Studio RAP describes itself as ‘Architects of Bespoke Ceramics’. Since the Rotterdam-based studio was founded in 2016 by Lucas ter Hall and Wessel van Beerendonk, it’s been on the cutting edge of new ways of manufacturing. The studio has an array of in-house 3D clay printers, working on ceramic designs for façades, artworks and ornamentation in collaboration with architects and designers.

The latest artwork from Studio RAP is Powerwall, which the duo reckon is one of the largest robotically 3D-printed ceramic artworks anywhere in the world. Comprising 322 unique ceramic titles, each 3D printed through a layering process using a robotic clay printer, the artwork began life as an algorithmically generated form.

Powerwall graces the façade of a high-voltage transformer station, Switchstation Beverwijk. The inspiration behind the forms was patterns of electromagnetic energy – invisible, but dynamic, transforming the windowless utilitarian form of the transformer station, owned by Dutch grid operator TenneT and designed by Powerhouse Company, into a piece of urban artwork.

The 300-plus panels form an installation that’s 8m high and 5m wide, gracing the brick façade of Switchstation Beverwijk. The wave forms that appear ripple across the surface were originally shaped by an algorithm, then output as three-dimensional forms via the 3D clay printer. Each tile is then coated with a translucent turquoise glaze and fired, creating a surface that shimmers and shifts depending on time and day and point of view.

The ribbed effect on the surface not only accentuates the form, but lays bare the act of clay printing, where ribbons of clay are extruded along a path, stacking up on each to create an organic feel. The addition of the glaze adds a layer of unpredictability, with different thicknesses of the colour pooling in the depths of the folds.

‘The studio embraces the reality that ceramics shrink and warp during the firing process,’ van Beerendonk and ter Hall explain. ‘The intense heat of the kiln transforms the raw material, meaning the final piece is never an exact sterile replica of the digital model, but rather an organic, highly characterful architectural element.’ Creating the final assembly required that each panel be perfectly engineered with the correct tolerances and stability so that the artwork could be put together in situ.

Studio RAP’s work brings the Dutch ceramic tradition into the modern era – a recent project, New Delft Blue, was a pair of gates incorporating reinterpreted traditional porcelain. Other recent work includes Ceramic House in Amsterdam, with its 3D-printed façade.

StudioRAP.nl, @Studio.RAP

Fanciness is something that’s resonated with Jeremy Anderson since he was a young boy growing up in suburban Minneapolis in the 1980s. He remembers his mom gingerly removing cube-shaped crystals that hung off the family chandelier and, with characteristic Midwest practicality, placing them in the dishwasher for a cleaning. He remembers noticing the silky damask patterns on mattresses and yearning to play dress-up with dolls.

‘Boys don’t play with dolls,’ Anderson recalls of the prevailing attitudes of the time. Now, with a solo show of lighting, furniture, mirrors and vessels on view in New York with the prestigious London design dealers Gallery Fumi, ‘I am giving myself permission to tap into that energy in a way I really couldn’t,' he says.

The show, titled ‘Held In Light,’ is Anderson’s largest solo presentation to-date. He works primarily in ceramics, a medium he discovered while still in high school. After co-founding the renowned lighting studio Apparatus, Anderson returned to ceramics about six years ago, a career transition that’s allowed the W*400 designer to plumb even deeper creative impulses.

Anderson’s work takes familiar objects and furnishings and transforms them into something more otherworldly and whimsical. Rotund stoneware vessels are ornamented with blooming petals and fins that give them a friendly, creature-like sensibility. Ceramic chandeliers and lamps are ornamented with ceramic beads, a move that evokes traditional lighting while giving them a delightful anthropomorphic quality, like a swinging fringe haircut.

‘I am very inspired by classic forms and shapes. It’s about putting my creative voice on those shapes and making them feel more modern and weird,’ Anderson says.

Gallery Fumi’s founders took notice. For co-owner Sam Pratt, who grew up in Sierra Leone, it was the hand-made quality of Anderson’s work and their universal ability to stir up memories that gave it a particular resonance. ‘There’s an unusual sculptural thing [inherent to the work]. I also see something African about them,’ he says, adding ‘Just as important is Jeremy the person.’

For the ‘Held in Light’ show, Anderson has amped up the scale of his work with a selection of 21 pieces that include a dining table, cabinet and a daybed. Each features a bronze frame, cast to appear at once delicate and brawny, and embedded ceramic slabs painted in Anderson’s signature, meditative stripes.

One of the most eye-catching pieces is a new daybed that blends fantasy with a certain pomp. It features a French horsehair mattress covered in a silky Zak + Fox fabric (a gussied up version of a traditional mattress) and bolster cushions fashioned from a 19th-century homespun fabric.

The works are displayed as part of Gallery Fumi’s New York residency at Gallerie 56, an exhibition space in the podium of Herzog & de Meuron’s ‘Jenga’ tower at 56 Leonard Street. In a full circle moment, Anderson would often drive past the building when commuting to his studio in Brooklyn.

‘So much of what I make is tapping into memory and being able to play in a way I didn’t feel like I was able to when I was young,’ Anderson explains.

‘That’s why the making process and being hands-on is so important to me,’ he adds.’ That’s what it’s all about.’

'Held in Light' is on view at Gallery Fumi's New York residency at 56 Gallerie through 3 July, 2026.

Since founding her eponymous brand in 2018, the Milan-based, Colombia-born designer Natalia Criado has been developing a body of work that reads as both functional object and sculpture. Known for her tableware wrought in silver-plated metal – often articulated through uncanny, surrealist gestures, such as a pair of teapots conjoined at the spout – she creates pieces that carry a palpable symbolic charge, at times drawing on themes as disparate as personal memory or her research into pre-Columbian ceramics and objects.

To pair that esoteric sensibility with a house like Laboratorio Paravicini – the Milanese ceramics brand run by Costanza Paravicini and her three daughters, Benedetta, Margherita and Bona, known for their deftly hand-illustrated ceramics – feels like a bridge across dimensions. 'I had been aware of their work for some time, and what drew me in was not only the craftsmanship, but the structure behind it, a family-run studio largely composed of women,' Criado says.

The collaboration has resulted in a new tableware collection, ‘Metalia’, which brings Criado’s metalwork into dialogue with Paravicini’s craft-led practice. Their joint presentation, titled ‘The Invisible Table’, runs from 21-26 April 2026 at Laboratorio Paravicini’s via Nerino workshop. Wallpaper* sat down with Criado to discuss her collaboration with Laboratorio Paravicini, her evolving relationship with ceramics,and what she’s most excited to experience during Milan Design Week 2026.

Salone del Mobile 2026: in conversation with Natalia Criado

Wallpaper*: Laboratorio Paravicini’s work is deeply rooted in a Milanese sensibility – the studio is based in the city's medieval centre, where Costanza Paravicini also raised her family. How did you engage with that context?

Natalia Criado: Milan has this duality, it’s extremely fast, very industrial, but at the same time deeply rooted in tradition and craft. Working with Paravicini allowed me to engage with that slower, more intimate side of the city. It felt like stepping into a lineage rather than starting from zero. As someone who has adopted Milan as home, it became less about referencing the city, and more about participating in it.

W*: In the past, you’ve worked largely with metal – how did you approach translating that practice into Laboratorio Paravicini’s ceramic language?

NC: My relationship to ceramics actually precedes my work in metal, so there’s always been a certain sensitivity there. Ceramics carry an inherent fragility, both physical and symbolic. Rather than translating my metal practice directly, I approached it as a dialogue. The metal elements became almost protective, structures that hold, frame, or even shield the ceramic pieces. It was less about imposing one material onto another, and more about creating a balance between strength and delicacy.

W*: Can you walk us through the different pieces in the collection?

NC: The collection is composed of a series of ceramic plates by Laboratorio Paravicini, developed in dialogue with my design language, alongside metal elements that I created. The metal works almost as a protective structure, encasing and framing the ceramics, responding to their inherent fragility. At the same time, it doesn’t conceal them; it accentuates their delicacy and surface. There’s a tension between the two materials, strength and vulnerability, where each piece exists both as a functional object and as a sculptural composition.

W*: The collection will be presented as part of an installation titled ‘The Invisible Table’. What can visitors expect to encounter?

NC: The installation is not meant to present a table in the traditional sense. It’s more of an atmosphere, something slightly disorienting, where the idea of the table is suggested but never fully defined. Objects appear almost suspended, disconnected from a fixed structure. It invites visitors to question what a table really is, whether it’s a physical object, or something constructed through interaction, memory, and ritual.

W*: Tableware is inherently tied to ritual and gathering. Did you imagine a specific kind of table or moment while designing these pieces?

NC: I wasn’t thinking of a specific table, but more of a condition. Something slightly suspended, almost intangible, a table that exists more as a psychological or emotional space than a physical one. The pieces were designed with that tension in mind: between presence and absence, use and contemplation.

W*: Do you see this collaboration as a one-off exploration or the beginning of a longer dialogue with ceramic work?

NC: I see it more as an opening than a conclusion. Ceramics is a language that I feel very connected to, and this collaboration allowed me to re-engage with it in a new way. I don’t think it ends here, it feels more like the beginning of a longer conversation.

W*: Aside from your own projects, what are you most excited to see during Milan Design Week?

NC: What I look forward to most is how alive the city becomes. It turns into a point of encounter, something that is work, of course, but also something much more human. There’s a convergence of people who are deeply engaged and curious, and that energy is always incredibly inspiring. I’m especially drawn to the unexpected, smaller exhibitions, conversations, moments that aren’t necessarily on the main stage but feel more intimate and real

Laboratorio Paravicini, Via Nerino 8

Opening Hours
Monday-Sunday: 10am-6pm
Wednesday: 10am-10pm

Arranged in an almost ceremonial, inward-facing circle atop lime-green plinths, the ceramics on show at County Hall Pottery (until 3 May 2026) appear like organic specimens or artefacts from another dimension. This, the show’s curator and ceramicist Jihyun Kim explains, is what ceramics could look like 100 years in the future.

Titled 'Ceramic Odyssey 2126', the exhibition brings together the work of five contemporary artists known for the way they challenge material boundaries, including Bangkok-based Eiair, the show’s South London-based curator Jihyun Kim, British artist Tessa Eastman, Canadian artist Toni Losey and Netherlands-based Uriel Caspi.

Each artist employs what Kim describes as 'bio-futurist thinking' to explore how ceramics might evolve in an imagined future where ecological, technological and biological systems have been radically transformed, and the boundaries between them deliberately unsettled.

‘Through this exhibition, I wanted to invite viewers to imagine an optimistic future through the lens of clay, expanding the perception of ceramics as a medium with limitless possibilities,’ Jihyun Kim told Wallpaper*. ‘The works were chosen for their otherworldly, ethereal qualities and for how they push the boundaries of material and technique. They spark curiosity, prompting questions like, “How was this made?” and “What is it made of?”, while showing that ceramics can be experimental, hybrid and endlessly inventive.’

While some works were specifically commissioned for the exhibition, others were existing pieces that naturally aligned with this vision. ‘I shared the exhibition brief and theme with the artists about five months before the show, and I was amazed by how they interpreted bio-futurism through their existing practices,’ says Kim.

Artists presenting new work include Toni Losey, whose highly saturated, organic ceramic sculptures capture plant forms in the process of blooming. Her pieces are wheel-thrown, hand-built and multi-fired, resulting in complex, colourful, deeply textured surfaces – some with stamen-like wire and porcelain details. Similarly, Kim’s own imaginative creations draw on her Korean heritage and the mysticism of nature – in particular fungi – bringing a sense of magical intrigue, as seen in the bubblegum-pink 'Salty Fairy Danji'.

Bangkok-based Hassakorn Hirunsirichoke, also known as Eiair, is fascinated by small living beings. Displayed under glass cloches and viewed through magnifying glasses, his miniature white porcelain creatures reflect the fragility of the natural world. ‘Eiair used a “Solar Death Ray” technique, focusing sunlight through a large lens to bisque fire his pieces – an incredible fusion of clean energy, technology and nature that produces ceramics in a completely new way,’ explains Kim.

Existing works include Tessa Eastman’s hand-built pieces, which combine contrasting glazes and forms that recall geodes or coral structures, as seen in 'Erupting Red Midnight Cloud Cluster', where a red mesh structure spills over voluminous, cloud-like forms, and Uriel Caspi’s work, which seeks to preserve ancient clay modelling and glazing techniques that are rapidly vanishing due to industrialisation. Pieces from his 'Corpus Archetypus' series feature pressed clay bodies depicting human organs, finished with Arabian lustre glaze – a technique developed in the Islamic world that creates an iridescent, metallic sheen through the application of metal compounds and refiring. In the exhibition, the works are placed on a moving turntable to reveal how the glaze shifts in the light.

‘Together, as curator and artist, we reimagined ourselves as future makers in 2126, reinterpreting the works through a bio-futuristic lens,’ says Kim. ‘Tessa’s pieces became climate-responsive, shifting with the weather, while Uriel’s sculptures were envisioned as living organs, melding human, biological and material futures.’

Presented at gallery and events space County Hall Pottery, which incorporates active studios and kilns in the historic County Hall building on London’s Southbank, the exhibition’s design was led by Kim. Plinths and walls are painted green, the floor is covered in furry fabric, and opaque, shimmering green fabric is placed across the windows, blurring the outside world. ‘I wanted visitors to feel like they had stepped into the year 2126 – something ethereal and otherworldly,’ she explains. ‘I drew inspiration from Dune, Guardians of the Galaxy and various bio-futurist illustrations.’ Running until May 2026, visitors are invited to immerse themselves in this imagined ceramic future and explore it firsthand.

Ceramic Odyssey 2126 is on show at County Hall Pottery until 3 May 2026, Tuesday–Sunday, 11am–6pm

County Hall Pottery
Belvedere Road
London SE1 7GP

Modern furniture retailer DWR has joined forces with Devin Wilde – one of Wallpaper's USA 400 – to debut a new collection of furniture and vessels, launching today both online and in DWR stores.

The ceramic artist is known for his sculptural approach (he was trained as an architect), as well as for creating objects that balance utility and ornament. The collection for DWR spans vessels, cocktail tables and tables alongside an entirely new design, 'Vessel No. IX', in four new glazes – 'Cobalt', 'Midnight', 'Garnet' and 'Metallic Satin'. These tableware pieces join ten existing designs, forming a collection defined by bold forms and richly saturated hues, all handcrafted in Wilde’s Brooklyn studio by a small team of artisans.

‘Glazes are like people,’ says the artist. ‘Each one has its own way it likes to be handled.’ His mastery of these nuances is evident throughout the collection, which features primary colours inspired by classic midcentury palettes with high-gloss finishes, while his architectural training ensures each piece remains grounded in function. ‘I think of these pieces as usable art,’ he says. ‘They’re meant to be part of daily life.’

‘Devin possesses an extraordinary creative vocabulary and a rare ability to bring together beauty, joy and inspiration,’ adds Omar Nobil, DWR’s creative director. ‘He embodies the kind of thoughtful, forward-looking design perspective that DWR has always championed.’

Wilde has been a fixture in the art scene since his debut vessel collection in 2023 garnered immediate acclaim. Over the past two years, he has been cementing his influence with his distinctive voice: a classicist with a postmodern sense of humour, he borrows from historical design movements while playfully subverting their rules, his work remaining rooted in a clear understanding of form, proportion and structural logic all the while.

Wilde is also inspired by the world beyond the walls of his Brooklyn studio – by long walks through New York City – whether that inspiration comes in the form of geometric brickwork, the curve of an arch or the interplay of light and shadow across architectural details. ‘I’m particularly drawn to the art deco façades of Manhattan’s skyscrapers and the classical revival townhouses of Brooklyn,’ says Wilde. ‘Some of my glazes are meant to recall oxidised metals – the kinds of finishes you’d see on Roman metalwares unearthed after centuries of aging.’

Whether you consider these pieces sculptural objects or everyday tableware, the collection reinforces the notion that beauty and utility belong together.

The collection is now available online and in DWR stores across North America. Prices start at $1,050.

After decades spent creating avant-garde portraits, New York-based photographer John Arsenault found himself ready to refocus his creative energy. He returned to another medium he had practised while studying at the Art Institute of Boston – one that offers a slower, more tactile process and allows the artist to create at his own pace. 'We're so bombarded by imagery that I felt like I needed to put my energy into something different,' he says. 'I was yearning to do something with my hands again.'

For the past couple of years, Arsenault has crafted a variety of highly textured and sculptural ceramic vessels – a world apart from the glossy, two-dimensional photographs he typically produces.

His first collection of 26 pieces was awash with nautical and hair-related references, based on childhood memories in Massachusetts spent on his father’s commercial fishing boat and in his aunt’s beauty parlour. Braided ropes were wrapped and entwined into the roughly textured clay, while seashell, coral and anemone-like forms emerged – with undertones of pink that nod to his queer identity. The glazes were equally rustic, adding another expressive layer to the organic designs.

For Arsenault's latest series, titled Charred, the artist has continued his hand-building process but shifted to a much darker palette with subtle red hues. The resulting vessels appear as though they’ve been recovered from a burning building and represent 'the idea of coming out of the fire,' he says.

Distorted shapes of classical amphorae, kraters and kylikes spring from memories of art history classes rather than directly copied, and a sensuality emerges from their curves and protrusions. 'There's a real sexual energy to them,' Arsenault notes.

These pieces are currently on display – and for sale – at fashion boutique R. Swiader, the label founded by Arsenault’s husband, Raf Swiader, in New York’s SoHo neighbourhood. Also operating as a multi-functional community arts space, the boutique offers a convenient platform for sharing the work and allows Arsenault the freedom to operate without a gallery – after 17 years of representation for his photography – at least for now.

Arsenault acknowledges that he wouldn’t have been able to create this work decades ago, when he first embarked on his photography career, because his energy was entirely different then. It is only now, at a different stage of life, that this 'reemergence' feels right.

For those seeking creative inspiration in the new year, his journey is a reminder that no matter how accomplished you may be in your career, it’s never too late to shift course, try something new, or return to a latent passion. Change can be incredibly productive and fulfilling.

The Charred collection is on view at R. Swiader, 135 Grand Street, New York, until 3 February 2026.

California-based artist Woody Othello was back in Miami a month or so ago in preparation for his first museum exhibition in his hometown, at Perez Art Museum Miami, and he was trying to reflect on ‘how I got from point A to B and to multiple points’, he tells Wallpaper*. He soon referred to his sketchbook, where he had scribbled his thoughts on the colour red’s connotations for renewal, transformation, and rebirth. This was the point when he decided to cover the walls of the exhibition, titled 'coming forth by day’, in a ruby-toned lime wash paint. Another influence was a trip to Senegal two summers ago, which had exposed him to many interiors painted in clay with rich textures. ‘Each day is a mini rebirth over and over again – we don’t realise how much we change in a lifetime,’ adds the artist, whose works span sculpture, ceramics, painting and drawing.

The exhibition delivers a cohesively ritualistic experience enveloped in Othello’s scarlet hue choice on the textured walls, and tapping into multiple senses, with an olfactory component concocted with vetiver, a plant commonly found in Haiti. Nooks, plinths, and a pyramid layer the show with suggestions to look in, up, and around where his sculptures in glazed ceramic and carved wood await like seasoned storytellers. ‘Woody wanted to take the visitors elsewhere, outside his own space of the museum and transform it into a calm, tender place that feels almost like it hugs you,’ says the show’s curator Jennifer Inacio.

A sculpture from 2025, 'one becomes two, and two becomes one,' 2025, shows a couple of huggers with gramophone-like heads. They tightly caress one another while standing on their knees inside two massive hands that cup them with a motherly compassion. The palpability of safety mingles with a mythical echo in the sculpture’s richly glazed surface, which stems from the artist’s multiple firing process in his kiln in search of the desired finish. ‘Don’t always do the work for the result,’ he says about a commitment to the intuitive process that he lets ‘dictate where things go with openness’.

Besides a creative journey often freed from an urge for a destination, a sense of homecoming resonates with Othello’s return to Miami. He takes the moment to contemplate time and heritage as non-linear forces, with references to spiritual figures of Central Africa, his personal interest in metaphysics, Yoruba shines, and everyday objects, which generally appear in his sculptures as larger-than-life totems of memory and use.

A book about Kongo funerary objects, Four Moments of the Sun by Robert Farris and Joseph Cornet, was inspirational in the show’s embodiment of the animate. The sculptor, in fact, strives to grasp a non-hierarchical physicality in both living and mundane objects through his experiments in scale and material. ‘Both the living and everyday objects are animated by the same presence,’ he says. ‘There is the same emanating force that causes humans to exist as well as the inanimate world at the same time.’ Othello sculpts familiar objects such as mirrors and even telephones out of his receptiveness to their fleeting impact. ‘Spirit takes form in all objects,’ according to the artist, who sees an abundance of potential in ‘unpacking what is between being a messenger and the receiver of that message’. The show’s mirror-like glazed ceramic works with wooden frames possess such double-sided souls between being grounded and ethereal.

In the artist’s offering of a journey to each visitor, the way up remains one of his routes. The show’s central wood pyramid structure, which exhibits various small ceramic sculptures, stemmed from the intention to suggest ascension. ‘At first I thought about a staircase,’ explains De Othello. Eugene Fersen’s book Science of Being, where he talks about the four corners of the evolution – life, mind, truth and love – propelled him to settle on the pyramid form. The sculptures inside the pyramid show oozing bodies, mask-like faces, and less recognisable abstracted compositions, entangled with hands. The medley of the spirited body and the insentient summons another form of spirituality. ‘Everything radiates an essence and functionality,’ says Othello, who continues to ask, ‘How do we become more aware of being in a physical body?’

'Woody De Othello: coming forth by ay' is at Perez Art Museum Miami until 28 June 2026

pamm.org

Design Miami Paris 2025, the fair's third edition, brings the habitual curation of contemporary design, shown within the Hôtel de Maisons (51 Rue de l'Université, 75007 Paris, until 26 October).

The fair as usual does a great job of showcasing some of the best contemporary and modern collectible design from the industry's key players, but it also renews its commitment to a new generation of creatives, with newly launched initiatives such as the Designers of Tomorrow, in collaboration with Apple, and the Perrier-Jouët Design for Nature Award, inviting designers 'to explore the concept of sustainability as a driving force for meaningful cultural and environmental progress'.

2025 is a year of celebrations, with the concurrent centenary of the 1925 art deco exhibition high on exhibitors' agenda, but also of whim, as evinced by the multiple zoomorphic pieces on display across different galleries, a sign of playfulness within the contemporary collectible design conversation.

Here, we share our highlights from Design Miami Paris 2025

Carl Auböck at Patrick Parrish

The work of legendary Viennese designers Carl Auböck ll (1900-1957) and Carl Auböck lll (1924-1993) is presented by Patrick Parrish, who collated 150 pieces, 25 of which are from his personal collection. The display elevates designs that are 'typically considered as everyday small objects: bells, dishes, baskets, and bookends, revealing each piece as a unique and prescient objet d’art'.

The Soul Garden by Sissel Tolaas and Vikram Goyal

At Design Miami Paris, an artful menagerie by Vikram Goyal and Sissel Tolaas tells a story of scent and nature. ‘The Soul Garden’ features India’s ancient Panchatantra animal stories in the form of sculptural embodiments of empathy and coexistence. Crafted in the designer’s signature burnished repoussé brass and copper, each animal contains a hidden compartment depicting a fable hand-carved in miniature relief. Alongside each sculpture, there is seating to encourage visitors to lower themselves to the animals’ level and sit with them, reflecting on the messages in the fables. In doing so, they also get closer to the ground – both the grass and the stools are embedded with nano-scent activators conceived by Tolaas. Read more.

Surface Narratives by Fornasetti

Surfaces become a meeting point of material and vision in this series of works by Piero Fornasetti. For these pieces, the Italian artist employed a trompe l'oeil treatment and his brilliance is best exemplified by the Trumeau Riflesso di Panoplie sideboard: a reinterpretation of a 1950s piece, its surface features a wunderkammer of musical, scientific, architectural, astronomical and naturalist instruments.

La Déclive by Paulin, Paulin, Paulin

A modular seating concept designed by Pierre Paulin in 1966, ‘La Déclive’ 'embodies one of the designer’s most radical approaches: to eliminate traditional furniture in favour of a shifting, inhabitable floor'. The display is a living reflection of Paulin's vision for a design approach that revolutionises domestic arrangements, fusing architecture and furniture into a novel spatial experience.

Resonating Ping Pong Table, Song no. 1 by James de Wulf

James de Wulf's 'Resonating Ping Pong Table, Song no. 1' is a multisensory piece that works sound into a ping-pong table's typically playful function. Set within the Hôtel de Maisons' gardens, it invites visitors to play, and in return it offers an A-minor pentatonic scale as the ball hits its aluminium plates.

Céramiques 1890–1930 by Galerie Maxime Flatry

Ceramic vases by Jean Besnard, Ernest Chaplet and Pierre-Adrien Dalpayrat are shown here with floral arrangements by Thierry Boutemy. The works of the three pioneering names of French Art Nouveau and art deco ceramics 'stand out for the boldness of their forms, colours, and textures: these rare works reflect a moment of exceptional innovation in the decorative arts'.

Also read: the best design exhibitions to see in Paris this week

In postwar London, a generation of artists reflected on the changed landscape around them, both physical and psychological. Among them, German-British painter Frank Auerbach captured its density and disquiet in paint, while British potters Lucie Rie and Emmanuel Cooper channelled its resilience through clay – transforming raw material into expressions of touch, imperfection and renewal.

'Each of them represents a very grounded, tactile form of modernism, deeply tied to this part of London,' says collector and curator Rajan Bijlani, who brings their work together for ‘Electric Kiln’ (10 October – 16 November 2025), staged at his Primrose Hill home, which also happens to be the former studio of Emmanuel Cooper.

‘There's a shared resilience in their work that speaks to the post-war city – its rebuilding and layers of lived experience. Auerbach’s connection to this area, Primrose Hill, felt like the perfect point of departure for the exhibition. One of his renowned works, “Christmas Tree at Mornington Crescent”, is included in the show, and you can actually see Mornington Crescent right from the first-floor window, which brings the work’s geography full circle.'

Following last year’s ‘Syncretic Voices’, Bijlani once again opens the doors of his home, Fonthill Pottery, to the public, transforming the domestic setting into a meditation on material, memory and metamorphosis. This lived-in exhibition format – increasingly favoured by art and design collectors – is a deliberate move away from more traditional white-cube gallery spaces.

'For me, the beauty of having a space like this is in sharing it,' he says of opening his own private space to the public. 'I've always believed that homes should be lived in, not preserved. When I first bought the house, which was once Emmanuel Cooper’s studio, I felt a responsibility to continue its creativity. Hosting exhibitions here feels like a natural extension of that lineage, and of this area's artistic history.'

Spread across three floors, the show places Auerbach's impasto canvases and charcoals in conversation with Rie and Cooper's ceramics, offset by modernist furniture by Pierre Jeanneret and Le Corbusier (the pair’s Chandigarh furniture is a particular passion for the collector). 'With Emmanuel and Lucie, there’s both a historic and local connection: Emmanuel wrote Lucie’s biography, they both worked with the electric kiln, and spent time in this area,' Bijlani reflects.

'Bringing their work back into this space felt symbolically fitting. I’m drawn to the materiality of their work, Emmanuel’s heat, colour, and pitted glazes; Lucie’s refinement, her sgraffito lines, and the thinness and elegance of her vessels. Each, in their own way, transformed craft into something profoundly modern, rooted in touch, imperfection, and in the physical and emotional landscape of London itself.'

Experiencing the work while moving through the house in the same low autumn light that Rie and Cooper once worked in creates a sense of intimacy – as if being allowed behind the scenes to encounter the pieces as they might exist in daily life, while reflecting on how the artists drew inspiration from, and in turn helped shape, the character of the city around them.

That atmosphere finds its most potent expression on the lower ground floor. 'The space embraces darkness rather than fighting it,' Bijlani says. 'With the concrete floor and warmth of the timbers, it makes for a contemplative setting where the works can take centre stage. Seeing Auerbach's paintings alongside Emmanuel's ceramics and the Chandigarh furniture in this room feels particularly powerful. They speak to each other through texture, each piece grounded in material and process. There’s a sense that the house itself is part of the exhibition, holding these works in conversation with its own layered history and with the spirit of north London that connects them all.'

‘Electric Kiln’ is open by appointment only from 15 October - 16 November 2025; to request a viewing, please contact hello@rajanbijlani.com

Also read: These are the design exhibitions to see in London during Frieze Week

Tekla debuts a new collection of candles, marking the home textile brand's first foray into home scent. The collection is created in collaboration with Irish ceramicist Sara Flynn, whose hand-shaped, organic vessels have long inspired the Tekla founder and creative director Charlie Hedin

Tekla’s sculptural candles

The three scents, each with a distinctive ceramic vessel, are developed to explore the relationship between place and memory, and are also available as refills. The launch is an opportunity for Tekla to expand its reach beyond textiles and into a more intimate, yet deeper sphere of domestic comfort and luxury.

The candles feature three scents: Vasta, a dark and smoky scent dominated by fresh wood notes, reminiscent of being in a sauna; Kōdō, whose notes of cardamom, carrot and fig are combined to evoke the atmosphere of incense burning in a temple; and Flore, which as the name suggests is created to bring to mind a meadow in summer, with notes of citrus and bergamot

'Developing the scents for this collection was a deeply personal experience, as we tried to capture the essence of places and memories that have inspired the brand’s story,' says Hedin. 'I’m proud of the three distinct fragrances this has resulted in and what they evoke for us.'

Hedin worked closely with Flynn on the three vessels accompanying the launch. The Irish ceramicist's designs are an ideal match for Tekla, with their sinuous forms and precise artistry. The ceramic objects, with Flynn's distinctive pinched surfaces, form shapes that reflect a textile's folds and creases, a subtle nod to Tekla's collections.

The collaboration, adds Hedin, 'brings a new level of artisanal craft to the brand, inviting all to elevate their home comfort'.

'Collaborating with Tekla was an exciting challenge,' adds Flynn. 'Translating the intricate folds and contours of my one-off sculptural vessels into a functional object pushed me into new creative territory. Working so closely with Tekla and the production team was crucial to producing the final form; designed, made and finished with care.'

The Tekla candles are available from teklafabrics.com and in-store at Tekla Copenhagen from 29 September 2025, €250, with candle refills at €75

This is the latest instalment of The Inside Story, Wallpaper’s series spotlighting intriguing, innovative and industry-leading interior design.

Gunia Project, the Ukrainian design and lifestyle brand, has opened a new flagship in Kyiv. The traditional-meets-contemporary space occupies a historic building that once served as the Embassy of the Republic of Panama.

It took nearly six months to find a location that would effectively embody Gunia’s aesthetic vision. Though the building settled upon had remained unused for some time due to perceived building constraints, Anastasiia Tempynska of Kyiv-based architecture and interior studio Temp Project, who worked on the design, saw its potential.

Designed with the customer experience in mind, the space prioritises clarity and flow. A recessed reception desk facilitates intuitive movement, while a children’s area adds a family-friendly touch. Mirrors in the fitting rooms create a spacious, airy feel, and each section features comfortable waiting areas.

The original dark timber ceilings and wall panels have been preserved, now brightened with soft pastels and cool materials like stainless steel, milky glass and crisp white acrylic, as well as contemporary lighting. Carpeting was introduced not only for its warm, domestic feel, but also for practicality – to help protect the fragile ceramics on display.

The furniture selection draws from classic Ukrainian interiors, and consists of contributions from largely local makers, including Noom, Woo and Cegla Studios; being an artisan studio itself, Gunia was committed to championing Ukrainian craftsmanship. A wooden table, mirror and chair pay homage to traditional carving techniques, as well as the nearby Golden Gate, the ancient entrance to Kyiv. Such cultural references repeat throughout; a colour pairing of chocolate brown and pale blue, for example, is inspired by the refectory at the city’s Saint Sophia Cathedral.

The space is, essentially, a continuation of the story told by Gunia’s products: a conversation between past and present. The brand’s offering – which ranges from whimsical ceramics and jewellery to clothing and accessories – evokes a sense of innocence and nostalgia, like a stroll through a pastoral landscape or old-world village. The store’s design mirrors this with its palette of forest greens, sky blues, floral pinks and water-like reflective materials.

Every detail – from layout to lighting – echoes the brand’s philosophy: that craft, context and culture are inherently linked. The resulting experience reflects both the spirit of Gunia and the soul of Ukraine.

Wedgwood and JW Anderson present an exclusive collection of designs by British studio potter Lucie Rie, dating back to a 1964 collaboration with the fine china brand, but never put into production.

Lucie Rie's pottery work

Born in Austria, Rie fled Nazi Austria in 1938 and established herself in London. Alongside her creative work, she was making ceramic objects, including buttons and jewellery for fashion houses, an experience that later informed her precise colourwork. She was also known for her ‘sgraffito’ technique, consisting of carefully scratching the surface of the material to reveal a different shade underneath. So many decades on, her work is defined by a language that still feels modern. ‘Lucie Rie is one of the greatest potters of the 20th century,’ says Jonathan Anderson, who for many years now has been a collector of her work.

‘Rie worked with incredible restraint and clarity, something that feels transcendent,’ says Emma Glynn, Wedgwood’s creative director. ‘Her refined silhouettes, experimental glazes, and graphic use of line challenged traditional notions of ceramics and paved the way for contemporary makers to explore this medium for both artistic and functional expression.’

Wedgwood and JW Anderson release Lucie Rie designs

Working closely with the Estate of Lucie Rie, Glynn and Anderson developed Rie’s original Wedgwood commission for the first time. Defined by Jasper blue surfaces with white graphic inlays, the collection includes two sets – a teacup and saucer, and a coffee cup and saucer – developed with a technique that makes them faithful to Rie’s designs.

‘The line is unmistakably Lucie Rie, and that’s what I love about these designs,’ continues Glynn. ‘It’s both decorative and structural, creating movement without ever overwhelming the form. It’s a quiet confidence that truly captures her signature style. Bringing that together with our iconic Jasper material, this becomes a remarkable meeting of minds – Wedgwood and Lucie Rie, two visionary forces in a collaboration that truly transcends time.’

The objects are made with a combination of machine and handwork. Once moulded, the pieces are fitted to the turning machine, where an artisan shapes them and ribs them by hand – a process similar to Rie’s own studio work.

‘[We used a] technique called “slip trailing inlay”, and to my knowledge, this is the only time we've used it,’ says Glynn. ‘It's an extremely difficult method – perhaps one of the reasons the design didn’t move forward initially. That said, it's a truly beautiful technique, and one I hope we continue to incorporate into our design language.’

The proceeds from the collaboration will support the newly formed Lucie Rie and Hans Coper Foundation, working to grant the long-term accessibility, digitisation and preservation of archival material. As part of the initiative, a grant scheme will be established to promote academic and creative scholarships.

‘It’s a chance to honour a collaboration she always hoped would happen,’ says Anderson. ‘What’s truly remarkable is that Wedgwood has now realised these designs in the way Rie envisioned them. I think she would be thrilled to see these pieces finally brought to life, especially in this charitable context.’

The collaboration will be available from selected stores in China, Japan and the US, Harrods and Selfridges in the UK, wedgwood.com, JW Anderson Soho in London, JW Anderson Milan, JW Anderson Shibuya Parco Tokyo, and at jwanderson.com from 19 September 2025

Max Lamb is attempting to nail the design of functional ceramic furniture pieces at the UK workshops of 1882 Ltd. But pieces seem to be spontaneously crumbling, while others emerge from the kiln cracked and are launched directly into the skip. These behind-the-scenes moments, captured as the designer works with the ceramic brand’s fearless creative director, Emily Johnson, to create a ceramic seat you can safely sit on, demonstrate the steely resilience of material maestro Lamb and his co-conspirator. Together, they are on a mission to master the capriciousness of this age-old material when worked at scale.

‘Crockery’ by Max Lamb and 1882 Ltd at Gallery Fumi

‘Crockery’ – a series of ceramic chairs and stools – is the outcome of their efforts. Currently on show at London’s Gallery Fumi, the confident, sculptural pieces conceal the complexity of their creation.

Aesthetically, the seating designs in white, black and soft pink earthenware extend the tableware ceramics that Lamb developed when Johnson first took creative control of the family kilns some 14 years ago. His haphazardly-hewn jug, bowls, and mugs set the tone for Johnson’s new venture – combining centuries of pottery expertise, both artisanal and industrial – with groundbreaking contemporary design.

Johnson grew up well-versed in the ceramic production of Stoke on Trent, where the Johnson Brothers pottery has been based since 1882. But she is also complicit with the cohort of leading designers she has engaged to work with her. 'Emily Johnson is not your normal manufacturer!' Lamb says emphatically. It is clear that the decision to crack the construction conundrum of a workable ceramic chair was a shared one, and followed years of mulling the idea together.

'The thing about these chairs is they look like they are a solid piece, but they are not,' says Johnson. 'They are four pieces of slip-cast ceramic that are stuck together with what we call “stick-up” clay.' The process began with Lamb creating the forms he would work with by using a hammer and chisel to chip away at plaster blocks. It produces an irregular textured surface as he works. These were then used to make slip moulds. The seat, the back, and the legs are cast as separate pieces, and then fettled together with liquid slip and a knife, which in expert hands, reinstates the chisel-carved surface seamlessly across the joins.

Drying lasts up to five weeks – and takes place naturally, in stable conditions that allow no air movement around them. The chairs are then fired at 1,140°C. 'What is quite astounding and original about them is that all the joined pieces are, in essence, hollow. It really takes the combined centuries of knowledge of all those in the factory to achieve this,' says Johnson.

While Lamb has a longstanding relationship with Fumi, this is the first time the London gallery has worked with 1882 Ltd. 'To be potters now creating work for galleries such as Fumi is pretty special,' says Johnson. There is no doubt, however, that the daring, pioneering nature of this challenging project deserves such a platform.

‘Crockery’ by Max Lamb and 1882 Ltd is on view at Gallery Fumi until 30 September 2025

2-3 Hay Hill, Mayfair, London W1J 6AZ

Plaster Paris Studio – comprising Tessa-Rose Vardy and Olivia Engelhardt – began as two friends with a shared interest in space, objects and furniture. Today, the pair explore the intersection between furniture and art, using materials such as ceramics, metal, wood, and plaster. As ‘Birds Eye View’, the studio’s first collection of contemporary artisan furniture and sculptural objects, is showcased in a Paris exhibition coinciding with the city’s Design Week, 3 - 7 September 2025, we took time to find out what makes these emerging designers stand out.

Get to know Plaster Paris Studio

It was a hazy afternoon in Ibiza when Vardy and Engelhardt, decided to launch their joint practice. Spending time in Engelhardt’s garden on the Spanish island in 2017, they spoke about the idea of creating objects together that merged their different backgrounds (Vardy is from South Africa, Engelhardt is from Germany, and they are based in Paris and Ibiza, respectively ). ‘Coming from different backgrounds, we were excited to explore the synergy of what that could look like,’ say the duo. ‘At the time, it felt far off, but in 2024, we finally gave it a name.’

They had met in 2017 while studying in Barcelona. Engelhardt worked in web and graphic design, while Vardy worked in art direction and image. As individual visual designers, they felt they were missing a tangible, hands-on connection to their work. Over time, they dabbled in getting their hands dirty with ceramics, wood and metal.

‘These individual explorations became essential stepping stones, giving us both the technical and creative tools that would form the foundation of Plaster Paris Studio. Everything we learnt along the way has shaped the direction we're in now and contributed to the visual library we draw from today. It was through this process that we found common ground, and from that, our signature style began to emerge,’ they tell Wallpaper*.

The ‘Birds Eye View’ collection is a harmonious balance of brutalism and bohemia, and nods to the two locations in which the designs were conjured up. ‘Curiously, both [our] studios are on islands,’ says Engelhardt of the duo's respective bases. ‘In Paris, we work from the fifth floor of Tessa’s apartment building, tucked between the rooftops of Île Saint-Louis. In Ibiza, the studio was hand-built by me and my family, and has been a sanctuary for us to start our process and get inspired away from the noisy city life.’

She continues, ‘We try to find the best of each place and merge [that] together as an outcome of our work. The song of the cicadas and soft light of Ibiza, in combination with the brutalist contemporary energy of Paris. We love that both environments contrast with each other, and we try to find that quiet space in between. That is really what feeds our work; whether it's through colour or material, we are constantly playing with the dialogue between the two locations.’

Drawing inspiration from these two environments, the designers work balances hard and soft materiality, and warm and cold tones. In their first furniture collection, they explore this contrast by pairing industrial materials such as stainless steel with more traditional and warm materials such as African sapele wood and Japanese washi paper.

‘We always start from a small detail, a texture maybe, or a particular feature in a landscape, and this develops into a concept,’ says Vardy. ‘We try to maintain a refined, aesthetic tone across all of our work, letting the connection to nature shine through, whether it’s in the raw materials we use or the earthy colour palette we mostly turn to.

'Having said that, it’s still important to us that beneath this you can get a sense of the eclectic sensibilities and experiences that make up who we are as designers and people, so adding an element of fun to the pieces we create is something that comes naturally, and even though we’re drawing on references from all different corners of our worlds, this seems to tie everything together.’

The duo's goal is to keep things light-hearted and to allow people to feel surprised when exploring the diversity of their work, which spans from ceramic dog sculptures to industrially charged metal lamps. The pieces are designed to be versatile in the sense that they could be a collector's item or simply add a contemporary warmth to a space. ‘We think there’s something to be said for discovering the connection in difference.’

plasterparis.co, ‘Birds Eye View’ is on show at 5 Rue Bailly, Paris 75003, 3-7 September 2025

Standing on the concourse at London’s Euston station, brandishing a banner saying ‘bob on’ – Stoke-on-Trent slang for ‘perfect’ – 1882 Ltd founder Emily Johnson corralled a coach load of designers and journalists onto a train to the Staffordshire city this week for the opening of ‘100 Years, 60 Designers, 1 Future’, an exhibition at the Potteries Museum & Art Gallery.

‘100 Years, 60 Designers, 1 Future’

Johnson has been mobilising creatives to reenergise the ceramics industry in Stoke-on-Trent for over a decade, helped by her infectious enthusiasm and boundless energy. Since she launched 1882 Ltd with her father in 2011, she has tapped everyone from fashion designer Giles Deacon to stoke-born pop star Robbie Williams to collaborate with local makers on the brand’s collections. For this turbo-charged effort, she has tasked the pair and 58 other artists, designers, musicians and architects to design 61 plates, which will be auctioned to raise money to upskill the next generation of craftspeople. Many jumped onto the train with us to celebrate the opening (Williams was sadly on tour…).

One of the plates cheekily declares ‘You’ve had enough fatty’, while another bears a portrait of a bespectacled pug. The 61 pieces range from minimalist sketches to maximalist feasts of pattern, made with a range of techniques: colour overlay, handpainting and gilding. Each is being auctioned anonymously, though some of the works of the contributors – who span from architect John Pawson and designer Bethan Laura Wood to Oscar-winning set designer Shona Heath – are easy to guess.

‘100 Years, 60 Designers, 1 Future’ is part of a series of events marking the centenary of Stoke-on-Trent being granted city status. But this milestone comes at a tough time for the region, with spiralling energy costs and cheap imports seeing successive potteries – from Royal Stafford to Moorcroft – close, though the latter has just been rescued from liquidation by the founder’s grandson.

As part of the British government’s new industrial strategy, published on Monday, ministers have said that more than 7,000 energy-intensive businesses across the country could see their electricity bills slashed by up to 25 per cent from 2027. But Ceramics UK – which represents dozens of manufacturers in Stoke-on-Trent and across the country – isn’t hopeful that potteries will reap the benefits, pointing to how the 160-page document includes just one mention of ceramics compared to 70 mentions of AI and calling it ‘a missed opportunity to truly underpin and champion a cornerstone of British manufacturing’.

The ever ebullient Johnson is also cynical. ‘It’s deeply frustrating because we desperately need government support,’ she says, while highlighting the dire lack of apprenticeship schemes across the industry. 1882 Ltd previously worked with specialist makers in different potteries to create its collections but opened its own factory within the Wedgwood works in Barlaston in 2021 to bring a diverse array of skills under one roof and safeguard their future. ‘But the average age of the team is 55, so what will happen when they retire?’ she asks.

That’s where the auction comes in. Proceeds from the plates will directly fund apprenticeships at 1882 Ltd, with 15 per cent also going to the Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust (QEST)  to fund activities for school children, giving them the chance to experience the magic of clay. Bidding has now opened for the signed works, but a limited run of unsigned editions will go on show at Fortnum & Mason, London, in August and will be available to buy.

As part of our trip to the potteries, Johnson led us around the factory, where we saw bone china teased into lace-like tendrils and tried our hand at an experimental bubbling technique used by 1882 Ltd collaborator Deborah Brett to stain vessels. (I won’t be giving up my day job just yet.) Hopefully, the future cohort of apprentices will get these skills ‘bob on’, carrying both heritage techniques and contemporary innovations into the future.

‘100 Years, 60 Designers, 1 Future' can be viewed here or at the Potteries Museum & Art Gallery. The plates will be auctioned by 14 September 2025

'I would say that ceramics has always called me because I am a lover of the earth,' says Lois Samuels, the Jamaica-born ceramicist whose exhibition at Los Angeles gallery Twentieth has not so much introduced her as an essential new voice in her field as presented a compelling case for intuitive design.

'I hope my work reflects who I am; a fearless woman who goes with what feels good and never has limitations in her creativity.' It is an audacious creative manifesto but reflective of a woman who has traversed different creative disciplines, continents and life experiences and, through her current practice translates them into vessels, wall hangings and abstract sculptures.

Lois Samuels: ‘See the beauty in a deconstructed construction’

Samuels’ practice is rooted in exploring 'life’s intricacies and magic', and this is a phrase she returns to when speaking of ‘Open’, ‘Portal’ and ‘Wave Medallion’, the three series displayed at Twentieth. However, seeking to give shape to the tangible and intangible has consistently informed her work. 'My first series, “Sankofa”, was like having a dialogue with my past and my present,' she says of the vessels named after the Akan phrase meaning ‘to go back and retrieve’.

Samuels relates that both the making and ideating process were 'very moving in non-verbal ways', allowing her 'to become a conduit'. This notion of being both vessel maker and creative vessel is something she believes is visible in many other ceramicists she admires, notably the late Augusta Savage, whose work she likens to 'touching the spirit'.

Location and memory have played a significant role in Samuels’ making process. She attributes her desire to work with clay as coming from her earliest memories: 'I am Jamaican by birth and I feel it every moment of the day, and when I was younger, I wanted to be a farmer and I think it’s still there in the work.' Moving to California was an important catalyst for her practice. Classes taken at the Throw Clay Studio in downtown Los Angeles, and time spent working from a communal studio in Cypress Park deepened her craft and provided an artistic community in her medium of choice. Two European residencies, at La Meridiana Ceramic School in Tuscany and the Eutopia Art Residency in Greece, gave her the space to distil her methods.

Samuels eschews using wheels in her work, with her practice rooted in experimentation and explorations that are instinctive rather than governed by convention. ‘I think that sometimes when we have so much theory, it [might be] necessary, but it can get too much, instead of creating and allowing [ideas] to flow. I prefer making in a prayerful or a meditative state.'

Working almost exclusively with dark clay, Samuels does not glaze her pieces; she wants people to engage and 'see the beauty in a deconstructed construction'. She elaborates: 'It is like make-up or a weave, this is what is coming out of me now. And this is just about being real and transparent and in the truest form.'

Her choice of metaphor is reflective of her own lived experiences. 'For the past 32 years, I have called abroad home,' says Samuels, who initially found fame as a model and later, a fashion designer. The segueing of processes and personal biography are further reflected in her use of fabric, which she presses into the clay body itself, folding it sometimes to evoke movement and occasionally adding hand-formed clay beads, resulting in additional texture to the forms. 'Fabric is a big part of my story,' she adds.

In ‘Wave Medallion’, Samuels has included leather, using responsibly sourced hides to fashion a through-line and provide suspension possibilities for the pieces, which can either be affixed to a wall or hung freely. While life’s vicissitudes are referenced in the works, Samuels also seeks to create a design language that is uniquely hers. 'It is so important to me that any other pieces that I make possess a similar sort of technique, and that all my pieces interact as an open conversation.'

With its reputation for championing emerging artists and those with an original point of view, Twentieth is a natural home for Samuels’ work. Recalling first showing her pieces to Stefan Lawrence, the late founder of the gallery, she says: 'I brought [them] in and he was amazed and he just loved them and said, “This is something different that I have never seen before.” I remember his eyes most [because] they just spoke so much.'

He was also adamant that Samuels continue with her unglazed aesthetic. ‘I also brought in a glazed piece, one “Portal” that was glazed on the inside,’ she says. ‘And he said, “No, do it the way you have done here, let’s just keep it in its organic state.”’ Often, an external confirmation will allow an artist to continue to articulate what is true to them.

Samuels’ future plans, which include more time spent in Europe, private commissions and a deeper dive into her “Sankofa” series, are indicative of a practitioner who values candid self-expression, adventure and trusting her subconscious to manifest work that will endure.

loissamuels.com
View Samuels' work at Twentieth by appointment via twentieth.net

A glorious spell of sunshine has swept across the UK of late, fast-tracking the transition from winter via spring and straight into what feels like summer already. The natural world has roared out of hibernation. Eggs have hatched. Trees are in full bloom. There could be no better elemental backdrop for the arrival of artist Jonathan Baldock’s latest commission, recently unveiled in the Ballroom Gallery at Jupiter Artland, on the verdant outskirts of Edinburgh. WYRD is a coven of magical creatures, handmade by Baldock in textile and clay, standing together in pairs in a semi-circle that feels simultaneously protective and conspiratorial. Visitors join the silent group, and there’s an uncanny sense that it is we, not they, who are being observed.

The species in question are each scientifically proven to have same-sex interactions, and relationships even: giraffes, lizards, horses, cats, mice, chickens. Indeed, the premise of the show was born from a news story about a bond between two male penguins at Edinburgh Zoo. Baldock was first intrigued and then dismayed by the nature of the reporting, which suggested the reason these two male penguins were in a relationship was because there was a shortage of female penguins. The tone of the coverage was mawkish, with a sinister undertone in certain places of homophobic bias. It stirred something in Baldock, who had a religious upbringing and is himself gay. The penguins’ behaviour was deemed weird and unnatural, feelings any queer person can relate to in their own awakening.

‘WYRD’, the title of Baldock’s show, has a palimpsest quality to it. ‘In pre-Christian culture, “wyrd” was personified as a Goddess with the power to determine destiny across earthly and spiritual realms,’ Baldock writes in the exhibition’s opening text. Wyrd is an Old Norse word meaning ‘exceptional otherness’. The word has accrued different insinuations over time: magical, dangerous, strange, unnatural, aberrant – arriving today as a slur, more than a complement. Baldock himself has been described as weird, and titling his show with the word’s Old Norse origin is, he explains, a reclamation of its more wonderful and wonder-filled definition.

‘I’ve made these creatures more magical than they ordinarily are,’ Baldock explained at the show’s opening. ‘I’ve played with their scales, and given them new features – hands, noses, ears, faces – cast in ceramic from myself and my partner (the artist Rafal Zajko). They are beautifully monstrous; from a queer perspective, we identify with monsters, rule-breakers and creatures outside the perceived norms of society.’ The creatures have a folk energy, and a certain nostalgic aura. They are familiar, more than threatening and Baldock explains how their forms and details were inspired by vintage soft toy ‘how-to books’ from the 1970s and 1980s.

Baldock worked seven days a week for three months making each animal pair by hand in his studio. There’s a strangely visceral, bodily appeal to them – you sense the fact they have been wrestled out of a psyche into physical form. The metamorphic process of humble sackcloth and coconut fibre stuffing becoming works of art gives them a compelling Frankenstein alchemy. Standing in pairs lends the animals a power, but there’s an intentional Noah’s Ark echo too, of course. We’re left unsure whether they are waiting to board or they’ve been denied access to the Ark for their otherness and are deliberating their fate together. There is palpable tension and poignancy here; something meaningful is softly implied, yet left hanging in the air. The mood is heightened by the pristine primness of the decorated Ballroom Gallery in which they wait. You want to hug them and tell them it's not a phase – it’ll be OK.

‘WYRD’ is a magnificent commission and moving experience. Baldock describes the work with poetic and precise allegorical confidence. ‘Having grown up with a religious background, today I look to the natural world for spiritual sustenance,’ he says. ‘My faith is in nature, and nature is queer. Scientific evidence about same-sex behaviour has existed for decades, but has been routinely ignored or buried, and has only surfaced recently. It’s important to see yourself in this world that we live in – naturally.’ Away from the huddle of forms in the room on the mantelpiece sits a nest with an egg on the verge of hatching. ‘It’s a nod to the next generation,’ Baldock explains. And with that, we descend back into the garden with its pollen-filled air, feeling as if we’ve been granted access to something extraordinary – earthly, primal, animal and spiritual – wyrd in the most wonderful possible way.

‘WYRD’, Jupiter Artland, Edinburgh. From 10 May - 28 September 2025

Jupiterartland.org

Jonathan-baldock.com

2024 was a big year for New York ceramic artist Devin Wilde. His debut collection of vessels, inspired by the brownstone row houses that characterised his Brooklyn upbringing, caught the attention of collectors and enthusiasts. But for Wilde, those vessels were just the beginning, a way to refine his aesthetic sense and establish his voice in a crowded field.

This year, Wilde has scaled up, both literally and creatively. His body of work has grown to include small tables and furniture pieces, each one a testament to his appreciation for the challenge of creating larger forms.

‘I’ve always wanted to work at this scale,’ Wilde, who trained as an architect at Stanford, tells Wallpaper*. ‘I’ve come to appreciate the design and engineering that goes into making these forms stable and proportional – There’s a lot happening under the hood to keep them upright.’

In time for NYCxDesign, Wilde has launched Series No. II, a set of ceramic side and cocktail tables. The collection debuted at Love House last week, with more on view at Lawson Fenning’s New York showroom.

Wilde’s style is an eclectic fusion of classical architecture, Art Deco and postmodern references, with their geometric shapes and column motifs. His glazes, inspired by oxidized metal and weathered stone, lend a sense of something unearthed, like an ancient artefact that was pulled from an Italian lake.

‘Devin has the unique ability to take classical forms and turn them on their head,’ says Glenn Lawson, co-founder of Lawson Fenning. ‘There’s a quiet confidence in what he’s doing, even early in his career, the impact is undeniable.’

Wilde is set to explore even more ambitious projects. Next year, he is planning a collaborative lighting collection with friends working in wood, metal and ceramics. A long-term goal is to launch a Brooklyn showroom. No matter what the next year brings, though, his devotion to the craft anchors his work, no matter the scale.

That kind of commitment is simple, Wilde tells us: ‘I love it.’

Yellows, greens, reds, purples, blues: a distinctly vivid palette of colours has been brought to life using an unusual ingredient: microalgae.

'SO-Colored' is a Japanese research project spearheaded by the Tokyo design studio We+, which taps into the potential of microalgae as an unexpected and sustainable new source of pigment.

Renewable, fast-growing, carbon-absorbing, and low-impact, Microalgae – microscopic single cell organisms that thrive everywhere from rocks to roadsides – have long been researched within the food and biofuel industries, but their potential as a source of pigment has largely gone unnoticed, until now.

SO-Colored presented its findings in an installation at Galleria Rubin during Milan Design Week. Centre stage was a series of sharply-lined sculptures with deeply-toned surfaces that resembled glazed ceramic tiles, in a spectrum of shades, from greens and reds to yellows.

The project was based on the discovery that laboratory-grown microalgae change colour when exposed to environmental stresses such as light, humidity and heat. A microalgae powder developed by Algal Bio Co. was mixed with dammar, a resin from Indonesia, creating a material that appears to retain its colour over time. As Hokuto Ando, co-founder of We+, explains, this process also gives the pigment a 'remarkable depth' that has a glazed, ceramic-like quality.

'We believe that micro-algae is an exceptionally promising material for humanity,' Ando tells Wallpaper*.

'While it is already being explored for applications such as carbon dioxide absorption, alternative energy to petroleum, pharmaceuticals and functional foods, our project focuses on its aesthetic potential – specifically, its natural pigmentation.'

'In the future, there is potential to use this microalgae pigment anywhere in the world. We can also use local vernacular. Everything in the process is from nature.'

We+ – a studio co-founded by Ando and Toshiya Hayashi in 2013 – showcased further innovations with a second project in the same gallery: a collaboration with Heiwa Gokin, a century-old metal casting company in Takaoka, a city with 400 years of history as a traditional copper crafts hub in Toyama Prefecture.

In 'Unseen Objects', We+ explored the beauty of the 'mistakes' or 'leftovers' of the metal casting manufacturing process – a patchwork of burrs along the lines where where moulds are joined; the unremoved residual sand stuck on surfaces; the geometric imprints of reinforcement bars; iron rods used to secure rods bundled together like an offering of metallic twigs.

The end result is a collection of six sculptural objects with an otherworldly beauty, organically formed and uniquely imperfect in a spectrum of unexpected shapes and textural surfaces.

weplus.jp

Being the great-grandson of French painter Henri Matisse carries with it, let’s just say, some creative pressure. That’s why Alex Matisse forged his own path.

In 2009, after a ceramics apprenticeship, Matisse moved to a former tobacco farm in North Carolina and set up his own pottery studio, East Fork.

‘For a long time, my family's legacy felt more like a shadow than something to celebrate, so much so that I needed to disappear in the mountains of North Carolina to find my way out of it,’ Matisse says.

Over the last 16 years, Matisse has grown East Fork into a successful business, alongside his business partner, John Vigeland, and his wife, Connie. East Fork’s product line grew from a line of humble mugs and bowls in earthy colours like ‘panna cotta’ and ‘morel’ to a fully-fledged homeware line that encompasses kitchen essentials, candles and even glassware. The company also grew; today East Fork has more than 100 employees in its Asheville, North Carolina headquarters.

Finally, Matisse was ready to re-embrace his famous forebear. Today, East Fork has unveiled the Matisse Collection, a joyful assortment of tabletop essentials featuring the French artist’s most iconic works.

There are plates emblazoned with whimsical faces–based on Mattisse prints such as ‘Bédouine au grand voile (1947),’ and ‘Nadia au regard sérieux (1948)’. There’s a delicate line-drawing of a plane tree—’Le Platane (1951)’—printed on a round serving platter. And then there's a set of dinner plates printed with the artist’s most recognizable cutouts, a series of reclining figures titled ‘Nu Bleu’ (1952). The company has even launched a new brilliant azure colourway, La Sirène, to complement the decorative items.

‘With time, it feels like a natural progression to honor my great-grandfather’s legacy in this special way,’ Matisse explains.

The ceramist was also working with a deadline: Henri Mattisse’s oeuvre entered the public domain in the U.S. this year. For the collection, the younger Matisse was able to collaborate with his family’s estate and foundation, Héritiers Matisse, to ensure that the East Fork line was as faithful to the artist’s originals as possible.

‘Now that [East Fork’s] stood firmly on its own for many years has the weight of that legacy lightened enough to celebrate and honor it. This collection is the beautiful culmination of that process,’ Matisse says.

Today (24 April 2025) marks the opening of the second solo exhibition from French ceramicist Ludmilla Balkis at New York’s Guild Gallery. ‘Grasp The Mountains, Then Let Them Go’ showcases Balkis’ minimalist ceramic sculptures, which take inspiration from the pastoral surroundings of the Basque Country.

Balkis is inspired by the Pyrenean forests that surround her home and studio, and through which she hikes every day. She uses gathered materials: clay from the earth, stones as decoration, and sticks as tools. The ceramics exhibited in ‘Grasp The Mountains, Then Let Them Go’ also incorporate ferns, hay, branches, kaolin and pebbles. These pieces are elemental and earthy: the designer’s ‘tribute to the land’.

‘By paying homage to the place that has welcomed me – its craggy mountains and fertile soil – my work becomes an act of tactile acknowledgement,’ says Balkis. ‘Tethered to the territory where I live, to its topography, my work is a conscious endeavour to find oneness with the land.’

The sculptures are organic in shape, with many taking on Balkis’ signature ‘Hodei’ form, with wide mouths and columnar bases that expand into fluid canopies. The colour palette is bleached and blanched, achieved by drying and reducing materials to create pale layered glazes.

The designer manipulates the clay as much as she can without it collapsing – ‘pushing the limits of clay's potential’, in the words of Guild Gallery founder and curator Robin Standefer (of design firm Roman and Williams) – drying it in phases to prevent structural failure. It's a ‘humbling’ process, the designer says, and one which harks back to an earlier time: ‘The Basque mountains force the observer to return to a lost state of integrity, to act in accordance with the basic order of things.’

‘These infinite whites, these weathered textures, these open moving shapes, are an homage to the land. The soil. The mountains,’ she adds.

Balkis’ ‘back to nature’ approach mirrors the trajectory of her career: the designer initially studied fashion and art history in Paris, later working as a fashion designer at Celine with Phoebe Philo. However, she found herself drawn to a more fundamental sort of making, and began learning ceramics with Freya Bramble Carter in London in 2014. She moved from the big city to the Basque Country, thereafter adopting her minimalist, imperfect style.

In ‘Grasp The Mountains, Then Let Them Go’, the natural and domestic spheres collide. In the sleek surrounds of New York, Balkis’ work ‘[rehabilitates] the matter of the world’.

‘Grasp The Mountains, Then Let Them Go’ will run until 21 June 2025, rwguildgalleryny.com

From intricate bumblebees and flying swallows to fat hens and foraging badgers: these humble animals are an inspiration for Alex Monroe, who is known for his delicate, nature-inspired jewellery. Now, the British jewellery designer opens a new chapter to creatively explore his fascination with UK wildlife through a sculpture exhibition at the Garden Museum in London.

The exhibition, titled ‘Into the Wild’, was created in collaboration with floral artist Hazel Gardiner. Looking at five habitats within the UK as inspiration, the sole purpose of the exhibition is to invite viewers to savour a moment to just pause. It's a space to take time away from the rush of life, and contemplate the series of floral sculptures, hand-thrown ceramics, and sketches – a delicately tactile ecosystem built on craftsmanship.

The five floral sculptures are crafted from silver, with the flower piece featuring an array of rubies. The exhibition dives into the creative process, documenting the trials and errors that Monroe made before realising the finished pieces. The exhibition will also be accompanied by ‘Wild Botany’, a jewellery collection of 20 pieces inspired by the exhibition’s concept.

In a world where climate discussion is all too often pushed to the wayside, Monroe talked with Wallpaper* about why nature should be at the forefront of design, and the joy in taking time to notice our environment's details.

Alex Monroe on his new sculptures, and a very personal passion for nature

Wallpaper*: Congratulations on your debut exhibition! Reconnecting with nature seems to be a topic at the forefront of the design world. What makes your exhibition different to what we have seen from you before?

Alex Monroe: All the work in the exhibition is unmistakably my work, so you’ll recognise it… but the finished pieces aren’t jewellery, I’ve made sculptures. Although there is a collection of jewellery inspired by the work I did on the exhibition, which will be on display in the shop. I couldn’t help myself… once a jeweller, always a jeweller.

I’ve always studied plants and insects through drawing and then I’ve made interpretations of them in silver. My work is quite forensic, meaning I sketch and create as a way of uncovering information. I often dissect things or collect specimens, and I press plants in my sketch books. I suppose artists and scientists are the same; we’re all just trying to understand things, to understand life. I usually translate all my thoughts and drawings into jewellery because I’m a jeweller. I wonder how they could work on the body. Jewellery is such a fascinating discipline, it’s worn on the body and carried with you. It has to work on the human form.

After a lifetime of using jewellery as my medium, I’ve decided to be purely sculptural. I’ve long been fascinated by classic still lifes, particularly Dutch tulip paintings or Spanish still lifes. The human is slightly removed from the work and observes it. It’s been really fun to shift the viewpoint and discover how that changes things.

W*: Why is connecting with nature important to feed into your creativity and what is it about UK wildlife that inspires you?

AM: This isn’t something I have a choice in. My earliest memories are of lying on my tummy looking at ants or trying to draw the birds I’d seen. In many ways my need to be connected to nature grew stronger when I moved to the city all those years ago. I’ve always felt that we have more than enough extraordinary beauty right here where we live to last a lifetime. Sometimes the desire to search for things further afield means you can miss what’s right under your nose. I spent some time in temperate rainforests in Devon and it was just amazing, like something you’d expect to see in a Jurassic Park movie. We have everything right here, and I think sometimes we just don’t take the time to notice it.

What’s lovely is that now I draw with my daughters. We never go anywhere without a sketch book and a pencil.

W*: What inspired you to start throwing clay?

AM: I can remember making clay pots in primary school so this isn’t something new for me. Actually, I’m doing a farming and biodiversity project in Suffolk and when I came across clay on the land I immediately dug some up, formed it into thumb pots, fired and glazed them. This is just part of life for me. I did study ceramics properly when I was on my foundation course, and luckily I hadn’t lost the ability to throw a decent pot. My daughter has a studio in Peckham, so she helped me. I definitely needed help making the glazes and getting the technical things right, such as firing.

I’m a craftsperson and we make things. I feel like these skills have been undervalued. In this exhibition, I hope to share with the viewer the importance of patient observation, and of craftsmanship. I did the drawing. I made the sculptures. I made the plinths. I made the pots. I harvested hay from each location and I burned it into ash and I made the glazes for the pots out of the ash. By taking time and care, I hope to engage with the viewer, not just so they can enjoy the exhibition, but perhaps they can reflect on some of the ideas I’m exploring.

W*: What challenges did staging the exhibition present?

AM: I already have a challenging job designing jewellery and running the business. Also, I’m trying to establish a farm as part of my environmental work. This [exhibition] has been two years of wonderful, but quite challenging work, so I must admit it’s been quite tiring.

I always worry whether I’ve done enough. If people take time to come and see the pieces, I want to make sure I’ve done everything I possibly can to engage with them. I’m aware it will never feel adequate. I could do with an 'off' button!

W*: A lot of your work is inspired by your childhood, having grown up around an abundance of nature. When creating the exhibition, was there any sense of nostalgia for you?

AM: A large part of my work explores nostalgia and I don’t seem to be able to escape it. As the pace of life speeds up exponentially, I find comfort in remembering what is important. The great thing about drawing is that it goes at a pace unchanged forever. The same applies to the making process. Sitting in Martin’s Meadow in Suffolk, drawing cowslip and fritillary, I can’t help feeling the centuries these few pockets of land have gone through and remained unaltered, the natural rhythm of nature unchanged. Down in the damp gullies of a temperate rainforest, you are in an eerily prehistoric environment. There’s no escaping nostalgia in these places.

We have so much today, but there is a peace and tranquillity in losing yourself in an environment where you can focus on just one thing and where nature sets the pace.

Alex Monroe's 'Into the Wild' opens 1 May 2025 at the Garden Museum in London gardenmuseum.org.uk alexmonroe.com

Faye Toogood is surrounded by a cacophony of roses. These are not the dozens of varieties of roses that she grows in her much-loved garden in the English countryside. Instead, the roses around her inhabit a different cosmos: they are swirling and dynamic, abstract and dripping, vividly layered in visceral pinks and infused with a wild-edged freedom – and she is spontaneously hand-painting them, one by one, on to porcelain in a ceramics studio in Nagoya, central Japan.

Toogood is among a handful of creatives, alongside Ed Ng of AB Concept, Marc Newson, Yabu Pushelberg and the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, who are reimagining the heritage-steeped world of Noritake, one of Japan’s first modern ceramic tableware makers.

Noritake is something of a household name in Japan. Since launching in 1904 and unveiling the country’s first Western-style dinner service a decade later, it has become synonymous with the quality of its decorative white porcelain and bone china tableware. Today, however, the vast majority of its output has diversified into ceramics-related industrial technology, from sake to dentistry.

Noritake’s creative director Yuichiro Hori, the entrepreneurial Nagoya-born founder of Stellar Works furniture, is intent on shifting the world’s creative gaze back to its tableware – as reflected in the Noritake Design Collection.

This new series will cast the brand’s richly layered heritage of technology and craftsmanship in a sharp new light at Milan Design Week 2025, with a show at Alcova’s Villa Borsani in a space that has been art directed by Toogood. ‘Timeless and handcrafted are key words,’ says Hori. ‘Many processes are more than 100 years old. These designers are from different continents, but they all respect Noritake’s DNA.’

Highlighting Noritake’s qualities of ‘whiteness, uniformity and sharpness’, Tomoyuki Katada, head of tableware, adds, ‘By combining the technology we have developed with the sensibilities of world-renowned designers, we hope to create something new and valuable.’

The Noritake Design Collection includes Ed Ng’s round and stackable ‘Bangle’ series, in shades of white and blue; Yabu Pushelberg’s ‘Hoshikage’, a 19-piece set with intricately iridescent surface patterns, first showcased in New York last autumn; and a reinterpretation of Marc Newson’s clean-lined tableware originally made for Quantas.

There is also the ‘Peacock’ tableware collection, created with the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation and inspired by the architect’s peacock motifs for the interior of Tokyo’s Imperial Hotel. And, of course, Toogood’s ‘Rose’.

Her limited-edition series includes 14 hand-painted pieces in five different shapes, from decadent dinner platters to elegantly tapered pitchers, plus a limited run of 111 platters, with both decal and hand-painted rose motifs.

Playful, energetic and joyful, Toogood’s pieces feature strong brushstrokes of swirling pinks, from cloudy shades to deeper tones, and layered, coiled, forest green foliage, with a hint of postmodern fairytale. Balancing contemporary abstraction with heritage form, each piece was created using original shapes from century-old Noritake moulds.

Mid-process in Noritake’s historic HQ in Nagoya, Toogood sits surrounded by bright palettes of blended pigment paints. Pausing to explain her journey along the path of roses, she says, ‘When Noritake first got in touch, I looked through their museum book and I remember thinking that everything looked like it should be in the V&A. It was all so fine and beautiful and precise.

‘I wasn’t sure how my sculptural geometry or mark-making would fit into this world. But I wanted to find something that was a Venn diagram between Toogood and Noritake. So I asked if they had any original moulds and suggested I come and paint – which now feels ridiculous in a way because they’re master painters and I’m not a painter. But I wanted to get as close as possible to the way they do things here.’

All things roses quickly shifted into focus, the idea blossoming naturally from Toogood’s love of gardening. ‘Most people wouldn’t have me down as someone who clips roses at the weekend,’ she says. ‘But my garden is a big passion and I’m obsessed with rose varieties. I probably have more than 30 types. My mother is a florist and was always arranging roses. And my daughter’s name is Rose.

‘It was only when I went to Noritake’s museum that I realised how much of what they made a century earlier was connected to roses. I hadn’t consciously noted this before. Everything suddenly made sense.’

For Toogood – whose softly sculptural multidisciplinary work is typically shaped by intuitive ideas and creative self-expression – the notion of unwrapping the power and beauty (and stereotypes) of a rose felt perfectly at home.

‘There are obvious connections to the English rose,’ she says. ‘But the rose is powerful. It’s love. It’s kind of sexual. It’s passionate. It’s the fairytale, pricking fingers. There is a darkness. The connection with blood, too, although there are no thorns. It could be considered feminine in a refined, delicate way, but the way I paint them is full of energy and power.’

When it came to actually painting, there was a clear process of ‘unlearning’ on both sides. Drips, splashes and spontaneity are not words commonly featured in the vocabulary of master painter Masami Okada, who has worked at Noritake for more than 35 years.

‘It normally takes about five years to learn how to draw a gold line – and ten years to paint images. We only had three days with Faye,’ he says. ‘I was very worried at first about how to teach her. But then I saw her draw from her imagination – it was so spontaneous. I’m a craftsman – I’m very careful and precise, typically drawing to make a product to sell. But Faye has a boldness. I learnt that this is the difference, this is art.’

‘The golden rules were the ones I broke, such as not using too much oil and solvent with the pigment paint, otherwise it goes everywhere,’ says Toogood. ‘This is the antithesis of what they do – it’s got smudges, running drips, mixes of glazes. Like a badly behaved child, the things he taught me I was able to reverse in order to find my own language. But the outcome has benefited so much from his precision, sense of process and deliberation over the details.’

Drying nearby is the reimagined form of a square-based water pitcher, its surface a deep tangle of coiled greens (‘This one is waiting for the roses,’ says Toogood) and a large round platter, at its heart a single rose, swirling in cosmic chaos and abstraction (‘expressive, experimental, emotional’, she adds).

For Noritake, this is just the beginning. Further projects with contemporary designers are underway, including a tableware collection by Toogood, with new shapes and decorations rooted in heritage. As Toogood says, ‘Noritake hasn’t lost its connection
with history, unlike many British ceramic companies that seem very trends-based. There is a classicism and longevity here. You feel like you’re contributing to an archive.’  

The Noritake Design Collection is on show from 7-13 April during Milan Design Week at Alcova, Villa Borsani, noritakechina.com, t-o-o-g-o-o-d.com, alcova.xyz

This article appears in the May 2025 issue of Wallpaper* is available in print on newsstands from 3 April 2025, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

Former James Bond star Pierce Brosnan and Stefanie Hering, founder of interior objects brand Hering Berlin, have creatively united on a new ceramics series exploring the themes of love, loss and renewal. The collection, titled ‘So Many Dreams’, comprises three vessels limited to 25 editions, and is a 3D realisation of Brosnan’s drawings of the same name.

Pierce Brosnan and Hering Berlin present 'So Many Dreams' vases

The Irish actor and artist met Hering for the first time in Miami in 2023, where they discussed the idea of bringing Brosnan’s drawings into the third dimension through sculpture. He selected Hering Berlin’s 'Tropo' vases as his canvas. The name is derived from the ancient Greek word ‘tropos’ meaning ‘to turn‘ or 'to change direction‘, which has inspired a theme of transformation and movement within the collaboration.

Working on the vases’ smooth, velvety porcelain, Brosnan created three designs, titled 'Mirage', 'Tryst' and 'Solitude'. They are intended to work as stand-alone pieces, but when arranged together, the grouping weaves a narrative of the artist’s experiences.

Over the past two years Brosnan’s works have been showcased in multiple exhibitions, since ‘So Many Dreams’, a show of paintings, phone drawings, script drawings, lino cuts, NFTs and a short film, debuted in May 2023 in Los Angeles, and was exhibited during Art Miami later the same year. This new ceramics collaboration with Hering Berlin marks his experimentation with new materiality, form and function.

Visit heringberlin.com or somanydreams.co to inquire.

Jonathan Baldock crafts wild magic in his immersive exhibitions. Working primarily with clay and natural textiles, the British artist weaves together pagan traditions, expressive natural forms, and the deep connection he shares with the women in his family. For ‘0.1%’ at London Mithraum Bloomberg Space, he challenges the patriarchal roots of this former Roman Temple, which was built to worship the macho god of justice and war. A four-metre-tall mother-goddess figure towers over the exhibition.

'The divine feminine predates the temple of Mythras,' Baldock tells me, when we meet in his east London studio ahead of the opening. 'But the older, divine feminine goddess figures were knocked to the side by warrior societies.' His idol is powerfully built, cloaked in a long coat covered in swirling vines and flowers. Her outfit is made from heavy hessian, like the fabric bags used for hop picking, a long tradition within his family. Its thick, loose weave fits her looming proportions. 'It looks like a giant could have made it,' he considers. 'It has an otherworldliness.'

The head is based on a sculpture the artist made of his mother when he was a child; he has scaled it up in bronze, with lapis lazuli embellishments. 'I remember making this figure from earth dug out of the back garden. Kent soil is claylike; it’s raw and sticky. Like a lot of parents, she told me it was incredible! I remember feeling very proud.' The new head is both endearing and intimidating; Baldock was keen to embrace this duality, presenting a potent, complex maternal figure. 'I was a queer kid in a single parent family until she married my stepfather, and she took on multiple roles. It would be very easy to make it all cheesy and cosy, but I wanted to show the hard-working person who held down multiple jobs and could be terrifying as well.'

The mother-goddess sits at the centre of a grid of poles which create a maze-like viewing experience and capture Baldock’s childhood memories of hop gardens. 'There’s a feeling you get in these spaces which is a bit like a forest. I like the idea that it’s not an easy path through.' The use of coppice, which involves cutting lengths of wood but never killing the plant, reflects the artist’s interest in traditional farming techniques which have a symbiotic relationship with nature.

Amongst the poles is a selection of ceramics and textiles covered in luscious images of bees, foliage, and sacred geometry, as well as his mother’s favourite flowers: bluebells and snowdrops. Teeth, umbilical cords, and hair are also pictured, mirroring parental keepsakes and DNA which runs through generations. Baldock’s mother created a heart sculpture and rendering of the artist’s head from Kent soil, which sit out of sight within the goddess. There is also an ambient soundscape created with Baldock’s frequent collaborator Luke Barton, which includes whispers, bird song, and the sound of hop pickers.

The title comes from the minute genetic difference that exists amongst all humans: 0.1%. 'At the centre of the work is my belief that most humans are good,' he tells me. 'When societies were smaller, often working with the land, everyone knew each other. They knew their place in the community. Now, we’re so overwhelmed. We need to be constantly reminded of our similarities. We are all brothers and sisters, the amount of DNA we share is so huge in comparison to what separates us.'

These ideas feed into Baldock’s upcoming solo exhibition at Edinburgh’s Jupiter Artland. For ‘Wyrd’ (opening 10 May), Baldock is creating textile and ceramic animal sculptures inspired by vintage soft toy manuals and based on creatures that have been observed to have same-sex relationships. Animals such as penguins will be shown in hybrid with mythological creatures, inspired by Sacha Coward’s ‘Queer as Folklore’, which positions the old Norse word ‘wyrd’ as a special otherness that is connected with ancient goddesses. “Certainty when I was growing up, ideas around what was ‘normal’ were impressed through the natural world,” says Baldock. “This recent scientific focus on same sex relationships between animals hit a chord. It’s a middle finger up to the idea of not being ‘as you’re supposed to be’. I hope it will be very inclusive, disarmingly funny, and beautiful.”

Jonathan Baldock's ‘0.1%’ at London Mithraum Bloomberg Space runs until 5 July 2025

londonmithraeum.com

In the industrial village of Fiorano Modenese, Italy, a new exhibition celebrates the quiet poetry of everyday objects. Conceived by Italian art curator Sarah Cosulich, ‘An Ode to Things’ brings together paintings, sculptures, and design pieces that explore the beauty found in simple forms and domestic stillness.

Drawn from the private collection of Massimo Orsini, founder of ceramics brand Mutina, the exhibition reflects a deep appreciation for the artistry of the inanimate – vases, vessels, furniture, and decor elevated beyond function into something more contemplative. Timed to coincide with nearby Bologna’s ArteFiera art fair, the event also marks an important anniversary for the brand. ‘Mutina is celebrating 20 years, and among the many things we have done, the most important is the relationship we have forged with the artists and designers who have shaped this entire world of creativity,’ Cosulich said at the opening.

Installed in an intimate corner of Mutina’s expansive showroom – part of the Patricia Urquiola-designed Mutina HQ in Fiorano – the exhibition invites viewers to linger, to look closer, and to find meaning in the ordinary. The show takes its name from a poem by Pablo Neruda, the Chilean Nobel laureate, in which he professes his enduring love for objects. He writes: ‘I have a crazy, / crazy love of things. / I like pliers, / and scissors. / I love / cups, / rings, / and bowls – / not to speak, of course, / of hats.’

Much like Neruda’s poem, the works on display similarly dwell on the presence of the inanimate, with each piece underscoring the beauty of the everyday. An ethereal glass vessel by Ingeborg Lundin is set against an oil painting depicting a living room side table, also with a vase, by John Currin; the real and the depicted vessels each hold a delicate floral arrangement

Also present are artworks from Mutina’s previous, curated ‘Mutina for Art’ collections. Two vases by the French brothers Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec – a fluted cylindrical form and a rounded tube with knobbly protrusions – are placed in conversation with a moody still life from the Parisian painter Aimée Moreau and a dreamlike interior imagined by the acclaimed photographer Luigi Ghirri, who hails from nearby Reggio Emilia.

‘It is a project that, for the first time, allows us to combine Massimo’s collection with modern and contemporary design,’ said Cosulich. ‘It’s blurring the boundary between what is art and what is an object.’

‘An Ode to Things’, part of the Mutina for Art programme at Spazio Mutina Fiorano, opened 6 February and runs until 8 August 2025, mutina.it

Manhattan has a great tradition of live-work arrangements, from the downtown artist lofts of the 1960s and 1970s (such as Donald Judd’s home and studio) to the shopkeeper’s apartment above a storefront. Part of this arrangement, of course, is a necessity due to competitive real estate, but it also impacts the artists’ creative output. To wit: Coenties Slip – a former maritime area in what is now the island’s Financial District – was essentially a supply shop to figures like Agnes Martin and Robert Indiana, artists who scavenged the neighbourhood for materials and enjoyed large spaces where they could create proportionally scaled paintings and sculpture. Today, those spaces have mostly been converted into condos; artists who want a similar situation have been pushed to the fringes of New York City’s outer boroughs. However, there has been a recent revival of the live-work space, but instead of an apartment-meets-studio it’s apartment-meets-gallery.

Inside Danny Kaplan’s Manhattan apartment and showroom

The designer Danny Kaplan – who makes ceramic lighting (see his collaboration with Brooklyn's In Common With), sculptural furniture, and tiles – recently uprooted his showroom from Bushwick, where it was located above his studio, and landed in NoHo, right between the storied Public Theater and scene-y restaurant and nightclub Jean’s. The space occupies a full floor and transitions from the more public gallery up front to Kaplan’s private quarters in the back. ‘It’s from another era,’ Kaplan says of the space. ‘These spaces come along very rarely, and when they do they're often attached to buildings that have kind of wacky landlords.’

Kaplan built a few walls to make the space, which was formerly an art gallery, feel more residential. Furniture is meant to be lived with and so the vignettes are arranged into rooms that show the work in situ. ‘I want to see how things wear,’ Kaplan says. ‘It's nice knowing that things have had a life.’

In the showroom’s ‘bedroom’, there’s a wood headboard adorned with ceramic tiles, which he designed with Vince Patti of Lesser Miracle and is loosely based on a Jean-Michel Frank screen; a prototype of a stainless-steel chair with a tubular maroon frame; and Kaplan’s ‘Triad’ café table. The built-in shelves are furnished with artwork that he has collected from friends, including a pair of bookends by Shane Gabier and small sculptures by Elisabeth Kley, alongside one of the very first ceramic lamps Kaplan made. In the powder room, there’s a playful resin mirror designed in collaboration with Joseph Algieri, as well as chairs by Thomas Barger scattered around.

While such a personal curation of objects helps Kaplan communicate with clients, there’s also a bit of selfishness in the equation. ‘It's also how I want to live,’ he says. ‘I want to be around these things that I love and covet.’

The new space has already informed Kaplan’s work. He’s been able to fine-tune the precise colour temperature of his lighting by living in such close proximity to so many of the lamps and sconces, which he didn’t do in his previous apartment. ‘I would see all the work all day at the studio and so at home I wanted to keep my mind clear,’ Kaplan says.

He’s also created a site-specific architectural lighting element called ‘Foxglove’, which his friend Kassandra Thatcher plastered over after it was installed, and built a 12ft-long metal-framed dining table for when he hosts dinner parties. Kaplan is currently experimenting with upholstered furniture and has a pair of corduroy armchairs in a conversation-pit-like space that he’s wear testing. (So far, he’s decided that the cushions need to be softer.)

Visitors to the showroom will be able to see all of these pieces (and more) but one area that’s off-limits is Kaplan’s own bedroom, which is on the far end of the space. ‘It’s not quite resolved,’ he says, though for now it is furnished with a prototype of the ‘Paravent’ bed (the same design as is in the public area), one of his dining tables surrounded by Ruemmler chairs, plus a few vintage pieces. His private bathroom shares a glass-block wall with the powder room and is done up in Zellige tiles by Clé

In the future, the space won’t look like it does today. ‘A lot of the work feels like a representation of where I am in my aesthetic development now,’ Kaplan says. And as he changes, the space will grow right alongside him.

Danny Kaplan Showroom, 417 Lafayette St, 4th Floor, New York, NY 10003, dannykaplanstudio.com

We are delighted with the prevalence of texture and tactility in material surfaces of late. In place of veneers, coatings and treatments that divorce the sensorial experience between hand and eye, we welcome the return of natural materials bearing their natural characteristics. Perhaps counterintuitively, we have technology to thank for the ability to scale artisanal properties into architectural materials.

Here, we celebrate Italian architects Matteo Thun and Benedetto Fasciana’s SensiTerre collection of ceramic flooring and cladding surfaces for Florim. Comprising six earthy shades, four textured finishes and a variety of shapes and sizes, the collection offers a multitude of possible configurations. In all arrangements, the primal pleasure of environments that feel ‘made’ more than manufactured is undeniable.

SensiTerre collection of ceramic flooring and cladding surfaces for Florim

SensiTerre is derived from Thun and Fasciana’s limited-edition collection of terracotta vases ‘Venere Bianca’, which they made with Bitossi in 2014. In the decade since they were launched, we’ve seen the embrace of craft’s properties extend from objects of singular beauty into environments of mood through materials that bear the marks of their maker.

The effect is to feel a far greater sensory engagement with our interiors; they bring to life our animal qualities. Florim attained B Corp certification in 2020 and, impressively, 100 per cent of its raw production waste and wastewater is recovered. The SensiTerre collection is part of the CarbonZero project, whereby all CO2 emissions are offset throughout the lifecycle of the surfaces. Beauty is more than skin deep.  

florim.com, matteothun.com

Find all the Wallpaper* Design Awards 2025 winners in the February 2025 issue of Wallpaper* , available in print on international newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today.

Visitors to London’s Corinthia Hotel in Whitehall this festive season can indulge in a little gift shopping thanks to a thoughtfully curated pop-up by Devon-based design studio Feldspar. Founded in 2016 by Cath and Jeremy Brown, the brand has gained acclaim for its ‘objects for life’ – fine bone china ceramics and homeware made for modern life but rooted in traditional craftsmanship and design.

Bone china production is listed as an endangered craft in Britain, which is why Feldspar is so passionate about making its wares in the UK – everything is produced in its Devon studio or by a family pottery in Stoke on Trent using traditional slip casting and hand painting.

Marking the studio's first foray into shopkeeping, the pop-up blends seamlessly into the Whitehall hotel’s elegant surroundings, marrying the bone china brand’s artisanal philosophy with the charm of old-world hotel interiors: think deep green paneling, polished walnut vitrines with tactile, rounded edges, and a bauble display echoing vintage hotel key racks.

We caught up with Cath and Jeremy during the pop-up’s first week to find out how the concept came to life and what visitors can expect from this rare retail experience.

Feldspar's founders reflect on creating their first physical shop space

Wallpaper*: What inspired the design of the pop-up?

Jeremy Brown: For the store we were inspired by old-fashioned hotel experiences – panelled walls with white detailing to pick up on the white of our bone china. The deep brown polished walnut vitrines add a sense of heritage and tradition but are shaped like our ceramics with rounded, tactile edges. And the bauble display behind the counter is inspired by hotel keys, all hanging up in a neat grid. From 1 December this display will transform into an advent calendar too, with a new hand-painted bauble each day showcasing our ever-growing library of colours.

W*: What has it been like bringing all your wares together in one space at the Corinthia Hotel?

JB: It’s wonderful to have everything all together on show. Even at the workshop, it’s rare that we have everything on display. It gives a chance to see the difference between sizes, and we’ve found customers are discovering new pairings of products, but also just the magnitude of our collection. Because we don’t subscribe to trends or seasonal ranges, every style we’ve ever made we continue to make, so the collection has been slowly but steadily growing throughout the years.

W*: Can you share more about the exclusive new objects and collaborations launching at the pop-up?

Cath Brown: Our first launch at the pop-up is our nutcracker – it’s a pretty big branching-out for us, as it’s made from walnut and brass rather than ceramic. Jeremy originally trained as a woodworker and has been hankering to get back to using wood for years, so we’re delighted to be able to finally launch this, our first in a collection of wooden wonders and an item many years in the making. It’s a hand-turned walnut bowl with a brass pedestal with an accompanying brass and walnut hammer – we collect nutcrackers at home and wanted to make one that favours accuracy over force. The hammer is perfectly weighted so it’s possible to delicately crack the nutshells rather than crush them to smithereens. It comes in a beautiful box, as all our wares do, with an accompanying flip book beautifully illustrated by John Broadley – an instruction manual of sorts! We’ve only made an edition of 50 pieces of these, never to be repeated in exactly the same way again, and over half of those have already been sold to pre-orders, so we’re excited to see where the other pieces find homes.

W*: How do you see the pop-up influencing how customers connect with Feldspar’s products?

CB: It makes such a huge difference for our customers to be able to touch and feel our products. They are all made with uneven, ‘wobbly’ profiles, with dimples for thumbs and fingers to hold them – as we always say, hands aren’t perfectly cylindrical, and neither are our mugs. So to be able to hold things before you buy them [means] you can fully appreciate the whole design – not just the tactility of the shapes but also the fineness of the bone china, the variances of the hand-painted accents.

W*: What has your experience of playing shopkeeper been like so far, and do you envision Feldspar exploring more physical retail spaces in the future?

JB: It’s been a lot of fun. We’re normally holed up in rural and fairly remote workshops in Devon, so meeting and chatting with customers is invaluable and interesting. It’s lovely to be able to put faces to names that have ordered online before, to learn how people use our wares and which are their favourites. It’s been wonderful so far and we’ve already got plans for next Christmas too.

Feldspar at Corinthia is open daily from 12 - 8pm until 5 January 2025. Corinthia London, Whitehall Place, London, SW1A 2BD

feldspar.studio

Erica the shark, Bonnie the hippo, and Monica the gorilla are just some of the snarling fang-toothed creations by Dutch designer Hella Jongerius currently on display at Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn’s New York gallery, Salon 94 Design. Part of a solo exhibition by Jongerius, titled ‘Roped Beings’, the ‘Angry Animals’ ceramics are displayed alongside a series of ‘Bead Tables’ and a collection of experimental ‘Textile Studies’ – three series that challenge traditional ideas about function, craft, and narrative.

Hella Jongerius at Salon 94 Design

Jongerius has long explored the relationship between users and objects, seeking to 'reverse the usual hierarchy between an object’s function and its narrative power’. She believes that greater awareness of the interconnection between all living and non-living things 'is needed and can be healing'. Animals, she says, often act as narrators in her work, bringing these ideas to life.

Glazed in earthy pigments inspired by lichen, the life-size ceramic heads are part of an eight-piece series sculpted in Jongerius’ remote Netherlands studio and fired in a kiln in Arnhem.

She describes wild animals as ‘silent partners’, coexisting with humans but lacking a voice. These open-mouthed heads reflect the anger and frustration of overlooked or endangered wildlife, serving as a metaphor for the ethical challenges of our time. Blending humour and poignancy, Jongerius gives these voiceless creatures a commanding presence.

Debuting at this exhibition, the ‘Bead Tables’ build on her earlier ‘Frog Table’, continuing her exploration of the interplay between function and sculpture.

Available in dining, desk, and console formats, each table features a grid pattern disrupted by porcelain beads and threads. 'The beads and threads act like natural weeds and cause tension,' Jongerius explains, highlighting her fusion of artistic expression and industrial design.

Completing the show, a series of textile experiments is arranged across the gallery’s long white wall. Made in Berlin at the designer’s experimental Jongerius Lab and composed of an intriguing mix of materials, such as silk, tissue paper, and ceramic beads, the samples are made using a revolutionary ‘third thread’ weaving structure, in which the thread alternates as warp and weft.

These works expand upon the 3D weaving Jongerius created for installations at Gropius Bau (2021) and Technical University Netherlands (2023).

'The output of Jongerius’ studio lab – a site of constant production, experimentation, and industrial design – shares centre stage with her more intimate sculptural practice,' notes Salon 94. 'As a gallery platform where art and design commingle, S94 Design is especially filled with wonder and gratitude for this collaboration.'

‘Roped Beings’ runs at Salon 94 until 21 December 2024, Salon 94, 3 E 89th Street,
New York, NY 10128

Genesis Belanger makes surreal magic of everyday items. Her ceramic and mixed-media installations, created at her Brooklyn studio, reimagine household or natural objects, underpinned by an unsettling play between attraction and disgust. ‘I try to hover in this repulsive, seductive state,’ the artist tells me, when we speak ahead of her solo show, ‘In the Right Conditions We Are Indistinguishable’, opening at Pace, London.

Husband Material is a sculptural shopping bag of groceries that appears frozen mid-collapse. An open packet of biscuits teeters out the right-hand side, as the bag flaps at the front. If this movement were to continue, the bag and its contents would tumble clumsily to the floor. Cause and Effect features a hoover expressively consuming a length of rug. In Family Portrait, a domestic cupboard is filled with various bottles, topped by a fresh sandwich.

‘I think fridges and medicine cabinets are like portraits,’ says Belanger. ‘They’re a way of placing the owner in a time, place and context without ever seeing them. You can tell a whole story through this domestic lens.’ While human forms are usually absent, many of the artist’s sculptures suggest personality and lifestyle simply through the objects depicted.

For this exhibition, Belanger has considered the importance of context in shaping who we are. This is inspired in a broader sense by the state changes of substances depending on their surroundings; water converts to steam in a hot environment, for example. She has applied this idea to people, exploring how sociopolitical or domestic environments might impact individuals, especially in light of current polarisation around the US election.

These ideas feed into the show in an abstract way. The work itself becomes slippery, its various symbols and icons taking on different meanings depending on the setting of the work. A recurring red dot might at different points be read as a cherry or a bead. ‘Each time you see a shape or form, its meaning might shift,’ the artist tells me. ‘The object might be the same, but the scale has changed.’

Belenger’s process also encourages multiple readings. Her pieces are meticulously rendered, categorising them as fine art objects, but they mimic the appearance of cheap imitations, reflecting on the artist’s previous experience as a prop-styling assistant. She combines a range of materials with ceramics, chosen for their engineering and narrative potential; the hoover bag in Cause and Effect is made from men’s suit fabric. Belanger works hard to make these consistent with the look of the ceramics, throwing the viewer off when they finally notice a different material.

The works also slip between dimensions. She notes that while the works are real objects, photographs of them have been read as AI-generated. ‘They have a 3D-modelled look to them which I think is really cool,’ she says. ‘How to make something appear fake; in this [case], we’ve understood things to be fake, when they are actually real.’

The idea of nature runs through the show, in a domesticated, controlled form. Belanger wanted to evoke the idea of nature as a backdrop, something we experience but rarely fully engage with. She notes how nature itself has shifted through art history, with a painting of a flower inspiring a sculpture and so on. ‘Each time it becomes an inspiration of the inspiration instead of the real thing. I think this is how we all, especially those of us who live in the city, experience nature. At degrees of separation.’

Belanger turned her hand to painting for a year prior to this show. Those pieces have inspired the saturated colour palette at Pace and fed into Bit Eden, a 7ft tile relief. This work features bright, blooming flowers and vines set against a uniform grid with a retro digital aesthetic. ‘It’s as if Super Mario Bros. 2 had a level that was based on the Garden of Eden,’ she laughs. ‘It’s the first time I’ve made something relatively two-dimensional that to me feels as expansive as the sculptures.’ Together, her pieces place the viewer in a giant doll house, neither entirely real nor completely fake, relying on their own context and projections to try and make sense of it.

Genesis Belanger's exhibition ‘In the Right Conditions We Are Indistinguishable’ is at Pace, London until 9 November 2024

pacegallery.com

Mud Australia has awarded Alfred Lowe its 2024 ceramics prize, celebrating the work of a burgeoning First Nations artist. Combining clay and ceramics to explore organic forms inspired by Australia’s Central Desert, the traditional home of the land’s Arrernte people, Lowe’s work is keenly political and visually unique. Embracing a colourful and provocative palette, the pieces magnify Lowe’s voice, identity, and the call for racial justice.

Alfred Lowe’s clay and ceramics

The Shelley Simpson Ceramic Prize was founded in 2020, hoping to provide Mud’s eponymous founder with the means to make a positive difference to Australia’s creative landscape during the pandemic. Between the country’s raging bushfires, tumultuous geopolitics, and the ongoing climate emergency, Simpson was looking to turn her internationally acclaimed homeware business toward helping those closest to her.

Having taken care of her family and team during difficult times, for Simpson, Mud’s ceramic prize became a way to extend this support to younger artists too. Inspired by the Australian government’s ‘New Enterprise Incentive Scheme’, which afforded her the chance to pursue ceramics in her youth, Simpson’s prize awards $10,000 in cash and international exposure to upcoming creatives that have caught her eye. Alfred Lowe is one such artist.

Originally hailing from Snake Well and Alice Springs in the Central Desert, Lowe began making ceramics in 2021, and now practices at APY Studio Adelaide, whose galleries specialise in celebrating Aboriginal art. A neighbour to the painter Clifford Possum during his youth, and a regular at the Araluen Arts and Cultural Precinct, he was strongly drawn toward creative practices and Australia’s racial politics, intertwining his otherwise playful work with a stalwart belief in rebellion and ‘a flat-footed posture of defiance’.

Speaking of his pieces, he describes the importance of their bright colours and fun appearance in holding their presence in a room: ‘a presence that rejects expectations, ignores preconceptions and embraces a provocative sense of rebellion’.

Alongside celebrating Lowe’s work in particular, Simpson is adamant about the political value of the prize itself and using her platform as a vehicle for change. Last year (2023) saw a failed Australian referendum to recognise Aboriginal people in the country’s constitution, sparking widespread anguish at the prevailing political disparity across the continent. Determined to do what she could, despite this alienation from establishment politics, Simpson knew that a First Nations artist had to win the prize this year, especially someone with such politically charged work as Lowe’s.

Steeped in a culture of resilience, of fighting spirit, and dignity in the face of terrible opposition, both Lowe’s work and its champions aim to make small but determined steps forward, and the awarding of Mud’s latest ceramics prize has been a valuable channel for this process. Sometimes, resistance is a battle won by inches, not by the strongest but by those who endure, with both feet planted firmly in the earth. Lowe’s practice is no different.

mudaustralia.com

You’d be forgiven for thinking that ceramics have little in common with wallpaper and textiles. However there’s a shared alchemy at play in the processes that bring these practices to life. They all deal with organic matter – earth, wood pulp, fibres – each material undergoes a process of transformation via mind, hand and machine, to produce the layers and objects that soften the edges of our interior lives and worlds. We are living in times of experimental creative commingling, on a quest to discover what we might learn from introducing the skills and insights of people with different sectoral and cultural experiences into traditionally siloed practices. And the results can be surprising, innovative and joyful, as ceramicist Henry Holland’s range of wallpaper and textile collections for Harlequin (launching 6 August) bears testament.

Holland closed his riotous and irreverent London-based fashion label House of Holland in 2020. He hung up his scissors and turned his attention to clay, subsequently and quickly forging a cult following for his ceramics practice at Henry Holland Studio, based in Hackney. It was during the pandemic, with his local pottery studio shuttered, that Holland began experimenting with the Japanese technique of Nerikomi – folding and slicing clay, which is then built by hand into objects that take on a distinct marbling effect. Holland’s Nerikomi-inspired signature has in turn translated into a textural motif that lends itself with beauty and intrigue to the papers and textiles in his Harlequin collaboration.

Beyond the more explicit derivation, Holland’s Harlequin ranges are a masterclass in mood texture and mood. Harlequin is a Sanderson house that celebrates colour and pattern with a contemporary zing, and Holland has both softened and augmented these tenets in various techniques. There is a richness here for the eyes and hands, thanks to a playful approach to combining printing and weaving techniques within a distinctly earthy, tonal palette. The results are evocative and accessible, expressive without being overbearing. They cater for and reflect the current penchant for patterned interiors that feel crafted and integrated, neither superficial nor superimposed. We’ve come to think of this as a Millennial x Bloomsbury revival.

The papers and textiles are on sale from today, and their beauty speaks for itself. That said, we wanted to find out more about Holland’s involvement, so we put a few questions to him, which he gamely answers below...

Henry Holland on the making of his collection for Harlequin

W*: Swapping clay for wallpaper and textiles must have been an interesting challenge – how has your process as a potter informed your design process here?

Henry Holland: Working on the wallpaper and textile collection with Harlequin was a fascinating departure from working in clay as we had so many more options available. While our ceramics are really tactile and have a texture of their own, it's still very uniform across our portfolio and the pattern is all created below the glaze.

W*: Did your fashion industry background help with the process of textile manufacture?

HH: For this collection I drew from my background in fashion, especially when working with the textiles, but also a lot of the wall coverings have a fabric texture created using an embossing technique. I had some knowledge from my years working with fabric mills, creating my own custom cloths, but this collection presented a whole new challenge, working into two categories for both upholstery and drapery, which meant learning the qualities that the different collections needed to encompass – not to mention learning about the all-important fabric rub count for upholstery. I was really engaged and fascinated by the whole process and when it came to working with the wallpapers, the team at Harlequin were able to guide me through and execute my ideas of adding textures through different printing and embossing techniques.

W*: How do you describe the different moods of the collections?

HH: The colour palette is intentionally really tight within the collection, which allows it to be used in myriad combinations. We used really neutral bases of oatmeal and off-white – never stark white – with a ‘Chocolate Black’ brown – never the stark coldness of a true black. I think this creates a very calming mood throughout the collection and the tactility of the texture within it – both for the walls and the fabrics – creates a cocooning feeling of sanctuary when they’re used in the home. I've recently renovated my own house using a lot of the collection and it has really created a much-needed safe sense of calm for me and my husband.

W*: What is your most significant discovery or learning from the collaboration?

HH: The constant learning is the best thing about my job, whether it's learning about new printing and embossing techniques for the wallpapers, or different weaving techniques like crewel, appliqué and boucle for the fabrics. I'm self-taught in everything I've ever done, which definitely has its drawbacks, but one of the positives is that with every new project comes a process of learning and discovery and I love that – it's what gets me going!

Harelquin.sandersongroupdesign.com

We’ve never been very good at disguising our borderline obsession with Heath Ceramics. Comforting beauty, earthy stroke-able glazes, time-tested forms of voluptuous proportions, all wrapped up in a sunny Sausalito origin story. Frankly irresistible. In darker moments we return to the desaturated photo of founder Edith Heath in a glorious dress and necklace, overseeing her studio filled with ceramics ready for sale. And everything feels a bit brighter.

Brighter still and great news for like-minded fan(atic)s: Heath is launching lighting. On sale this week online, and in store from its San Francisco and Los Angeles showrooms, the lighting collection consists of two sizes of table lamp and one pendant, in two different glazes. Each piece is hand-thrown and glazed in the Heath Clay Studio, the creative heart and experimental engine of the brand, which is based in Heath San Francisco’s Boiler Room.

The Clay Studio has been a hot house of artistic explorations under Heath’s creative director Tung Chiang. Since 2012, Chiang has released limited-edition collections from the Clay Studio as numbered Design Series projects. The lighting is an evolution of his experiments with using clay for light fixtures from the third Design Series back in 2015. He describes his initial feeling that clay was an unusual material to hold light, given its weight and opacity.

Almost a decade later, Chiang and his team of ceramicists have cracked it – not literally. The table lights and pendants are cleverly glazed with a gradient, which gives the appearance of translucency, even when the light is switched off. Switched on, the pendants emit a warming glow, while the table lamps have a pleasingly playful, dappled light, inspired by Chiang’s childhood memories growing up in Hong Kong: ‘They remind me of catching fireflies in my hands then loosening my fingers to let their light shine through,’ he says.

Heath Clay Studio lighting is on display and for sale in its showrooms and online at heathceramics.com

The ‘homespun monumentalism’ of South African ceramicist Hylton Nel was at the heart of Kim Jones’ latest collection for Dior Men, seeing the showspace populated with blown-up versions of his distinct cat sculptures. 

‘He’s an old friend of mine, I’ve known him maybe 12 years,’ Jones said at a preview of the collection. ‘I love his work, and I wanted to take that idea of working with an artist and working it through the Dior archive.’

Dior Men’s Kim Jones reveals collaboration with ceramicist Hylton Nel

Located this season in the grounds of Paris’ Val-de-Grâce – a departure from the École Militaire, where Jones has shown in recent seasons – the specially constructed showspace saw guests overlooked by the playful, naive figures, which are adorned with colourful hand-drawn motifs and feature elements of the human form, like arms, legs and hair.

One of the sculptures depicts a cat in a pair of high heels, and is from Jones’ personal collection (at the preview, a selection of the original pieces surrounded the designer). Last year, partly down to Jones’ support, the UK’s Charleston House held an exhibition of Nel’s work, titled ‘This plate is what I have to say’. The home, formerly the residence of the Bloomsbury Group’s Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell, previously inspired Jones’ S/S 2023 collection, the designer having first visited as a teenager.

For this collection, Jones said he was inspired by visits to Nel’s own art-filled homes on the outskirts of Calitzdorp in South Africa’s Western Cape. ‘He’s lived in two houses in the same town for years and years,’ says Jones. ‘[There is] this huge sky. That was what really drew me to the colour palette, the blues and the pinks when you are there at different times of the day.’

In the collection, motifs from Nel’s work, like hand-drawn dogs and birds, became pins, intarsia knits and embroidery, evoking the teeming shelves of ceramics in the artist’s home. Hats, meanwhile, were created in collaboration with Stephen Jones and Earth Age, a Cape Town-based company that hand-crocheted the beanie-style headwear, which was then finished with ceramic beads applied in Paris. ‘The homespun with the salon, the global with the local – the artisans’ skill, intent and pride in their work unites all,’ said Dior.

The designer also said the collection was ‘a celebration of work and an expression of who somebody is and what they achieve through work’, nodding to house founder Christian Dior, whose womenswear collections continue to be an inspiration to the designer.

‘I look at it because of the purity, and because a lot of it is rooted in menswear,’ he said of working from the Dior archive. Elsewhere, the ceramic collars referenced an unrealised sketch by Yves Saint Laurent during his tenure at the house. Other pieces saw workwear instilled with the fabrications and silhouettes of the house’s haute couture collections.

‘In the case of Christian Dior, Hylton Nel and myself, it’s an idea of parallel paths with different stories,’ continued Jones. ‘It’s lifelong work in ceramics and paintings and lifelong work in fabrications and clothing. There is an idea of and dedication to art and the applied arts shared by all.’

Discover more from Paris Fashion Week Men’s S/S 2025.

dior.com

The winner of the 2023 Loewe Foundation Craft Prize has been named as Japanese ceramicist Eriko Inazaki. Her winning work, a ceramic piece titled Metanoia, 2019, is a captivating orb covered in fine, plant and flower-like extrusions, each intricately made by pinching the clay by hand. This year's honourable mentions went to Dominique Zinkpè from Benin for his wall sculpture The Watchers, and Moe Watanabe, a Japanese artist whose work Transfer Surface uses salvaged walnut bark to construct its naturalistic box form. 

Speaking ahead of the prize ceremony, which was held at the Noguchi Museum in Queens, New York, Loewe's creative director Jonathan Anderson said, 'Each year gets better and better, hence why it also gets harder and harder. It's a global submission [and] there's no political things or [any constraint] in terms of where people apply from, which is the point. This is what's unique about the prize. The level is up and we’ve got many amazing pieces competing against each other.’

This year marks the sixth edition of the Loewe Foundation Craft Prize, launched in 2016. Initiated because of Anderson’s deep interest in craft techniques and as a reflection of the fashion brand’s own craft heritage, the prize has played a key role in shaping how craft is perceived in an age when the distinctions between art, design and fashion continue to be blurred. 

‘I was looking at friends who worked in craft and saw them [as] just as important as sculptors or contemporary artists,’ he recalled. ‘The packaging of it was wrong in some cases. One of the biggest things was [that] there wasn’t enough exposure. What Loewe and the foundation does is provide huge amounts of exposure to unknown artists. No matter whether you win or not, being shortlisted helps to boost their profile, and at the same time, it helps people to understand that craft is not just one thing.’

Inazaki’s winning work describes a period of deep personal anguish, something that is palpable through the tiny, biological structures layered on the ceramic body’s surface, which are vitrified and shrunken down further in the kiln. Anderson said, ‘What I love about the work is you have no idea what it’s made out of. It has an incredible sense of anxiety in it, which I quite like. At the same time, there is a depth of field that is very unusual in ceramics. You get this idea that it has so many layers that you go into, that you can get lost in it. When you look at it in a video, it looks completely different [than] in the flesh. There is something about this fragility that is remarkable.’

With a cash prize of €50,000, winning the title certainly has a significant impact on the artist – something to which last year’s winner, Dahye Jeong, who was also a member of this year’s jury, can attest. She said, ‘Because the craft tradition that I work in is not well known, even in Korea, I used to struggle a lot with doubting myself before winning. Now I have more confidence in what I’m pursuing. The Loewe Foundation always discovers new artists and there are things here in this year’s group that I also discovered. I work on challenging the medium’s limitations, and those were the criteria when looking for this year’s winner. When I [first] saw an image of Eriko’s work, I initially thought it was a textile piece. When I saw it [in the flesh], I felt she had a deep knowledge and understanding of the medium and was also pioneering a new path in this field.’

The 2023 Loewe Foundation Craft Prize will be on view at the Noguchi Museum, New York until 18 June 2023. craftprize.loewe.com; loewe.com

Architecture, design and tradition come together effortlessly in the works of Korean-American ceramic artist, Janny Baek. Based in New York City, Baek studied ceramics at Rhode Island School of Design before pursuing a master’s degree in architecture at Harvard University. She primarily uses the traditional nerikomi clay technique – a Japanese decorative process that involves stacking clay before slicing through it at a cross-section to reveal a pattern – albeit, with an unexpectedly contemporary effect. 

‘In traditional nerikomi, coloured clays are stacked and create thin slabs of a pattern when the stack is sliced through,’ the artist explains. ‘Since my focus has always been on revealing a change occurring across the surface (rather than a tiled or otherwise repeated surface pattern), I’ve modified this, sometimes adhering more closely to traditional nerikomi by using striped patterns that change in colour, but other times breaking from that and treating the coloured clay in different ways; as a patterned, coloured sheet and applied to the surface of a form, or as an inlaid material, or as a three-dimensional sculpted surface texture.’

Janny Baek at Culture Object, New York

From 22 March – 20 May 2023, Baek is presenting her first solo exhibition at Culture Object, a Manhattan gallery championing artists whose conceptual and functional approaches encompass technical innovation and material experimentation. ‘My sculpted ceramic forms are based on the themes of growth, flux, and other various states of in-between,’ she says. ‘I enjoy working in a realm of ambiguity between the familiar and the strange, or with some uncertainty as to whether something is one thing or the other. Lately, I’ve been using more familiar natural forms, such as plant life and clouds, as a departure point to try to imagine what it looks like and feels like to undergo a change. Where there is change, there are questions, possibilities, desire, and agency.’

It’s a line of critical thinking reminiscent of her architecture days; Baek founded McMahon-Baek Architecture with her husband Thomas McMahon in 2014, which she continues to run with him, alongside her ceramic practice, which she returned to in 2019. Baek’s hand-built forms exude a sculptural, yet intimate quality that also conveys levity and exuberance, thanks to her embrace of bright, vibrant colours. Hazy ombres and gradients effortlessly collide with animated geometric patterns and organic textures. Best of all, the resulting vessels are all functional.

‘I make colourful work to express vibrancy, pleasure, and hope. As another aspect of transformation, I often use gradients, with coloured surfaces that are blooming, ripening, or otherwise becoming something that expresses a different character from one side to the other,’ she says. ‘I find it interesting to make my work out of what could be seen as these artificially bright colours, with the ultimate earthy material, clay. Ultimately, I hope that my work communicates the wonder and importance of questioning assumptions and being curious: about ourselves, our world, and our future.’

Janny Baek: 'The Pleasure of Growth', 22 March – 20 May 2023 at Culture Object, New York. cultureobject.com; jannybaek.com

Paola Paronetto rarely welcomes visitors to her workshop in Porcia, a small town in the north-western Italian region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, but, to mark her collaboration with Veuve Clicquot, she happily makes an exception for Wallpaper*. 

The project, which coincides with the champagne house’s 250th anniversary, sees the ceramic artist create the case and bottle for the newly released 2015 vintage of La Grande Dame, Veuve Clicquot’s premium cuvée, designed in homage to the brand’s leader in 1805 Barbe Nicole Ponsardin (known as Madame Clicquot). The new vintage will be available in Europe in summer 2023, following its initial launch in the US in November 2022. 

For the launch of La Grande Dame 2012 in 2020, Veuve Clicquot had called on Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, who adorned the champagne bottle and case with her distinctive polka dots and flower motifs. Anyone familiar with Paronetto’s detailed artworks will recognise her interpretation just as easily. 

‘La Grande Dame embodies Veuve Clicquot’s exceptional savoir-faire as well as our love of pinot noir,’ says Jean-Marc Gallot, president and CEO of Veuve Clicquot. ‘For this new vintage, we are honoured to collaborate with Paola Paronetto. A master of colour, she has created a new collection of six gift boxes in hues from her unique personal palette of more than 86 shades. Steeped in emotion, optimism and commitment, the whole is a symphony of colours that harmoniously blend together.’ 

A self-taught artist, Paronetto is known for creating ceramic works with seemingly fragile forms and proportions that appear to be made of paper. ‘My first encounter with ceramics occurred when I was 18 years old, when an Umbrian maestro came to my town and I joined his course. It was a revelation. I fell in love with clay, a malleable, soft material that was difficult to tame but immediately captivated me.’ 

She entered the world of ceramic art at a time when it was rather set in its ways: ‘There was a sort of rule among ceramists that one had to work on specific shapes or glazes,’ she says. ‘Over time, I became frustrated and felt the need to push those boundaries.’ Her encounter with paper clay in 2000 was a game changer. ‘I had to work hard to find my personal recipe and solutions to keep objects standing, to convey an image of movement and lightness, something not immediately associated with ceramics.’ 

Made by hand, using a lengthy and partially secret method that involves the addition of paper pulp to a clay mixture, her pieces are delicate but structurally sound. They are available in textural variants inspired by nature – Cartoccio (husk), Liscio (smooth), Corteccia (bark), Rete (net) – and because they are opaque rather than shiny, the pieces absorb light and change colour as the day progresses, making them appear to be in motion rather than static. While her output ranges from vases to lamps, Paronetto is most known for her bottles, so the project resonated with her. ‘I immediately saw this connection with Veuve Clicquot, and had the idea to make bottle-shaped boxes. Due to a desire to avoid any paper waste and make the packaging sustainable, we chose a more traditional champagne case with a texture similar to the Cartoccio bottle, whose lines generate distinct light and colour effects.’

The visit to her studio begins with her office, which features shelves loaded with pieces from her collections (‘I love seeing my pieces together as a tribute to the theme of being together, as happens in human relationships’). From here, a corridor lined with plants and equally packed shelves leads to the kiln room, filled with white works-in-progress, brushes, clay and water bowls. The connection between the textures and palette of Paronetto’s paper clay creations and those of La Grande Dame is clear when the two are placed side by side: ‘My ceramics usually look like paper, and the champagne cases reflect my pieces. But in this case, we chose to use very refined papers, tailor made and completely sustainable.’

Paronetto says her interpretation of La Grande Dame 2015 is imbued with a message of optimism and embodies the importance of female empowerment: ‘Madame Clicquot’s story moved me because of her strength, tenacity and willingness to innovate,’ says Paronetto, referring to the hurdles the female entrepreneur had to overcome as a young widow in an industry dominated by men. ‘It must have been difficult, but she chose to pursue her vision.’ The champagne house and the artist also share a connection to nature: ‘Veuve Clicquot works with vineyards, so is always involved with nature and the seasons,’ says Paronetto. ‘In my daily work, I must adjust to the seasons, climate and light.’

For the collaboration, Paronetto used the iconic Veuve Clicquot yellow as a starting point, and expanded the palette to include six nature-inspired shades for the boxes that mimic her paper clay technique, realised in recyclable packaging. ‘We knew that the label would be the focal point, and I worked with colours that would go well with a yellow, like the sun, the centre of everything,’ adds Paronetto. ‘I placed it next to the sky with a pair of blues, a green that can’t be missed with its connection to nature, a lilac to bring a feminine element, as well as a pink, in the future, for the rosé.’

Paronetto’s collaboration with Veuve Clicquot has also resulted in a limited-edition artwork, a composition of three giant bottles, titled Giganti Monumentali. This will be shown as part of ‘Solaire Culture’, a travelling exhibition that kicked off in Tokyo and Los Angeles before hitting London in May 2023. The show features a series of contemporary female artists that have created works inspired by Veuve Clicquot’s heritage and ethos, and includes the likes of Kusama and Sheila Hicks. The commission led Paronetto to push boundaries: ‘The giant bottles are 1.35m tall. My desire was to create taller pieces, even for outdoor use, but I was a long way from achieving that goal, at least with paper clay,’ she says. ‘Then I met an Italian company that works with sheet metal and metal prototypes, and we started thinking about a group of bottles ranging from 4-6m.’ These were unveiled for the first time for the launch of La Grande Dame 2015 during Salone del Mobile.

La Grande Dame 2015, £170, by Paola Paronetto, for Veuve Clicquot. Paronetto’s artwork will feature in the exhibition ‘Solaire Culture’, which celebrates 250 years of Veuve Clicquot and will be on show in London from 12 May-6 June 2023, solaireculture.veuveclicquot.com,
veuveclicquot.com, paolaparonetto.com

Ceramics and art have a companionship longer than most. The story began in the Palaeolithic period with a potent fusion of water, earth and creativity that has since evolved through many modes. Now, 21st-century ceramic artists are proving that the medium has as much potential for concept as function, lured in by its versatility, sensuality and role as a platform for provocation.

From artists upholding age-old techniques with a twist to those unearthing radical ways to push materials to their limits, explore our ultimate guide to ceramic artists: the trail-glazers, the mould-breakers and future-shapers on the cutting edge of clay.

Ceramic artists: a guide to the contemporary pioneers

Alfred Lowe

Alfred Lowe is one of our emerging designers for 2025. As an Arrernte person, growing up near Alice Springs in Australia, Lowe's ceramics are influenced by identity and landscape. Cocooning his work with the colours of his native country and environment, his work is a joyful expression of his experiences. In 2024, he was awarded the Shelley Simpson Ceramics Prize by the founder of Mud Australia.

Read our interview with Alfred Lowe

Jonathan Baldock

Jonathan Baldock's work is saturated with humour and wit, as well as an unsettling, macabre quality that channels his longstanding interest in myth and folklore. The British artist was partly drawn by the medieval architecture and carved wooden figures of nearby Wakefield Cathedral for his recent exhibition at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, but his creations are less about religious iconography than they are about what lies beneath. As some of the 500-year-old carved figures were concealed under folding seats, known as misericords, and thus hidden out of sight, those who made them had the freedom to carve what they liked, and their subject matter often relates more closely to nature or mythical beasts.

Inspired by the idea that their makers found pockets of joy in expressing themselves freely outside of the rules, Baldock riffed on these characters, creating large-scale textile sculptures that include a sphinx-like creature and a Green Man. As someone from a working-class background, he connects with the non-authoritarian voice of the craftsperson. As a queer person, he sees the misericords as objects that have survived the repressive ideals of history – they are subversive outsiders hiding in plain sight.

Writer: Anne Soward

Lindsey Mendick

Lindsey Mendick’s ceramic art was talk of clay-based town in ‘Strange Clay’, Hayward Gallery’s landmark show of ceramic artists in 2022. There, Mendick staged an environment that conveyed the intensity of domestic cohabitation. It was an astonishing example of the artist’s ability to use clay not only as a medium but as theatre, complete with props, protagonists and plot. In the process of creating these worlds – layered with candid personal anecdotes, myth, and pop culture references – Mendick subverts clay’s connotations with decoration and function, instead using ceramic art as a narrative device - at once witty, grotesque and beautiful.

Writer: Harriet Lloyd-Smith

Maxwell Mustardo

Maxwell Mustardo’s ceramic art appears as though its origins are from another universe. This is clay, but not as we know it. Last year, the New Jersey-based artist staged his first solo show in New York at Culture Object. Titled ‘The Substance of Style’, the exhibition comprised ceramic vessels sprayed with bobbled matte fluorescent colours and iridescent colour-shifting PVC. It demonstrated Mustardo’s knack for fusing the tradition of ceramics with an otherworldly approach that is simultaneously playful, uncanny and hyper-contemporary.

Writer: Harriet Lloyd-Smith

Sin-Ying Ho

In her deft cut-and-paste approach, Sin-Ying (Cassandra) Ho fuses together fragments of East and West. Self-described as a ‘global sapien’, Ho creates work reflective of the multicultural cities she’s inhabited, including New York, Toronto, her birthplace of Hong Kong, and Jingdezhen where she lives and works. Ho’s cross-cultural ceramic art is an amalgam of life experiences and observations; European and Chinese elements, decorative motifs and images from past and present collide to create concepts that are fundamentally contemporary.

Writer: Harriet Lloyd-Smith

Jonathan Baldock

Jonathan Baldock’s ingenious recipe of wit, grotesqueness, empowerment, mortality, and surrealism is as much ceramic art as theatre. The British artist’s multidisciplinary practice often merges ceramics, painting, sound, metal, textiles and performance to stretch the possibilities of his materials. Baldock – who recently created a striking window display for the Renzo Piano-designed Hermès Flagship store in Tokyo – is best known for incorporating biological forms into his work: disembodied ears, beckoning fingers, or contorted hands pushing and punching, which explore childhood fears, adult desires and the space occupied by the human body. As the artist has said, ‘All bodies are good bodies’.

Writer: Harriet Lloyd-Smith

Shawanda Corbett

American multidisciplinary artist Shawanda Corbett is breaking the mould of ceramic art. Her performative pottery – incorporating dance, music and poetry – is shaped by global histories and theories around a ‘complete body’. Corbett is a self-described ‘cyborg’ artist, drawing on Donna Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto (1985). ‘I wanted to use [the book] but with my perspective: a Black woman, queer, disabled and all these other social identities that I have, whether decided or decided for me,’ the Oxford-based artist told us in an interview. Corbett’s ceramic works often comprise totemic, anthropomorphic vessels of different heights, shapes and glazes, their vibrant, glossy surfaces scored with traces of the music Corbett listens to as she works.

Writer: Harriet Lloyd-Smith

Fernando Casasempere

When Fernando Casasempere moved to London in 1997, he brought with him over twelve tonnes of his own mixtures of Chilean clay. The ceramic artist has always retained deep connections to the landscape of his native country, through which he confronts urgent global ecological and social concerns with links to the sensibilities of the Land Art movement. His abstract work blends clay with industrial matter, notably waste materials from copper mining (a principal export of Chile) and draws on classical and modern cultural forms such as Pre-Columbian art and Latin American architecture.

Writer: Harriet Lloyd-Smith

Martha Freud

The work of British ceramic artist Martha Freud is a bold fusion of wit, cultural critique, tongue-in-cheek wordplay and philosophical reflection. It was following a degree in furniture and product design that Freud discovered an affinity with ceramics, a moment she describes as ‘love at first sight’. In recent years, Freud has been focussing her energy on motherhood, an experience she has is now channelling into something of an art renaissance. ‘Mixed Messages’ at Nonemore Gallery, London, is Freud’s first solo show in more than a decade and features new works that blend technology and tradition. This includes delicate porcelain tableware and candles which feature witty slogans, life lessons and statements of empowerment: ‘Well, Well, Well If It Isn't The Consequences Of My Own Actions’, ‘Fuck This Shit’ and ‘My Body My Labels’ among them. It takes a certain vision to achieve an impactful balance of profanity, profundity, and poetry, but Martha Freud might have just cracked it.

Writer: Harriet Lloyd-Smith

King Houndekpinkou

King Houndekpinkou’s otherworldly ceramic art blends ancestral pottery traditions with space-age video game aesthetics. The Paris-based artist, of Beninese origin, fuses seemingly disparate influences – from Japanese craft, African Voodoo and pop culture to form sculptures bursting with bold colour, playful spikes and cracked surfaces. As he told writer Minako Norimatsu in a profile for our September 2021 issue, ‘It can take a combination of hundreds of powders to obtain a particular colour or texture. Sometimes I rework a piece that is ostensibly finished, applying another layer of glaze and firing it again. Then a new piece is born!’

Writer: Harriet Lloyd-Smith

Brie Ruais

Brooklyn-based Brie Ruais uses one primary tool to fashion her dynamic clay pieces: her own body. Each of her sculptures is made with the equivalent of her body weight in clay, resulting in pieces that uncannily mirror human scale. Each gouge, scrape and fold is evidence of raw physical engagement with her material, reminiscent of work by Ana Mendieta and Lynda Bengalis. Ruais’ often creates alone in the desolate desert terrain of Nevada's Great Basin, with no Wi-Fi or phone service. The intensity of solitude, and the charged intimacy with her material, as she rolls, pushes and pulls her body across it, results in works that blur sculpture and performance.

Writer: Harriet Lloyd-Smith

Ron Nagle 

It’s a rare trait in the arts, but acclaimed American ceramicist and prolific musician Ron Nagle has managed to master two very distinctive mediums with singular zest, conviction and unpredictability. Clay began as a rebellion for Nagle, both against his parents’ ‘closed-minded’ view of suitable vocations, and the conventional ceramic applications that ruled 1950s California. Gaining prominence in his 20s, he joined forces with other like-minded artists, such as Peter Voulkos and Ken Price, and soon found his rhythm. The results were small-scale, huge impact pieces that the artist has been perfecting for the last 60 years. An amalgam of hyper-polished and rugged surfaces combined with spicy, saturated hues, his works are imbued with the legacies of California: pop culture, the Finish Fetish movement and its sun-soaked vernacular.

Writer: Harriet Lloyd-Smith

Zemer Peled

The more you look at Zemer Peled’s work, the more there is to see. The the Israel-born, LA-based artist’s almost impossibly intricate ceramic sculptures are composed of thousands of porcelain shards to form small and large scale objects that resemble organic forms. Each shard is created from strips or slabs of raw or glazed porcelain that she rolls, smashes then affixes to her works. Often taking colour cues from the blue cobalt of Japanese pottery, the artist examines the beauty and brutality of the natural world and delves into themes of memory, identity and place. The resulting works – almost appearing soft from afar, and playful yet ominously spiky up close - resemble something between blooming flora, undulating sea anemones or something entirely abstract.

Writer: Harriet Lloyd-Smith

Magdalene Odundo 

Over a four-decade career, the Kenyan-born British studio potter and revered educator has made a tangible mark on ceramic art. Her restrained, often asymmetrical sculptures allude to the curvature of the female human form and affirm the inextricable and profound link between humanity and clay. As a young ceramic artist, she travelled to Nigeria, New Mexico and China, immersing herself in various approaches to craftsmanship. The artist’s hollow vessels carry a catalogue of global histories, technical approaches and cultures: graphic design - which she first trained in - diasporic identities, British studio pottery, ceremonial vessels from Kenya and Nigeria and Ancient Greek and Roman techniques. In place of the potters’ wheel, Odundo makes use of a coiling technique to hand-build her vessels, which she fires and burnishes repeatedly. The resulting objects have a surface akin to satin, and range in colour from flaming orange to subdued black, and sometimes a combination of the two.

Writer: Harriet Lloyd-Smith

Ai Weiwei

Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei is just as famed for breaking ceramic art as making it. In 1995, in one of the most memorable and controversial moments of art-world theatre, he intentionally dropped an alleged 2,000-year-old Han Dynasty Urn, which shattered at his feet. A year before, Ai painted over another with the red Coca-Cola logo. This erasure of artefacts – and ergo cultural history - is a recurring theme in Ai’s work, with ancient ceramic vessels often his tools of choice to question who or what ascribes cultural value. In a different, but no less striking ceramic mode, Ai dominated Tate’s turbine hall with 100 million individually hand-crafted life-sized sunflower seeds sculpted and painted by specialists in Jingdezhen, China. It was an invitation to reflect on the ‘Made in China’ phenomenon, and more broadly, contemporary cultural exchange. Ai confronts the vast history of ceramic art, smashes it open and pieces it back together to astonishing, and explosive effect.

Writer: Harriet Lloyd-Smith

Grayson Perry 

A mere whisper of the term ‘ceramic art’ is usually enough to bring Grayson Perry’s work into the conversation. The artist’s command of the medium as a storytelling device is nonpareil, chronicling scenes of contemporary British life with wit, poignancy and nostalgia. At first glance, these pieces are alluring, playful and spirited. A closer inspection often brings with it a change in mood, as his sgraffito surfaces reveal loaded stories of prejudice, injustice, desire, disaster, religion, mass media and power. His work – which also extends across cast iron, bronze and printmaking – is dense with autobiographical references and unflinching societal statements. Perry simultaneously flips ceramics on its head to question the social status of the medium itself – turning its purity into a vehicle for fiery allegory.

Writer: Harriet Lloyd-Smith

Genesis Belanger 

In the work of Brooklyn-based sculptor Genesis Belanger, nothing is quite what it seems. Demure pastel hues and mundane objects are skewered with sharp wit and cultural critique - ingredients that make for uncanny visual consumption. Unlike many ceramic artists, Belanger eschews glazes in favour of a matte surface. Colours use either the natural tones of the clay or involve blending pigments into the stoneware or porcelain. Often involving mid-century furniture, pills, food, telephones, candles, flowers and displaced body parts, Belanger’s ceramic compositions are smorgasbords of surprise and conceptual depth. Each piece is packaged like a surreal novella, bound up in contemporary realism: feminist critiques of contemporary America, vanity, excess, consumerism, and in a 2020 show at The Aldrich, grief and loss.

Writer: Harriet Lloyd-Smith

Theaster Gates  

American artist Theaster Gates has a practice of many facets. Through his socially-engaged art, Gates delves into race, territory, and the history of objects. He trained as a potter, and maintains a deep affinity with clay. For Gates, the ceramic vessel is rooted in metaphor: a container of spirituality, ritual and universality, and architecture for shared experiences. Last year, Gates staged ‘Black Vessel’ at Gagosian New York, in which he created a space for contemplation through large-scale works in glazed and fired clay. The artist’s ability to unify age-old traditions and ceramic sensitivities with contemporary themes and aesthetics anchors him as a forerunner of contemporary ceramic art, and a great deal more. Read a full interview with Gates for our At Home With series.

Writer: Harriet Lloyd-Smith

Lubna Chowdhary

The work of London-based artist Lubna Chowdhary is all about tensions and hybridity: between manual and industrial, East and West, minimalism and superfluity. Born in Tanzania to Indian parents, the artist creates vivid hand-painted tiles, three-dimensional objects and spacial installations that defy easy categorisation. Chowdhary’s interests lie in the malleability of clay, its relationship with the human hand and colour’s capacity to generate visual and emotional responses. Through her bold lashings of colour, lustrous surfaces and gridlike geometric constructions, the medium is imbued with wide-ranging histories, geographies and cultures. Her new exhibition at Jhaveri Contemporary in Mumbai centres on the concept of code-switching, the act of shifting between linguistic codes and systems. This, in the context of Chowdhary’s work, means an interchange between different modes of production, cultural references and media, conveyed through tiled ceramic work, paintings and collages on paper.

Writer: Harriet Lloyd-Smith

Zizipho Poswa

The Cape Town-based ceramicist’s titanic totemic works, vividly hued and often of variegated parts, are deeply rooted in her experience as a Xhosa woman. In 2006, Poswa co-founded Cape Town ceramic studio Imiso, a leap that allowed her to translate her training in textile design into the ceramic sphere. Her relatively recent success as an independent artist came after two decades of dedication to clay as a vehicle for expression, and as a business. Her stoneware pieces, ambitious in scale and often composed of different parts, draw on Xhosa rituals and textiles, the water vessels carried by Xhosa women, and African hairstyles. Texture plays a central role in Poswa’s work: course surface treatments are often juxtaposed with silky smooth appendages (or vice versa), and other striking embellishments that bridge the gap between tradition and modernity.

Writer: Harriet Lloyd-Smith

Most artists would consider their first museum survey on home turf as an opportunity to celebrate personal successes. But for Theaster Gates, the Chicago-based artist, urbanist, musician and cultural icon it is also a chance to pay homage to the radical thinkers and creative forces who came before.  

Gates’ first American museum exhibition, ‘Theaster Gates: Young Lords and Their Traces’, opens 11 November 2022 at the New Museum in New York. In developing the show, he first drew from his native Chicago. Thinking about the local 1960s political group, Young Lords, and then about his personal cultural deities – such as bell hooks, Okwui Enwezor, Virgil Abloh, Sam Gilliam and Theaster Gates Sr, all of whom have passed – the exhibition is what Gates describes as ‘a personal pantheon’ and ‘a kind of memorial for different individuals who had an impact on my life and culture’.

The full range of Gates’ multidisciplinary practice, which spans pottery, found objects, sculpture, painting, video and performance (and was explored in Wallpaper's 2021 Theaster Gates interview) is showcased in an epic, site-specific installation that spreads over three floors. The museum becomes a communal space for preservation, remembrance and exchange. As one ventures through the show, there is an emotional cadence that prompts contemplation, whether it’s walking into a spacious room dominated by one of Gates’ libraries, in this case, 4,500 volumes belonging to the film and Slavic studies scholar Robert Bird (a friend of Gates, and former colleague at the University of Chicago, who passed away in 2020) presented on cast-iron Carnegie shelving; viewing a sample cross-section of the artist’s extensive collection of objects and ephemera, encased in 100-year old wooden vitrines from the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago; or hearing live music being played on A Heavenly Chord, Gates’ construction of a Hammond B3 organ with seven Leslie speakers suspended overhead. (The piece will be activated on most Saturdays throughout the show’s duration – check the museum's calendar.)

‘Young Lords and Their Traces’ presented me with the artistic time and space to grieve the lives of people who have been important to me. The New Museum is a site of mourning and mischief, an antidote to the darker emotions we experience when we lose someone who made us, whom we love, or who represents the things we believe in,’ Gates says. ‘Through this exhibition, I’m expressing that artists are not exempt from complex human emotions caused by death. The exhibition doesn’t feel like a survey of objects that I’ve made in the past. Instead, it feels much more like a survey of the ways the material world and the ancestral world come together. Art moves us because art functions as a visible mechanism for the display of deep emotion. Mourning and loss were emotions understood before there was art.’ 

He adds, ‘Making, remembrance, and the accumulation of one’s things are cultural tasks that demonstrate that art and loss have always been aligned. I hope those who experience the exhibition will consider the importance the material world plays in honouring those close to their hearts. I hope they are moved to create minor museums or shrines to those who had a profound impact on their lives, elevating the material to a higher plane. I consider creation the antithesis of death, but I am also moved to remain connected to and conversant with the great spirits who have left us. One could say that my being engaged with the elegiac is oblique, but it’s my way of keeping people alive.’ 

Viewing 20 years of work through this lens certainly reiterates Gates’ profound ability to convey meaning and significance through objects. ‘‘Young Lords and Their Traces” demonstrates a deepening of my artistic interests in objecthood,’ continues the artist. ‘In Chicago, the personal objects, the traces and the collections were always informing our work with our building projects. This show allows visitors access to the part of my brain that has always been engaged with the intimacies of other people’s lives and their possessions. 

‘While there isn’t much of a divergence, I do think this exhibition sharpens my commitment to the archive, ceramics, and narratives associated with the histories embedded in materials. This survey feels much more “essential” in its pronouncement of some of my artistic investments. The question of religious social form and how it is embedded within the history of art demonstrates more profoundly that an object, like the cross, can both say so much and hide so much about people’s deepest intentions, dogmas, and alliances. I wanted to demonstrate that my belief in form-making is as deep as my belief in believing.’

The unmissable show is complemented by 'Vestment', an exhibition of new tar paintings by Gates at Gagosian Gallery's uptown space. In this series, the artist explores religious iconography as politically galvanising devices, while exploring spiritual and stylistic hierarchies and the symbolism and universalism of nationhood. Experimental in colour and made using roofing techniques in homage to Gates' father's profession as a roofer, this new body of work looks back as much as it looks forward.

‘Theaster Gates: Young Lords and Their Traces’, until 5 February 2023, New Museum, New York. newmuseum.org, theastergates.com

‘Theaster Gates: Vestment’, 11 November–23 December 2022 Gagosian. 976 Madison Avenue, New York. gagosian.com 

The idea of clay as a serious art form is nothing new. The traditional ‘craft’ connotations of the medium have been slipping since the second half of the 20th century, with clay becoming the material of choice for heavyweights such as Grayson Perry and Betty Woodman. More recently, artists including Lindsey Mendick, Leilah Babirye and Woody De Othello have used it for its raw, political and psychic potential.  

These artists are included in Hayward Gallery’s wide-ranging new exhibition ‘Strange Clay’, which presents ceramics as fantastical and uncanny. It also manages to show quite how electrifying this medium can be. The work is vast, totemic, loud and messy. All 23 artists in ‘Strange Clay’ more than hold their own within Hayward’s cavernous brutalist architecture. 

‘The good thing here is that you can put together a really serious installation,’ curator Cliff Lauson tells me. ‘There is domestically scaled work in the show, but you can also really let rip. We wanted to turn the old image of clay on its head and make it really exciting.’ He has been considering the exhibition for the last four years, engaging in long-running conversations with many of the featured artists, whose profiles have continued to soar since its inception. 

‘The idea of clay as a serious art form has been bubbling at the forefront of contemporary practice for a while, alongside a wider consideration of craft,’ says Lauson. ‘The journey for many of these artists has come from looking at history through a contemporary lens. Of course, ceramics has a rich history in every country around the world.’

Jonathan Baldock’s imposing Facecrime greets visitors first entering the show. Precarious towers of ceramic cylinders emblazoned with ears, faces and mug-like handles are interrupted by floppy, unmissably phallic, balloon-like forms poking from the sides. The work captures the playfulness of the medium that threads through Strange Clay, often revealing uneasy emotional undercurrents.  

Eruptions of all kinds also happen throughout the show. David Zink Yi’s giant squid is surrounded by a thick marbled slick of ink; Beate Kuhn’s collection of chalky black ceramics appears ready to burst with glowing goo; Salvatore Arancio’s volcanic forms feature iridescent columns shooting from their bases. Mess, both physical and psychological, can be found everywhere. 

Lindsey Mendick brings this untidiness to a thundering climax in Till Death Do Us Part. Taking its title from Madonna’s homage to her famously troubled marriage with Sean Penn (which soundtracks the work), the installation displays the full intensity of domestic life spent with another person. Slugs writhe on the kitchen floor with their guts spilling out; rats clamber over a broken table, surrounded by blood-like splashes of red wine; cockroaches crawl over a worn-out copy of Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus. Mendick has poured her own experiences into this piece, creating a complex image of love and the potent battle of wills that often accompanies it.

‘It is an emotive medium and I think we relate to it,’ Lauson tells me. ‘Tactility is there in all of the works. It’s really explicit in some. There is this trace of interaction. There is that element of the human and the earth. You can revel in the untidiness of the medium, which is often brought into the final form. It’s also bolstered by the things you can do with surface.’

Leilah Babirye creates similarly powerful work, stretching the material potential of ceramics by combining clay with found objects. In busts ranging from human-sized to 3m tall, she utilises woven old bike tyres for hair and bike chains combined with rusty lights to form a crown. Her use of discarded materials refers to abasiyazi, a Ugandan slur for queer and trans people derived from the inedible part of sugar cane that is thrown out. Babirye symbolically elevates her materials, ‘representing the queer community, my community, in a royal way’.

This expanded way of working with clay is pushed to its limits by Klara Kristolova. Far From Here features 18 stoneware figures surrounded by dried vegetation, forming a hilly landscape that viewers can walk through. The scent of dried leaves, not dissimilar to chamomile, pervades the space, noticeable before the work is within view. Each of the figures can be seen in a state of transformation, between human, animal, insect and plant forms. She combines gloss and matt finishes on her ceramics, creating an effect more akin to watercolour painting than traditional glazing. 

Hayward director Ralph Rugoff mentions that ceramics sit in the middle of painting and sculpture. But this is not the only ‘between’ space that they occupy. There is also a play between liquid and solid; humour and darkness. As displayed in ‘Strange Clay’, this medium is hard to pin down, enabling a conflicted expression of what it means to be human and all of the muck that comes with it. 

Until 8 January 2023 at the Hayward Gallery, London 

Walking through Palermo’s historical centre, the stunning old city soon reveals itself as a palimpsest. Street names, edifices and ornaments often disclose traces of the many cultures, rulers and religions that have travelled across the Mediterranean and left a mark on the island. It is discernible in the architecture, customs and cuisine. And it is legible, to nearly impossibly utopian degrees, in Sicily’s spirit of inclusivity. Genoa-born artist Vanessa Beecroft, who staged a previous tableau vivant here in 2008, returned to Palermo on 8 December 2022 with her latest one-time performance, which paid tribute to Sicily’s dizzyingly diverse cultural and historical narratives. 

Titled VB94, to indicate the work’s sequence within the artist’s practice, the new performance was specifically created for a small gallery inside Palazzo Abatellis, a museum that houses the Regional Gallery of Sicily. But just like most buildings in Palermo, the Palazzo has seen several incarnations. Originally built as an aristocratic residence in the 15th century, it later became a cloistered convent for 400 years, until the Second World War. After the last of the nuns had left, the palace was transformed into a museum in 1953-1954 by Venetian architect Carlo Scarpa, and is considered a masterpiece of international museology thanks to Scarpa’s extraordinary exhibition design. It seems there’s no better place to stage a signature Beecroft work – which links the past and present, stasis and movement, art and life –than these history-filled stone quarters remodelled by a modernist master. 

‘I idealised this museum so much that now I feel like I’m in a dream,’ Beecroft said on the eve of the performance. ‘The first time I visited this museum was in 1987, and since then I’ve considered it the most beautiful museum in the world. Antonello da Messina’s Annunciation and the bust of Eleonor of Aragon by Francesco Laurana made a profound impression on me. Over the years I have continued to visit it, and when the possibility of making a performance here materialised, I thought about how to express my relationship with such a special place.

‘I trust that the city of Palermo has a deep understanding of the complexity and dialectic of my work and this makes me feel safe,’ she added. 

In the palazzo’s moonlit courtyard, visitors queued to enter a small gallery where a group of models, draped in variously diaphanous fabrics and wearing golden leather shoes, stood or sat amid Beecroft’s sculptures of heads and busts cast in ceramic, bronze and wax. An original soundtrack by composer Gustave Rudman (of Euphoria fame, amongst many other accomplishments) induced an ethereal, timelessly thrilling mood. In fact, this is the first time that the Los Angeles-based artist has combined live models with sculpture and sound. 

While the sculptures referenced some of the artefacts in the museum’s collection of Renaissance art, the performers – women from Palermo, some from a lineage of local aristocracy while others are first or second-generation immigrants – evoked the women who have inhabited the dwelling throughout the centuries, from the noblewomen of the Abatellis family to the nuns of the Santa Maria della Pietà convent. A porcelain-skinned performer was nursing her baby but retired to a back room as the infant grew tired. 

For models, Beecroft’s tableaux are demanding feats of endurance. Participants must stay in character for several hours, keeping movement to a barely perceptible minimum. ‘It was very challenging,’ Emma Preisler, a yoga teacher who embodied a goddess figure in the three-hour performance, said the following morning. ‘It was an exchange between me and the audience; from my spot, it looked like they were touched deep inside, somewhere where it hurt.’ 

‘But it helped that Vanessa was in the room; every time I was in doubt I searched for her and that became the golden thread carrying me through.’ 

Vanessa Beecroft’s one-time performance ‘VB94’, took place on 8 December 8 at Palazzo Abatellis. The artist’s sculptures will be on view at the museum until January 8, 2023. vanessabeecroft.com

Cape Town-based ceramic artist Zizipho Poswa is known for an expansive art practice that draws on ancient African traditions (see our visit to Poswa’s studio). Her work is grounded in the Xhosa rituals she witnessed during her childhood in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa, and also explores how the sociopolitical role of Xhosa women has evolved throughout generations. 

Her debut 2021 exhibition at Cape Town’s Southern Guild Gallery, titled  ‘iLobola’ considered the value and relevance of Lobola, a tradition in which a bridegroom’s family offers payment in cattle or cash to the bride’s family ahead of marriage. For the show, Poswa exhibited 12 large sculptures, including Makoti (Bride), uMyeni (Groom), uBuso beNtombi (Gift for the Bride’s Mother) and iKhazi (Agreed Number of Cows), all measuring up to 2m in height and resembling gourd-shaped totems. The pieces were made by assembling hand-coiled clay bases, which were painted in an array of coloured glazes (one or two dripped effects) and crowned with two bronze horns.

Rather than reinforce Lobola’s objectification of women, Poswa looked to the spiritual aspects of the practice and how such traditions offer opportunities for solidifying the bonds between two people and uniting families and communities alike. 

Zizipho Poswa’s ‘uBuhle boKhokho’ at Southern Guild

In a new exhibition, ‘uBuhle boKhokho’ (Beauty of Our Ancestors) at Southern Guild, Poswa continues her exploration of traditional African hairstyles, first studied in her Magodi series (the Shona word for the topic). ‘uBuhle boKhokho’ draws inspiration from the elaborate art of hairstyling not just in her native South Africa but across the African continent and extending to the diaspora. 

Black hair has long been explored by a cross-generation of African artists, most notably by Nigerian photographer JD ’Okhai Ojeikere, who paired Nigerian women's hairstyles with the new Nigerian architecture of the 1960s, and more recently by London-based artist and hairstylist Joy Matashi. Informed by ancestral hairstyles from ethnic groups including the Fulani and Zande, Poswa looks even further back with this new body of work. Twenty new monumental ceramics and bronze sculptures are spread across Southern Guild’s spaces, alongside a photographic series where the artist recreated 12 hairstyles over a period of five months.

Additionally, some of the sculptures are titled after women who have played an important role in the artist's life, an ode to female solidarity, commonality and conviviality. 

Across ceramics and photography, Poswa reminds us of the critical role Black hair has played culturally, socially and politically, across time, as well as its versatility and experimental potential as an artistic and sculptural medium whilst being an important marker of Blackness. 

Zizipho Poswa, ‘uBuhle boKhokho (Beauty of Our Ancestors)’, until 2 February 2022, Southern Guild Gallery, Cape Town. southernguild.co.za

Every ceramicist has to be willing to dig their hands in the mud and get dirty, but, for most, that creative messiness usually occurs within the relatively civilised context of a studio or classroom. For its latest collection, The New Craftsmen has taken a group of its makers out of their typical surroundings and led them knee-deep into the mud of the River Thames. 

Earlier this year, 15 craftspeople were invited by The New Craftsmen’s creative director Catherine Lock to join a mudlarking expedition in London’s River Thames. Intertidal archaeologist Mike Webber led the group in the practice of scavenging the river bed for artefacts of historical value; teaching them how to spot shards of pottery or other small objects among the debris and explaining the significance of what they discovered.  

Participants include names familiar to devotees of The New Craftsmen – 1690 (Sophie Wilson), Aude van Ryn, Bibbings & Hensby, Fitch & McAndrew, Rich Miller, James Rigler, Joe Hartley, John Wheeldon, Matthew Foster, Matthew Raw, Michael Ruh, Viv Lee, and Emma Witter — all of whom used the objects they found to inspire their works for ‘Claylarks’. 

Works include 20 pieces of tableware inspired by the gluttony and debauchery of Tudor feasts, created by ceramicist Matthew Foster. He produced large platters, jugs, decorative lidded jars and vessels with animal motifs – as well as limited-edition salt-glazed vessels made with fellow ceramicist Matthew Raw – using his typographical ‘sprig’ technique, whereby low relief shapes are applied to pottery before firing. 

Also inspired by Tudor decadence, artist Emma Witter (a new addition to The New Craftsmen family) has created chandeliers out of electroplated oyster shells and ‘Thames bone’ rendered in bone china. Meanwhile, Bibbings & Hensby made a Welsh dresser designed to showcase ceramic pieces collected and curated over time. The work was inspired by several hand-forged nails the furniture-making duo found while mudlarking, which galvanised them to research historic forms of nailed furniture. 

The many other works that make up the collection are just as innovative and diverse in their realisation of mudlarking treasures. Lock says of the collection: ‘Ever since our early ancestors’ dexterous hands formed the materials surrounding us into items required for everyday life, adorned the environments we inhabited and helped us make sense of wondrous worlds around (and within) us, the “craft baton” has been passed from generation to generation. The resonance of the conversation, steeped with deep wisdom, child-like curiosity and ambition, has reverberated within communities of makers and their patrons, across the ages.’ 

‘Clayworks’ will be exhibited at The New Craftsmen’s Mayfair showroom as part of London Design Festival 2022.

INFORMATION

thenewcraftsmen.com

ADDRESS

34 North Row
London

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There is an immediate sense of calm at sculptor Klara Kristalova’s studio in Norrtälje, Sweden: it sits within trees on one of the northernmost points of the Stockholm archipelago. ‘The nature around my studio moves into my work intuitively,’ she says. The studio itself is a light, barnlike structure with high ceilings, and behind it is the peaceful home that she shares with her family, an unusual 1960s summer house that lies a few hundred metres from the water’s edge. 

‘In winter, you always see the lake. In summer, the greenery obscures it, but you can go down and swim,’ she says. It reminds me of the view from Artipelag, a favourite museum on the Stockholm archipelago, designed by the late architect Johan Nyrén to align with the surrounding landscape. There, a few years ago, I had a chance encounter with What Holds Me Back, Carries Me Further, 2017 a powerful bronze sculpture by Kristalova at the opening of ‘Sculpture in Nature’, a group exhibition of predominantly Nordic artists. I was moved by the piece and so learnt more about the evocative and distinctive glazed ceramic sculptures she is known for.

Kristalova was born in 1967 in what was then Czechoslovakia, but her family moved to Sweden soon after. Her parents, Eugen Krajcik and Helena Kristalova, were both established artists, so she was exposed to numerous museums and art fairs from a young age: ‘I travelled with my father to the Venice Biennale and Documenta and had an art library in my head.’ As a result, becoming an artist felt like a natural choice. She went on to study at the Royal University College of Fine Art in Stockholm, which gave her even more opportunities to learn and travel. 

Today, Kristalova predominantly works in ceramics and stoneware, but that wasn’t always the case. During her university years, her focus was painting. ‘When I finished studying, I was a trained painter, but mainly with watercolour and ink on paper, because it’s fast. I wanted to do something three-dimensional. I started to experiment with ceramics and stayed with it, because it’s a fast and easy material. I see my work as three-dimensional drawings – for that, ceramics is an excellent material.’ She works in bronze in the same way. 

Kristalova was in London in 1997 and saw the groundbreaking YBA show ‘Sensation’ at the Royal Academy. ‘I was very impressed by the shows in London, particularly as Stockholm was a smaller art city,’ she says. ‘I remember Tracey Emin and Louise Bourgeois as their work is so personal. We were taught not to do this in school. It opened a window – you don’t have to be so distant or formal.’ 

There is a sense of humanity and vulnerability to Kristalova’s figurative work, which draws parallels with those of Emin and Bourgeois. This autumn, as well as being the subject of a solo exhibition at Perrotin New York, Kristalova will exhibit alongside other leading international ceramicists in a group exhibition at London’s Hayward Gallery, where Bourgeois recently had a retrospective. Kristalova was also influenced by Jenny Holzer. ‘When we were in New York with our school, we went to see her ‘Laments’ exhibition at Dia Art Foundation in 1989, which was very impactful.’ Kristalova collects art for her own home, but only swaps with
artist friends and never buys. 

In 2006, Kristalova was exhibiting at Frieze London, with Stockholm’s Galleri Magnus Karlsson, when the Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan bought her work and introduced her to the Paris-based international gallery Perrotin. She has since had solo exhibitions at the gallery’s Miami, Paris, Hong Kong and Seoul locations. Her work is also included in the permanent collections of the Nationalmuseum and Moderna Museet in Stockholm, as well as the Fonds National d’Art Contemporain (FNAC) in Paris. 

I ask Kristalova if she has any rituals or routines while preparing for her exhibitions. She responds with a specific outline of a day of work, but it is the music she sometimes listens to that intrigues me. She embraces music ‘not when I have to work with the ideas or develop them – only when I’ve decided what I’ll do. Both my brother and daughter give me mixtapes with everything from hip-hop to music from the 1970s.’ However, she emphasises that this is relatively unusual. ‘I have a plan, but my thoughts evolve as I make the work, and my hands change my mind, which is why I always need fast materials.’ 

Although Kristalova has previously been inspired by Nordic fairy tales, she says she is now more focused on nature. ‘I take a lot of inspiration from the botanical and the structure of trees. Many people have asked me if my work would look different if I lived in a busy city like New York or Los Angeles – and yes, it would.’ She continues, ‘I am very concerned by climate change and think nature and animals are very undervalued. Many are on the verge of extinction and we are dependent on them to survive. Every stone and plant is important to my work – my work is not necessarily about it, but they affect and influence it.’ 

Kristalova considers the exhibition ‘New Work: Tiago Carneiro da Cunha and Klara Kristalova’, held at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2011, to be a pivotal moment. There, she was approached by Richard Serra, whose monumental sculptures she’s always admired. ‘He liked our exhibition, it was very surreal,’ she recalls. 

She recently completed her own large-scale sculpture, a public commission in Le Havre, France, that has received critical acclaim. Many onlookers asked why it depicts a woman. She replied that her works ‘depict people generally, not women, but they are always women and it comes naturally. It’s not a deliberate statement and yet it’s important. I’m thinking of my daughter and I compare myself to how I was at her age.’ She made the model in papier mâché. ‘It took me a week or two to get used to it – it was like sculpting porridge – but then I started to like it.’

Kristalova has also held intimate exhibitions in historic locations, such as the Carl Eldh Studio Museum in Stockholm, where her sculptures contrasted beautifully with the more traditional work of Eldh, a leading sculptor of early 20th-century Sweden. ‘I tried to be slightly disturbing in a subtle way. I felt that all the women were objects and so I wanted to have another kind of female object,’ she explains. 

Kristalova says her choice to become an artist when she was young involved ‘no conflict or big decision – I decided to try and then went on’. This is reflected across her oeuvre, which feels intuitive. As we part ways, I ask her if she would consider diverging from the ceramics that have defined her career thus far. ‘I have been thinking a lot about other materials, but I don’t connect with them. I will continue to experiment. I feel I have to move forward and cannot only do ceramics my whole life. I like the living surface, even if I use a lot of transparent glaze – there can be a lot of shifting. It’s really like a watercolour, but three-dimensional.’ Doubtless her upcoming exhibitions will reveal more.

INFORMATION

‘Klara Kristalova: Flora and Fauna’, 6 September – 22 October, Perrotin New York, 130 Orchard Street, Manhattan, perrotin.com 

The design industry can be a competitive place, but the Brooklyn-based lighting studio In Common With and fellow Brooklynite, ceramicist Danny Kaplan, have made a compelling case for working together. The two studios have come together to launch ‘Terra’, a sculptural lighting collection featuring Kaplan’s ceramic work that they have designed together.

Stemming from a mutual admiration that first emerged over social media, the partnership between In Common With and Kaplan started out organically and continues to grow, with eight new geometric forms now joining the original six pieces that they unveiled in 2020, on the cusp of the pandemic.

‘Terra’ ceramic lamps by In Common With and Danny Kaplan

‘Our studio was founded around a spirit of collaboration. Because materiality is so central to what we do, we are always looking to work with other makers, artists and craftspeople who complement our point of view, skill set and have expertise in a particular material, whether it’s metalwork, glass or ceramics,’ says Nick Ozemba, who co-founded In Common With alongside fellow designer Felicia Hung. ‘We love the interplay of light with the tactility of hand-thrown ceramics. Danny has such a mastery of the medium, so he was the perfect person to help us bring these pieces to life.’

Ozemba adds, ‘The first iteration of “Terra” launched digitally in 2020 in the midst of the pandemic and really resonated with our clients. We have continued experimenting with new ideas, and it’s exciting to now expand the collection in new directions. Danny has such a distinctive, yet timeless sensibility and an interest in form that parallels the approach Felicia and I have to design. Together, I think we have arrived at a new design language that came together in really interesting and unexpected ways.’

While not deviating from In Common With’s crisp and minimalist sensibility, ‘Terra’ leverages Kaplan’s handcrafted quality of ceramics and rich, tactile glazes to bring a new harmony between beauty and utility. Simple orb forms and timeless geometric assemblages exude a mercurial quality when combined with Kaplan’s gestures in ceramic and glaze.

New colourways, such as ivy greens, rust tones and even lapis, bring out a new lustre in ceramic form, that’s further complemented by brass hardware and concealed wiring. Each piece – the collaborative collection spans surface mount lights, a pendant, a sconce, a table lamp, a floor lamp, and the brand’s first mirror – easily illuminates an interior.

‘These objects look unlike anything we have done before in terms of colour and scale and are some of our boldest, most ambitious pieces to date,’ Ozemba says.

‘The larger lights, like the “Paloma” pendant and “Helena” floor lamps, are bordering on the monumental with totemic forms – they are approaching something that almost blurs the line between lighting and sculpture.’ 

INFORMATION

‘Terra’ is on view and available for purchase at Assembly Line in Brooklyn until 30 June 2022

incommonwith.com

ADDRESS

373 Atlantic Avenue
Brooklyn, New York

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While exquisite, refined clothes are its calling card, The Row is increasingly garnering attention for its impeccably curated, art- and design-furnished stores, in London, New York and LA (with highlights often popping up on its Instagram feed). 

Now, co-founders Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen are expanding their obsession for design objects with a line of ceramic planters, made in collaboration with the landscape designer Grace Fuller Marroquín. The trio had already been friends for years when the idea was hatched; a mutual appreciation of each other’s creative process helped the collaboration flow. 

‘I often feel as though landscape design in the residential setting needs to continue and be unified within the house. For me, there’s a constant search to find the right vessels and planters,' says Fuller Marroquín, who intends the ceramic vessels to be used inside. A former Vogue fashion editor and W magazine accessories editor, she left her fashion career behind in 2018 after completing a degree in landscape design at the New York Botanical Garden’s School of Horticulture, inspired by her mother, an artist and avid gardener. 

Although based in New York, Fuller Marroquín spends a lot of time in Mexico with her family. ‘I’m constantly in awe and inspired by the master crafts of the country. Years ago when I first saw the piñas, I immediately was drawn to them. They are traditionally ornamental pieces; however, I wanted to take a different spin for their use with plants,' she says. Fuller Marroquín worked with skilled potters in Tangancícuaro, two hours’ drive to the south-east of Guadalajara, where handcrafted ceramics have a long history.Sun-dried, hand-kneaded clay made was worked into 20 intricately crafted pots, from small to large scale, and tabletop to floor standing. Painted in colours that reflect the surroundings where they were made – deep green, rich brown, glossy black – each vessel was then fired in a wood-burning stove and finished with a custom glaze.The planters will be available to purchase from The Row stores in New York and Los Angeles from 6 May 2022.

INFORMATION

From $1,200-$5,000. Available from 6 May 2022

therow.com

While Bari Ziperstein might not quite be a household name, you are likely to have already admired the distinctive assemblages of primitive, sculptural forms that she creates under the moniker Bzippy. Established in 2008, Ziperstein’s experimental ceramics practice has since grown to encompass furniture, sculpture, objects and larger, art-driven installations, which all riff on her inventive use of shapes, glazes and slab construction that have together created a unique signature.

With her fine art practice growing in recognition, the Los Angeles-based Ziperstein has moved into a new 9,000 sq ft production studio, office and showroom that will bring all her enterprises under one roof. 

Overseen by the local design firm Foss Hildreth, the space enables Ziperstein to have a dedicated production room, eight production kilns, a product photography studio and an inventory and fulfilment warehouse on the premises, with room to spare. It will also house administration, development, production and other facets of Ziperstein’s businesses. 

‘It has been a lifelong dream to grow the studio space in a way that sustainably nurtures all three aspects of my practice,’ she says. ‘Because the studio is a hybrid space and was to contain both our offices and production floor, we wanted to treat each with the utmost consideration. 

‘The kitchen, break room, and office spaces also evolved into a sort of showroom space, allowing us to showcase our works to visitors. I knew that I wanted to work with Luke [Foss] and Ashley [Hildreth] of Foss Hildreth, as I previously worked with them individually at The Future Perfect; I was drawn to their design sensibility, vintage expertise, and fresh take on colour.’

Given Ziperstein’s love of colour, Italian acrylic furniture and lighting from the 1960s and 1970s, Foss Hildreth sought out pieces by Joe Colombo and Vico Magistretti to be placed alongside custom furniture by the label Waka Waka – a fellow Los Angeles studio. 

Durable and playful in equal parts, the space serves as an eyecatching stage for both known and previously unseen work. Bzippy light sconces, the studio’s first, line a hallway and the walls of a sales office. In Ziperstein’s office, a desk is reserved for her seven-year-old son, with whom she shares the workspace. 

‘Our objective was for clients to feel fully immersed in Bari’s world as they enter the studio,’ says Foss. ‘Bari is known for her colourful glazes, so we injected bright sophisticated hues throughout the offices and lounge space; worlds away from the production studio on the other side of the wall.’

Ziperstein adds, ‘Since we produce everything on-site, we are always covered in clay or clay dust. Incorporating surfaces and furniture that were durable and could be wiped down was key. This way our team has a place to take their breaks in a space that wasn’t too precious to interact with but still captured the aesthetic of the studio. Luke and Ashley developed a custom vinyl banquette with our very own custom bistro tables and furnished the space with vintage plastic chairs from Kartell and Joe Colombo. 

‘One of my favourite aspects of the studio is the plants throughout the space, installed in our Bzippy planters by Lizzie [Royale] of Pop Dirt LA. Lizzie used a variety of rare specimens sourced from Southern California and beyond, highlighting drought-tolerant plants and cacti that emphasise the sculptural aspects of their surroundings at the studio.’

INFORMATION

bzippyandcompany.com

Open by appointment only.
7900 Clybourn Ave, Unit B, Sun Valley, CA 91352
 

The work of French ceramicist Pierre Casenove goes on show at Arles’ Villa Benkemoun, a 1970s piece of architecture by Emile Sala. Presenting a collection of sculptural work, large vases, lamps, and ceramic totems, the exhibition is titled ‘Coincidences’, referring to the lucky encounter between the villa’s owner, Brigitte Benkemoun, and Casenove. The name also reflects the unpredictability of clay, and the often unexpected results that Casenove’s work has produced. 

‘Coincidences’: Pierre Casenove at Villa Benkemoun

‘Potters know that everything is possible in an oven,’ he says. ‘If you put a simple clay pot in an oven and you see branches and leaves grow during the firing, you’ll be the only one surprised!’ Much of his ceramic work is led by random outcomes: while part of his output comprises gold-plated objects featuring anthropomorphic or zoomorphic forms, his clay production is more abstract.

For his ceramics, Casenove finds inspiration in Japanese aesthetics, favouring imperfection and discretion. To create the pieces, he works from his Jura workshop using a Japanese wood-fired oven, a tool which, he explains, allows him to explore different raw stoneware palettes.

The exhibition is presented inside the airy spaces of the villa, its distinctive design offering a charming contrast to the earthy work of the ceramicist. Architect Emile Sala was commissioned by Algerian couple Simone and Pierre Benkemoun in the early 1970s, to design a villa that was ‘transparent and open’. Featuring flowing, curved silhouettes and shifting perspectives, the villa has been restored by their daughter, Brigitte, and Thierry Demaizière, who transformed the venue into an art and cultural destination, regularly hosting the work of artists and designers. 

As part of the exhibition, a rare collection of ceramic tableware and unique pieces by Casenove will concurrently be on sale at the nearby lifestyle boutique, Moustique.

INFORMATION

‘Coincidences’ at Villa Benkemoun, 28 May-8 June 2021
villabenkemoun.fr

British ceramics brand 1882 Ltd has launched a new collection of candles, with a bespoke scent, in ceramic holders designed by some of its most celebrated collaborators.

The candleholders – though that description doesn’t really fit their ambition – were created by designers Max Lamb, Bethan Gray, Snarkitecture, and conceptual artist Bruce McLean. Longstanding collaborators with 1882 Ltd, the four were chosen to celebrate the diverse range of techniques and aesthetics that the brand has been championing since it was set up in 2011 by daughter-and-father founders Emily and Christopher Johnson. 

1882 Ltd: the history

After a career in advertising in LA, Emily returned to London to study design, where she spotted a gap in the market for design-led, British-made ceramics. Collaborations to date include the likes of Paul Smith, Martino Gamper and Philippe Malouin. Her family’s ties with Stoke-on-Trent’s artisanal heritage date back to the year 1882, when the Johnson Brothers started producing ceramics there. The brothers’ company grew rapidly and eventually became part of the Wedgwood Group in 1968. Christopher, a fourth-generation Johnson, had been running the family business, and was invited to join Wedgwood, where he stayed as head of production until his retirement in 2002.

1882 Ltd strives to promote creative talent, while drawing on its founders’ multi-generational knowledge to support the ceramics industry of Stoke-on-Trent. Working with a network of local suppliers, Emily and her father have grown the brand and are now moving some of their production to Wedgwood’s factory, built in the late 1930s, in the nearby village of Barlaston – a process she describes as ‘going back as close to the mothership as humanly possible’. The bright, state-of-the-art facility will allow 1882 Ltd to amplify some of its more experimental and research-based work, including designer collaborations.

A collection of four candleholders by leading designers

The new candleholders are additions to the four collaborators’ existing collections for 1882 Ltd. Lamb’s offering joins his Crockery collection of bone china tableware, cast from moulds he carved in plaster and rendered with his signature beautiful imperfection. Snarkitecture adds to its series of vessels designed to reveal the artisanal process behind their creation, their otherwise sleek surfaces interrupted by unexpected texture. Gray’s design expands her Lustre collection, featuring 22ct gold decals that create captivating motifs. And McLean builds on his Garden Ware series of vessels decorated using a silk screen decal, his designed topped off with a bird figurine.

The candleholders represent a distillation of each designer’s collection into a single piece, enhancing their aesthetic richness. McLean, for example, considered his creation to be more than a candleholder. ‘He said to me, “Let’s make a ceramic garden with a bird”, and that’s what we did,’ recalls Emily.

What's next for 1882 Ltd

‘People who haven’t always worked with ceramics come and design a collection unbiased,’ she says. ‘They’re not aware of the limitations of the materials, which means that they push the boundaries.’ Simultaneously, 1882 Ltd is developing a series of home accessories for British brand Jo Malone, created by set designer Shona Heath. ‘This is one of the most fantastical collections that we’ve worked on,’ says Emily. ‘Shona’s imagination is just incredible, the way that she is able to transfer her vision through to us is fantastic.’

The common thread of these creative collaborations is the brand’s craftspeople. ‘The people who make our products are a fundamental pillar of our company,’ says Emily, who is expanding its apprentice scheme. ‘We need to ensure that the industry continues, and we can do that by having a younger generation working. But in order to do that, you need to be making some pretty interesting stuff. If you make interesting things, you’ll attract interesting people.’

INFORMATION

‘Dissolve’ candle by Snarkitecture, ‘Crockery’ candle by Max Lamb, both in fine bone china, £185 each
‘Ceramic Garden’ candle by Bruce McLean, in fine earthenware, £185
‘Lustre’ candle by Bethan Gray, in fine bone china, £225

Available from WallpaperSTORE*