Ceramic artist, painter and architect Adil Writer shares the most important information with us right at the end of our walk-through of his new exhibition, Table Manners 2: “I love to cook, and I don’t follow any rules. If I hadn’t been an architect, I would have been a chef or in the catering line.” Back in the day, he says, there wasn’t a “market for male chefs,” and so, his dad insisted that he pursue engineering. The rest, of course, is history. Writer is doing many different things today, including creating unique ceramic and earthenware, some of which you can also eat out of. A curated set of this tableware is on display on a tabletop at the new art show in Gallery Art and Soul, Worli.

Most of the glazed pieces were made at the ceramic bottega of his friend Mirta Morigi in Faenza, Italy. He had hidden them away in his Auroville home for two years, until Tarana Khubchandani, the director of the gallery, added a new coat of paint on the white walls of her gallery. He tells us how Khubchandani has been convincing him to do Part 2 of Table Manners-1 that he had curated with Rakhee Kane at Gallery Square Circle in Auroville, for nearly a decade. His stipulation to bring the show here was that he wanted dark walls, so that the starkness of his table—the naked kadappa tabletop on Siporex blocks, with a bulb dangling from above—would show. She got him to settle for grey, he jokes.