As a I guy who runs a blog dedicated to dumplings and also studies ceramics, I was captivated back in 2018 when photos of Stephanie Shih’s porcelain pot sticker dumplings went viral.  I recently discovered her Instagram feed and her work over the past two years to create ceramic homages to Asian grocery staples like bottles of soy sauce, Sriracha and chili paste.  Her use of glazes and under-glazes to create hand painted versions of labels and contents of the bottles is quite amazing.

One of my favorites: Lao Gan Ma Chili Crisp

According to her artist statement she is trying to create the food items from her youth in the 80’s and she spends time researching the bottle labels used back then.  As she writes “The result is a pantry from the ‘80s——filled with with fingerprinted surfaces and shakily painted labels——that looks at once familiar and hazy, like an old memory”.

Her work has been shown at the American Museum of Ceramic Art (Pomona, CA), Wieden+Kennedy (Portland, OR), and Hashimoto Contemporary (San Francisco, CA) and featured by NPR, Los Angeles Times, Vogue, The New York Times, and The New Yorker.