Table Art

Designer Alexis Moran doesn’t make just any fruit bowl. Her creations give you a new way to play with your food and turn your tabletop into a gallery space.

Moran’s beautiful wood fruit plates and coasters are works of art that reflect her reverence for food and her fondness for shapes. Using solid pieces of walnut wood, Moran carves each piece on a lathe. Slats and organically shaped indentations in the plates promote fruit preservation by allowing air to circulate. Shallow, circular depressions also coddle each piece of fruit, like the cardboard pockets fruit is often shipped in. Moran admits that she’s “a very orderly kind of person,” so having a place to put each individual cherry or lime appeals to her more than jumbling her perishables together in a bowl.

Moran’s creativity stems from her family, which includes four generations of artists, and her East Bay roots. While attending Miramonte High in Orinda, Moran fell in love with her 3-D arts and crafts class, in which she made sculptures and designed jewelry. Out of high school, she was recruited by Georgia Tech to play volleyball, and it was there that she discovered industrial design. She later returned to the Bay Area to attend California College of the Arts and pursue design full-time.

Currently, Moran designs for Oakland’s Concreteworks Studio, where she’s at work on a line of housewares, including tea light candleholders and vases made from concrete. They’re the perfect tabletop accompaniments to her fruit furnishings.

Moran makes her work to order. Visit www.alexismoran.com.