Featured table setting
A seat at Stephanie Stamatis’s dream table
What does the ideal dining table look like for someone who dedicates her life to beauty? Serax asks Australian art director and set designer Stephanie Stamatis. Her answer: a time-freeze of a table at the beginning of a party, saturated with symbolism, shot by photographer Marie Wynants.
Please introduce yourself.
‘I’m Stephanie Stamatis, an art director and set designer. My role is to act as a conduit between a brand and its audience by creating imagery that communicates the brand’s message. I do this through beauty, whimsy, and a touch of quirk. I studied interior design and worked in that field for six years before going freelance and applying my skills to photography. Twelve years on, I’ve refined my work around beauty and luxury, imprinting my personal style and experience into images for brands such as Goop, Flamingo Estate, Aesop, Summer Fridays, and Kinfolk.’
Your dreamtable is very expressive. Could you explain the concept?
‘I wanted to imagine sitting at a table with artists who have inspired both me and Marie Wynants, the photographer. I asked Marie for a list of her dream artists she’d love to sit with and have deep conversations with, and I made my own. From there, I selected artists whose work contains iconic imagery that I could translate into recognisable visual symbols. That’s how we arrived at Wolfgang Tillmans, Peter Fischli & David Weiss, David Lynch, Irving Penn, Dionysus and Marina Abramović.’
So every image is inspired by an artist’s work. Tell me about the egg on the raw steak.
‘This image was inspired by the photographer Irving Penn. He was a master of still life, and I’ve always been deeply influenced by his approach. I love how he photographed objects stripped bare in a studio setting. The genius lies in imperfection and in treating each subject as an icon. I like to approach my work in the same way: every item I photograph carries its own story and can stand alone.’
A question for Marie: Describe the beauty of a cigarette butt.
Marie: ‘I’m obsessed with the balance between melancholy, decay, and the macabre. A cigarette butt embodies all of that. It’s the end of something. It’s waste. It’s something that was just alive and warm. A cigarette can be vulgar, yet sometimes strangely elegant. That tension between the filthy and the beautiful, between something lifeless and something stylish, that’s where the poetry lies for me.’
Aside from cigarette butts and pills, the atmosphere recalls the old vanitas still lifes from centuries ago.
‘I’m deeply inspired by historical still life painting and the symbolism woven into those works. The Dutch and Italian masters often hid subtle meanings in their compositions. Eggs for fertility, butterflies for mortality. In a similar way, I choose objects that hold meaning for me. I love the idea that there’s always more than meets the eye. Beyond the beauty, there’s mortality, fear, doom, and love.’
Marie, I get the sense that you and Stephanie really enjoyed this shoot.
Marie: ‘Stephanie has an extraordinary instinct for objects. Her gaze isn’t that of an ordinary person but of a sculptor. She works directly with the products on the table, guided purely by intuition. In a single minute she’ll assemble a few elements and suddenly something sculptural and poetic appears before you. Her aesthetic is soft and romantic, mine more melancholic and dark. That contrast made working with her an absolute delight.’
Why did you choose the tableware by Sergio Herman for Serax?
Stephanie: ‘I selected the white plates of Sergio Herman’s Silhouette collection because they offer a beautiful blank canvas that I could use to tell my stories with. Sergio’s plates are quiet and elegant, without too many distracting elements. Yet they also have sophisticated contours, giving them just about enough character.’
Your “dream table” is a table that has already lost its neatness. Why is that?
Stephanie: ‘This dream table captures the exact moment when the table begins to fulfill its purpose, when it has just shed its untouched state. I’m not fond of overly tidy, perfectly set tables; they often feel staged. Once a table has been used, it gains something human, something real. My dream table isn’t about flawless styling, but about the traces of a beautiful moment.’
Marie: ‘The moment everything becomes too neat, the tension disappears. Perfection feels lifeless. Neatness is control; mess is life.’
