.. I would like to present to you...
… ten clay characters...
… nine printed errors...
… eight adapted palettes…
… seven Schitt shoes…
… six movie dresses…
… five gold wings…
… four paper pests…
… three growing bathers…
… two storytellers...
… and a lazy day in space.
(Disclaimer: We're coming into some posts with lots of Instagram
images embedded in them, so if they don't instantly load, give it a
second or refresh the page, that seems to have worked for me.)
It's probably not really a surprise that I'm a sucker for a good plant pot. I love plants, and propagating, and with that come the need for plant pots. Sometimes I've bought very plain ones, usually white, which I've bought with the intention of decorating (some have been, well, one has been, with gold nail polish polka dots), some I've bought for a pretty colour or finish, but more and more I've been collecting ones with faces. There's something stupidly fun about a plant acting as hair and clay with a face has become something I'm almost automatically drawn too.
Thus, pottery with personality for Day 10, and ten ceramicists who specialise in clay with character...
AJ Simpson Ceramics
(Aberdeen, Scotland)
Starting with Aberdeen based ceramicist and the winner of The Great British Throw Down 2022 and the creator of these incredibly expressive blobs, AJ Simpson...
Since the series ended AJ has continued to create and sell their hand thrown, hand built and incredibly expressive goofy blobs online and I can't wait to see what they come up with next.
Dani x Kawaii Studios
(Los Angeles, California)
Next up is the work of Dani Iwami, and specifically the adorable watering bells that she creates out of her Los Angeles based studio...
Hand thrown, Dani's inspiration comes from her childhood, growing up watching Japanese animation, shown in her designs featuring Studio Ghibli characters such as No Face from Spirited Away (2001) or Appa from Avatar: The Last Air Bender (2005-2008), but they're also primarily focused on animals and traditional functional ware, such as the watering bells.
Watering bells (or thumb pots) have been found in archaeological sites as far back as the 13th Century, and were used to dampen the loose rushes or straw which covered stone or earthen floors, this was done to reduce dust and dirt which would be released into a space as it was walked on, extra water being sprinkled over to help reduce this even more when sweeping. They were also used in medieval and Renaissance gardens as a means of watering plants, which is their primary use today.
The ceramic pots have flat bases punched with holes - like rose on a watering can - a hollow bell shaped body to hold water and thumb sized hole in the top. To fill they're submerged in water, then you place your thumb over the hole creating a vacuum seal, stopping the water from escaping until it's removed and you allow the water to be released. It's a simple but elegant delivery system which modern ceramicists have introduced into their hand thrown collections, and many adding a little more character to them than the the traditional ones, such as Dani's dumplings, whales and cute octopi.
Link || Watering Floors and Gardens in Medieval Times, and Later via Old & Interesting
Ghost Ceramics Gbg
(Gothenburg, Sweden)
Lisa Agnetun is a ceramic artist who mostly creates ghosts out of her home studio in Gothenburg, Sweden...
Thrown in stoneware or porcelain clay, these little ghosts are full of texture and hand sculpted details and adornments that turn them from their traditional ghost form into unique kawaii characters, some covered in sprinkles or golden veins of kintsugi mending, others dressed up as though for Halloween as witches, bats, devils or animal characters. I love these.
More and more I'm attracted to things with ghost iconography, and these ghost ceramics are simultaneously cute and beautifully made, and I am particularly enamoured of the "Jase", a jar and vase combo with the highly textured, pitted and corroded looking verdigris glaz,e which is featured in many other pieces of Agnetun's work, and I find this colour and texture really beautiful. These are just a pleasure to have appear in my Instagram feed, and there seems to be endless iterations for the ceramicist to explore.
Hadaki
(Poznan, Poland)
Creature feature that this is, I had to include these organic, claymation looking figures from Polish ceramic studio Hadaki...
These remind me of the kind of claymation characters I grew up watching on TV, like Berk from Trap Door (1986) and Morph (1977 - present), they look like they should come to life and start running amuck in a very good humoured manner.
Link || The Trap Door (1986-1990) || IMDb || Wikipedia || Fandom Wiki || YouTube
Link || Morph (1977-present) || Website || Aardman || IMDb || Wikipedia || Instagram || Twitter || Facebook || YouTube ||
Maì Accents
(Brighton, England, UK)
Maì Accents is a recently closed brand created by Marzia Kielberb, a former YouTube content creator turned designer and self-taught ceramicist, who is also married to one of the websites second most subscribed too creator, Felix Kielberb, also known as PewDiePie.
Maì Accents didn't solely produce ceramics homewares, Kjellberb's designs were also featured on plushies, stickers, clothing, jewellery, and bags to name a few items all with the same cute, quirky aesthetic. Unfortunately the brand, which opened in 2018, closed officially at the beginning of February 2023, which is a shame since they were creating some really fun, quirky designs with goofball faces and speckled glazes. (I love speckled, splattered glazes on ceramics.)
Normally I would probably avoid an influencer based brand for something like this, lots just feeling as though they're a money grab, but this genuinely seems to have been a passion project for Marzia, using a self taught skill to create something as opposed to others who simply put their name on anything they're offered. It's also nice to see one actually make the items for sale, putting in the time and effort to create their products.
Modern Pottery Shop
(Marden, England, UK)
From speckles to freckles and the simple and sweet work of ceramicist, Samuel Stokes...
The Modern Pottery Shop specialises in these very simple white ceramic forms, thrown in small batches then glazed with simplistic expressions such as meh, blush and kiss, as well as ones painted as striped sailors, but the most prominent yet subtle smattering of freckles each features. It sounds silly to say, but I don't think I've ever seen a piece of pottery with facial features that has had freckles. Freckled pottery yes, but not freckles in the loathed and loved speckled pigmentation guise.
A missed opportunity that I'm so happy Stokes has embraced. Freckles are gorgeous and I'm jealous that the only ones I have are hidden under dark circles and concealer, or are on my arms and point out that I didn't wear enough sunscreen when driving with the window open.
MTC Pottery
(Rochester, New York State)
Possibly the weirdest contribution to the list is the work of Maliya Travers-Crumb, a small batch pottery from Rochester, NY, and when I say weird, I mean it, her ceramics are bizarre and wonderful with it...
... yeah, probably should have been a warning about barfing cat mugs, but they are genuinely so weird that I thought they should speak for themselves.
A self proclaimed crazy cat lady (she literally uses it as a hashtag in her Instagram posts), MTC's illustrations and ceramics are almost completely cat centric, and they're kind of unhinged in a wonderful way. I mean, how many designers create functional homewares which are too be loved, held, and become part of your daily life, and have them simultaneously barf a portion of your beverage into another vessel? Maliya Travers-Crumb that's who! And she has a unique aesthetic that I personally love, from the monochrome colours and dimpled texture, to the crazy cats festooning and emerging from her mugs and their (for some) unsavoury selling point, I think these are amazingly weird and cool.
And yes, in case you were wondering, according to MTC, completely functional.
Link || Maliya Travers-Crumb (MTC Pottery) || Website || Instagram || TikTok || Facebook || Pinterest || Behance || Etsy
Myostery
(Seoul, South Korea)
We've had watering bells, barfing cats and now ceramics that smoke...
Created by Hye-jeong Jeong and Jong-Hyun Lee, the married couple behind Myostery, which they describe as "a small planet somewhere in the universe". Apart from their kawaii approach to character designed ceramics, meant to represent the creatures who inhabit Myostery, they also create backflow incense burners, which I've become kind of obsessed by in recent years.
Normally I'm not a fan of incense, I feel like most of them smell the same and that that smell isn't particularly pleasant, however I do enjoy the aesthetic of backflow incense, which once lit and smouldering allows its smoke to flow out through the hole in the base of the incense cone, unlike traditional incense cones and sticks which floats as smoke is usually want to do.
This smoke is at the will of gravity and pools in a really compelling way, and I have seen some really ugly incense burners in my search of one for my gran - who does love incense and large number of backflow cones I bought instead of normal ones - and I have also seen some truly beautiful ones which truly embrace the way this heavy smoke cascades. The ones from Myostery, while definitely not my grans taste, are silly fun, they've created characters that breath smoke in anger, over creepy ghost scenes, from ufo's in the middle of abductions and into bowls as baths for other characters. They've embraced the way the smoke flows and created their ceramic characters around that action, which is very aesthetically pleasing.
Now, if someone could invent scentless backflow cones I'd happily burn them so I could enjoy the aesthetic look of the burner, but didn't have to endure the unpleasant smell.
The Pottery Parade
(Utrecht, Netherlands)
If you're reading this and you're Scottish, have you ever heard of lucky tatties? I hadn't until approximately thirty seconds ago when I thought, given the Lucky Potatoes created by Netherlands based pottery Sandra Apperloo were such an unusual item, was there an origin story?
Now I don't know if there is any connection between Apperloo's lucky potatoes and lucky tatties, but the Scottish variety are a traditional sweet made of white fondant flavoured with cassia, which are steamed and then covered in ground cinnamon. They used to contain a small plastic toy for you to find as a lucky surprise, though this stopped due to health and safety concerns.
Either way, a lucky potato in the ceramic sense are handmade sculptures which are intended to bring "luck and cheer to whoever owns them", and I think they would. The cheer at least is a certainty with their happy little faces, silly demeanour and colourful appearance, how couldn't looking at one of these in your home not bring you joy?
Link || Lucky Tatties || Wikipedia || Scots Language Centre
Studio Rain
(Seattle, Washington)
And finally from the a city which is also known as the Emerald City, The Coffee Capital of the World and Rain City, a.k.a. Seattle, we have Studio Rain and yet another vessel that like to reject liquids...
These happy little ceramics are thrown by Gabe V. from Rain, and while he calls his designs functionally ordinary, I think they're simple but full of character. Whether they're gleefully weeing on your plants, crying for joy at being watered or happily dribbling because they've drunk too much, they're fully of humour, and fun. But it's done in a wonderfully simple and elegant manner, truly letting the earthenware clay be the focal point... though the cheery expressions do pull focus.
That's what I like so much about all of these ceramic characters, they're full of joy and silliness, but it doesn't mean that the form or function is ignored or sacrificed.
I love kind of stuff. I aspire to that kind of stuff. I'm so tired of the fear of not being high brow enough... what's wrong with things just being fun?
Anyway, keep warm and cosy as we enter another joyous dip in temperature in the UK. Part ten, the penultimate post, and I'm off to put on a warmer jumper...
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Listening: Is There A Ghost - Band of Horses
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