Meet the artist who turned her food allergy into a hobby, creating desserts from glass

Shayna Leib's beautiful handworked glass and clay replicas of 84 classic French pastries took 18 months to craft.

Shayna Leib's Patisserie collection features 84 glass and ceramic miniature French desserts. Source: Eric Tadsen

We’ve all wanted some desserts to last forever, particularly if they’re of the French patisserie variety.

Shayna Leib is an American artist making this dream a reality with her delicate dessert creations, all crafted with glass and ceramic to look good enough to eat. Her Pâtisserie series comprises 84 tiny dessert replicas, each one modelled after a classic French treat.

Crème de framboise Source: Eric Tadsen

There’s a rich looking Cerise au chocolate noir, a shiny Crème de frambroise, and a decadent Entremet au citron vert, all recreated with spectacular precision at a fraction of their regular size.

Shayna Leib's replica of Entremet au citron vert. Source: Eric Tadsen

“A French patisserie is the penultimate expression of beautiful food,” Leib tells SBS. “The attention to colour and design is nothing shy of exquisite. French pastry chefs are innovative, subtle, sublime, and don’t demean their desserts with loads of excess sugar like Americans do. They craft them with all the care you would a piece of fine art.”

The undying appeal of French desserts notwithstanding, a big reason why Leib is so drawn to them from an artistic perspective is that she can’t actually eat them.

Entremet au chocolat. Source: Eric Tadsen

“If I eat dessert, I get sick, which is sometimes worth it to live a little,” she says. “A few years back, I started making glass chocolates for fun. I noticed the deeper I got into it, the more I saw chocolate as a form and less as food. My analytical mind would kick in whenever I passed a chocolate shop, trying to figure out the best way to create it. I basically took that principle and applied it to dessert, training my mind to not want it, to bypass desire.”

Gâteau l’orange et la crème Source: Eric Tadsen

Of course, she’s not infallible. “It works about 80 per cent of the time,” she says.

I realised there’s a universal reaction to dessert that transcends culture. I didn’t start out to affect people’s moods, but suddenly it became a really humbling, pleasant by-product.

Leib’s “dessert doppelgangers” are a mixture of glass and clay, all made from scratch in various workshops. The “hotshop” is where individual glass parts are blown or hand-worked; at the same time, she’ll focuses on the ceramic elements of each individual piece –often the cream on top, or the icing.

The process is slow-going: Leib started in 2016, and crafted all 84 pieces in the collection over an 18-month period.

Pâte à choux. Source: Eric Tadsen

“It’s very time consuming and hard on the body, because a lot of machining is required to make the disparate materials look like they were organically blended. It’s hours upon hours of machining, grinding and fitting that comprises the majority of the labour.”

The hard work and long hours have paid off for Leib – her dessert miniatures are near-flawless. If Paul Bocuse were alive, we’re sure he would give her work the nod of approval.

Millefeuille Source: Eric Tadsen

Other people seem to approve, too.

“I didn’t realise until I watched people looking at the desserts that it seemed to make everyone happy,” she says. “I realised there’s a universal reaction to dessert that transcends culture. I didn’t start out to affect people’s moods, but suddenly it became a really humbling, pleasant by-product.”

Keep an eye out for Leib’s forthcoming dessert collection, in which she’ll explore the bright, garish and playful desserts of American cuisine.

Stay up to date with Leib’s work on her website and on her Instagram page.

Images by Eric Tadsen.