Amanda Brown of Blazing Star Studio (401-339-1624) was inspired by a succulent plant in Belize when she created the “Sea Spike” dish.

Tableware isn’t just a temporary place for food—it’s a connection to our environment through natural shapes, colors and the sensations of a good conversation. These six artists offer an array of imaginative products, from multi-functional vessels to table runners.

Kristy Sly is fascinated by the qualities she finds in nature, like the ripples in a kayak’s wake, and by the ways we see glass—through refraction and reflection of color. For more than 10 years, Sly has worked to master glass techniques, most recently focusing on kiln-formed and kiln-carved tableware. Through Kristy Sly Kilnformed Glass in Madison, Wis., she offers 10 colors and nine shapes to mix and match the perfect table settings and accents.

Designs by Kelly Marshall, of Custom Woven Interiors Ltd., are influenced by her experiences in Sweden, where she spent a year studying textiles. Although Marshall’s second language still comes in handy for buying trips, the Minneapolis, Minn., artist also looks to the American Southwest and other contemporary designs for inspiration, weaving a multitude of threads into perfectly nuanced colors. Look for an ever-expanding color selection in rugs, wall art, table runners and placemats.

Lynn Everett Read is unequivocally inspired by the abstract color-field paintings of the 1960s, but he also looks to textiles, mosaics and forms in nature. Through his Portland, Ore., studio, Vitreluxe Glass Works, Read produces festive, functional vessels for the table and the home, using complex fusing, tiling and blowing techniques to achieve a miraculous color palette.

Amy Adams of perch! labels her line of lights, vases, salt and pepper shakers, and plant pots as such, but doesn’t require you to stick to its primary function. It’s up to the owner to decide if a bowl should hold birdfeed or toothbrushes. Every perch! product uses low-impact materials and processes and non-toxic finishes. Although her medium of choice is clay, “it’s more about design than art,” the Brooklyn, N.Y., artist says.

Jeff Soderbergh of Re-flect Architectural Art primarily creates furniture, but at the end of the year he focuses on bread and cheese bowl/boards. For him, beauty in a piece isn’t always about flawless pattern, it’s about “warm tones mixed with alluring colors and grain patterns to remind us of the simple elegance of our natural world.” The bowls are especially environmentally friendly, since they are created from recycled cutoffs from the renewable hardwoods Soderbergh uses yearlong.

Although Amanda Brown, of Blazing Star Studio in Providence, R.I., is first and foremost a sculptural ceramist, she also creates functional pottery with flare. Take her “Sea Spikes,” for instance, which are both immediately inviting and intimidating. Most of Brown’s work is influenced by Moorish and West African art, but she also looks to the environment to produce a line with simple forms complemented by a natural color palette.