When SMITHS approached us to create a centrepiece for the Solus in time for Clerkenwell Design Week, we saw it as an opportunity to push ceramic beyond its usual role – building on the ongoing work at Webb Yates exploring the structural potential of natural materials.

Porcelain gets used everywhere as tiles, worktops, and cladding. The goal here was to push it further by turning it into the main structural element for a dining table. The idea stayed simple: use the material’s strength in compression, strip the design back, and see how far its raw form could go.

The final table is made only from large-span porcelain tiles, cut and slotted together. A diamond pattern was chosen to allow a greater length of material in compression without getting in the way of leg room. It also adds stability and buckling restraint while giving the piece a strong, clean aesthetic. The legs were water jet cut to slot into this pattern, securing them into place and adding rigidity to the slender porcelain sheets. This locks them into a stable base without glue or fixings. The tabletop sits on top, held in place by the cross sections in the legs, with the weight of the porcelain doing the work. It’s solid but can be taken apart and rebuilt. No hidden bonds, just the material doing its job.

We wanted to challenge porcelain’s typical use as a surface finish and prove it could act as the primary load-bearing element. To do that, the process had to be iterative. Getting it right took some trial and error. We built prototypes, tested cantilever lengths, checked how the legs would hold under load, and refined the cutting tolerances. We tested how far the edges could cantilever before deflecting too much, how the interlocking legs would behave in compression, and how the tabletop would transfer load through the joints. The testing was surprisingly successful, which meant we were confident to push the cantilevering edges further than we first planned. The cutting tolerance was better than expected too, which let us refine the width of the cut to get a snug, stable connection without fixings.

A lot of the work was about seeing how far current manufacturing methods would let us go, while staying true to traditional porcelain production techniques by using large spans and cutting them down to suit the design. We worked closely with SMITHS and Casa Grande, a traditional tile fabricator in Italy who supplied the porcelain. The production methods and standard tile sizes set the maximum spans we could work with. Thickness was also key, and we settled on 12mm, which gave a good balance between strength and slenderness and helped control deflection. Working with larger elements wherever possible meant we could eliminate waste and keep the design simple.

The result is minimalist, efficient, and adaptable. It can be disassembled and reused without adhesives or positive fixings, making it simple to repurpose or move.

The piece sat at the centre of a programme of events – ‘Staples’ – curated by SMITHS for Solus for Clerkenwell Design Week, which included the panel ‘Innovation in Everyday Materials’. The table embodied exactly what we explored on the panel, which I was glad to join. It took something as familiar as porcelain and proved it could carry load, come apart cleanly, and work harder than it usually does.

If we look again at the materials we use every day (brick, timber, porcelain) and think harder about how we use them, we can find better ways to build. Sometimes that means questioning our assumptions, using what’s already there and letting the raw qualities of a material do the work.

The table was just the start. Following the success of the design, Solus went on to build a bench alongside it, which scaled the same concept down to prove it can adapt to different uses. The limit for now is the size of porcelain that can be manufactured. Looking ahead, there’s room to push it further by combining porcelain with other materials that have complementary properties, like timber’s strength in tension, to create smarter structural hybrid solutions.