Get To Know: Lue Brass

GP fell in love with Ruka Kikuchi’s handiwork while shooting It’s All Easy, but it was actually brilliant prop stylist, set designer, and overall aesthetic genius—as evidenced here and throughout the cookbook—Christine Rudolph who sourced the hand-crafted brass dishes, accent pieces, and serving utensils in the first place. In a world where everything is so ubiquitous, not only does Kikuchi (he goes by Lue, hence the name of the line) create shapes that are entirely original but he does so 100% by hand out of his Setouchi, Japan studio. Every piece, whether it’s an elegant ladle, a set of spork-like picnic utensils, or a teeny coffee scoop, is hand-hammered to perfection, sometimes, out of a single cut of metal. What this means: It’s likely to have marking that are unique to the individual piece alone.