Rita Soares & Raquel Medeiros launch the Depau brand

01 / 14 / 2021

The two winners of the Roca One Day Design Challenge Portugal 2019, and participants at the Master Design Challenge, have created the brand and a design studio together with Mafalda Coutinho. They focus on the development of projects within the context of product design.

Let’s discover more about the brand!

They defend artisan characteristics, sustainable processes and, undoubtedly, the essence of Portuguese design. Following this philosophy, the best-known project is a set of kitchen tools, the Depau kit, consisting of a spoon, a fork and a spatula, manufactured in oak wood, with manual finishing and a touch of linseed oil.

 

The Depau kitchen tools were born from a project carried out in the degree in Product Design at the Faculty of Fine Arts of Lisbon in 2018, by Raquel Medeiros, Rita Soares and Mafalda Pestana.

In this project the overall goal was to produce something that could be designed quickly and reproduced in a short time. To do that, they followed a methodology that started with a research, which led to the definition of a concept and the conception of a general idea, which was then prototyped and tested. Their research focused mainly on the consumers and in a chosen space of the house, the kitchen. Thus, they were able to define that one of the most used objects is the wooden spoon, also very associated with craftsmanship, so they considered it interesting to explore this object.

 

The design began with a need for better storage by the user, hence its characteristic straight and flat shape.The research also included the materials, and that they found that wood stood out as a natural and sustainable material. Oak was the one they chose because it is a nobler and more resistant wood. To end, the linseed oil was carefully chosen because of its impermeable characteristics, perfect for objects in contact with food preparation.

 

Without a doubt, this project represents what Portuguese design is all about!