Photograph by Art Holeman

When Christopher Jagmin was a nine-to-fiver working in the advertising industry, he unleashed his creative energy by painting plates and mugs for family members at Christmastime.

His office fantasy – the one you have when work isn’t going so well – was to someday design a whole collection of dinnerware, anointed with bold numbers, cheeky phrases, conjunctive ampersands and pop art.

A couple decades later, Jagmin, 49, is doing exactly that. Almost by accident, his whimsical plates are popping up in boutiques and getting the conversation rolling at dinner tables across America.

“Someone can get really eclectic conversation pieces,” Jagmin says from his east Phoenix home, where hundreds of plates are stacked up on metal shelves and every order is hand packaged. “I like that people can talk about it. I think it opens up a lot of conversations; I know it has on my table.”

Jagmin says his number plates – the runaway hits of his Black and White Collection – can take the place of nameplates at dinner parties, or they can be turned into a game. At a cocktail party, fattening hors d’oeuvres can go on the “yes” plate while healthy foods are displayed on the “no” plate. (Or, if we’re being honest with ourselves, vice versa.)

Jagmin is one of those creative souls whose mind is constantly turning cartwheels and somersaults. He draws inspiration from everything he sees – magazines, museums, the Sonoran Desert. He sketches, draws, takes notes. He keeps a journal full of the things that have inspired him over the years.

“I have so many plate ideas,” he says. “If I had the money and the time I would do them all.”

Those ideas would have rested obscurely in his notebook if not for a few twists of fate.