Bauernhäuser der Schweiz — Max Gschwend’s survey of vernacular Alpine architecture. Countryside homes built by people who understood their materials; no unnecessary moves, nothing built to be looked at, but everything beautiful anyway 🤍
I am always struck by how the most functional objects can be the most beautiful. Onggi, vessels shaped for storing, fermenting, and sustaining everyday life, were never conceived as decorative objects, yet in their generous curves and forms, there is something I find incredibly attractive.
Onggi jars were made to be used, to endure weather and time, to serve households faithfully. They are vessels shaped by need, unadorned and purposeful, and in answering that need so completely, they become magnificent.
Above are some of my favourites from a book about traditional Korean earthenware that I really love
Onggi — korean traditional earthenware
#onggi
Days spent at the studio, where I arrive early and stay longer than I mean to. I am trying to learn shapes, nothing more ambitious than that, at least not yet. Later will come the questions of colour and glaze, but for now it is enough to focus on form.
I throw the same piece again and again, fifty bowls, fifty cups, trying for consistency, though I’m not even sure consistency is what I’m after. Still, the repetition teaches me things: how a millimetre changes the whole mood of a rim, how each piece decides its own attitude.
Between attempts I search for answers, like how to get that cloudy off-white, matte and soft; whether wood-fired depth can come from an electric kiln (it can’t); then I find myself searching for land outside the city, as if it were perfectly logical that the next step in learning to throw a decent bowl is to move to the countryside and build a kiln that breathes like a bonfire.
Making things by hand reorders my mind, and the slow slow work of looking for the shapes and colours I’m after brings me a very steady kind of joy 🤍
very pleased to announce the studio’s first open door days with @rui.space._ and @___887l
you will be able to find a selection of both handcrafted and sourced vessels and objects
saturday december 13th 11-18h
sunday december 14th 11-16h
consell de cent 159, local J
hope to see you there 🤍
I made this vase a few years ago in La Borne, a village near Paris known for its wood firing tradition, during a workshop with a sculptor. At the time I had been making large pots for a while, obsessed with the idea of the perfect form. She gently suggested I try something more sculptural. I began with a solid block of clay and no real plan. For a while it became other things, before slowly settling into this shape, as if it were inevitable.
She was kind enough to find a place for it in an Anagama kiln, where it was fired for ten days. I picked it up the following summer, and at that moment realised that what I want most is for the things I make to be touched by fire. No glaze, just ash falling and melting into the surface, turning it dark—browns and blacks that almost look like rust. Anyways—this week I gave it to my father as a gift for his 80th birthday and I think he liked it.
