The plate that changed me Glenn Tebble with his Tulip Plate, which reinspired him to get back into making ceramics. TALK to Glenn Tebble for long enough and eventually he tells you about the plate that changed his life. He seems faintly bashful about it: after all, his pretty, bright tulip design is a world away from his beautiful freeform plates and subtle platters in use in 150 top-notch restaurants including Circa, Movida, Aria and Icebergs. Tebble created the tulip plate two decades ago, back when he taught pottery at a little hobby ceramics centre in Eltham, in suburban Melbourne. In the intervening years, tastes changed. But the little flower plate popped back into his head when he needed it most, after debilitating illness forced him to give the ceramic game away. You try making plates with 40 per cent lung capacity. And it was that plate that laid the foundation for his current success - creating his bespoke tablewares for many of our top restaurants. Tebble's stoneware, created using moulds, means a restaurant - for an extra fee - can buy a range exclusively. "Up and coming chefs are always looking for something a little different," Tebble says. We can offer them anything they like - the latest technique using splatter effect, a white satin with black splatter. It's very random, every piece will look a little bit different. There's a big market for that at the moment. Three Blue Ducks (in Sydney's Bronte) have a lot of that and they absolutely love it. Step back to 1994 and to Eltham, and the students who painted Tebble's designs on their own vases and platters loved his creations as well. Tebble, who was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis shortly after birth, had left school at 17 and taken up ceramics, becoming a teacher at 20. I was able to use my students as a marketing platform. We had 300 students and 60 per cent would want to paint your design. That was my role - to keep everyone coming back. Our business relied on getting students coming back week after week, so we had to keep them entertained. During that time he learnt all about big hits and misses. Fifty pieces of one design of mine that the girls had tried to recreate, I had an idea that it was a successful product model and I could start selling those products to galleries and homeware shops. I was pretty much cold calling, hard work and labour intensive, but also there was a lot of joy that a gallery or homeware shop wanted my product and I could deliver it. These orders would make very little money but it came back to the passion and the knowledge that I was able to make something and provide a service that the community wanted. I was probably driven by adrenalin. It is what has brought me to where I am today. Today, his Glenn Tebble Homewares supplies plates and platters to more than 150 restaurants here, half a dozen in New Zealand, and the Toko restaurant in Dubai, opening this week. When noted chef Dan Hunter opened his new restaurant Brae, in Birregurra, 90 minutes west of Melbourne, on Sunday, he served his food on Glenn Tebble Homewares. Tebble describes his range of plates and platters as "freeform - in one word. We use the phrase 'organic shaped' quite often but that can be misinterpreted. It is a mould base. We make the individual mould and can replicate each piece over and over. A face-to-face chat with chefs gives Tebble and his team some idea of needs and budget before the 17-step manufacturing process. A $3000 plaster mould creates his stoneware plates. A combination of clay and clay filler, heavy in its liquid form, is gunned into the mould. After it sits for one hour it becomes leather hard. Out of the mould, the plates dry overnight and are fired to 1040C, turning into bisque. Glaze is dipped or sprayed, depending on the desired effect, and the plate then fired again at 1200C before a 36-hour cooling process. A 16-piece dinner party set costs about $350. In 2009, Tebble, after three years of waiting, was finally granted a double lung transplant. He had given away ceramics to focus on his role as an ambassador for the Cystic Fibrosis Federation. But the following year he had his tulip plate epiphany. I just went out and painted one of my most popular plates, a tulip design, sort of getting back to my roots. I wanted to get back in because I had given up ceramics because of my health. I wasn't able to start a new life and I wanted to start something that was for me again. It was just a bit of therapy for myself, looking after my mental health. He took it to a nearby kiln to get it fired. That was Unique Pottery, the long established ceramic company and corporate giftware supplier. You stumble across something and before you know it - wow! Tebble says of the encounter. He was attracted to the Unique Pottery brand Elliot Golightly, which was in need of a reboot. "I had faith in my ability and said if you allow me to work with this product I can take it somewhere," Tebble says. They were overwhelmed by my interest in their product. Tebble worked with Elliot Golightly while setting up Glenn Tebble Homewares and getting in orders via endless ceramic parties and corporate markets. It gave me a lot of gratitude and I felt like you were making a difference in life. I had been so blessed and I felt that I was giving back. After two years, his business has a turnover of $300,000. He has plans to boost that to $2 million. Next year he plans to merge his company with Unique Pottery and supply tableware to premium events at Noosa Food and Wine Festival. He is targeting the general public as well as restaurants. He also continues to speak out and write about his condition. I still get sick, yet I work around it. I spent four nights in intensive care with a terrible infection. Transplant is not a cure; it is a better life with no certainties and I hope that comes across with my enthusiasm and passion to this day. gthomewares.com.au