For the last five years, celebrated Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos has been cooking up a 12m-high sculptural pavilion in the British countryside. Her three-tiered Wedding Cake is a Rothschild Foundation commission for the Waddesdon estate (a French Renaissance-style château owned by the National Trust and managed by the Rothschild Foundation).
Part sculpture, and part architectural garden folly, Wedding Cake is an extraordinary, gigantic, fully immersive sculpture that fuses pâtisserie, design and architecture. It is a tiled cake shimmering with a glaze of pinks, greens and pale blues inside and out, adorned with sculptural ornaments and featuring the sound of water and a dedicated lighting system.
‘I wanted people to have three different approaches to it: looking from the outside, enjoying the surroundings from the different levels or balconies and rising to the top, finally completing the artwork with their presence’ says Vasconcelos.
And this undertaking is emblematic of Vasconcelos’ practice. Her materials reflect the multitude of international influences on Portuguese culture over centuries – born from a history of exploring and seafaring, from Chinese and Japanese ceramics and Brazilian carnival, incorporating colour and light. In fact, for this project, the ceramics were made by the Viúva Lamego manufactory, which has been operating in Sintra, Portugal, for over 170 years.
