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I can hear a faint echo as ceramicist Danny Kaplan chats to me from his Brooklyn studio. The 2,000sq ft space, a pre-war bottling factory, was chosen for its capacity to house his super-sized front-loading kiln. Inside, there are no ceramic tiles – nor any tableware – but coffee tables, floor lamps and chairs.
“Growing in scale was a really fun challenge,” says Kaplan of his early ventures into ceramic furniture, a fast-growing trend. “I really wanted to make sculptural work but remain in the world of design.” Instead of throwing wet clay on a potter’s wheel, his team uses soft clay that is easier to handle: Kaplan’s textured Basket chair ($4,650) is assembled from long coils, while his Demilune tables (from $4,500), are constructed from large flat slabs. The latter take their inspiration from refined wooden side tables popular in 18th-century France but, rendered in clay, they have a commanding presence.
Many of his works have an organic quality. The Arno Club Chair ($7,000), for example, is structural with an artistic touch. “There’s a lot of symmetry in it,” he says, “but then the curves and the way the clay meets at different points feels very natural. I love the idea that something like that might have come out of the earth.” The matte, chestnut glaze is contrasted with a fitted cushion, in a tight boucle from Zak+Fox.
Thousands of miles away in northern Belgium, an even larger workshop produces vast ceramic surfaces for Nestor & Rotsen. The brand’s popular Fiery cabinet (from €20,955) employs nearly metre-long tiles for its push-to-open doors. Its recent Shelby collection (from €8,133) is yet more impossible-looking, with perfectly curved edges. Their patchwork patterns and rich hues are inspired by aerial views of the earth’s landscapes.
“The use of colour goes somewhat against the current trend,” says founder Devi Vervaeke, “but is crucial for a cosy home. With glaze,” he adds, “you can create an intense palette of colours that seem to glow from the surface.” For bespoke projects, which include kitchen islands and built-in shelving, the studio incorporates coloured glass, terrazzo and patinated metals.
British designer Daniel Schofield’s Mag tables for The Conran Shop also have an ultra-glossy finish. Drawing on traditional enamelled roll-top baths and Belfast sinks, the coffee and side tables (from £575) have smooth, rounded edges, which makes them less likely to chip or crack. Combined with a quartz-enriched clay developed for laboratory tables, the range has an artisanal look but industrial strength.
New furniture brand Nine produces the designer’s second collection, Landmark. These tables (from £381) are more compact. “With the Mag tables,” says Schofield, “the top is pressed ceramic and the base is cast [in a mould]. Then with the Landmark tables, I wanted to push the limits of slip casting, so they’re made with a single cast.” Forma Rosa’s Wave chair ($7,500) was the result of a similar experiment, but rather than being minimal and blocky it is undulating and graceful, with dripping two-tone glazes accentuating its contours.
French artist Agnès Debizet never intended to make furniture. For decades she created sculptural ceramics, before a Parisian gallery approached her about turning them into functional pieces. The resulting chairs (POA) are striking, their irregular shapes and pitted surfaces mimicking the natural world: the black L’Éléphante is hefty and solid, the orange Crustacé perched on pointed legs and the Bergère pale and bubbling – it was named for the wigs worn by Marie Antoinette, who liked to dress up as a shepherdess, or bergère. Debizet’s Galet tables (POA) could be mistaken for stones, their surfaces inscribed with imagined creatures. All her furniture, while undeniably functional, feels like artwork.
The same goes for Reinaldo Sanguino’s stools, benches and tables (from $4,000), whose freely worked surfaces capture the effervescent energy of New York. The Venezuelan-born artist moved to the city in 1993, and began making stools for his home after he was a few chairs short at a dinner party. “Little did I know this object would become a major staple of my work,” he says. “That was over 30 years ago!” Sold by The Future Perfect, his pieces are patterned in bright oranges and pinks, metallic golds and deep browns and blacks, adding an “unexpected touch” to rooms that are too one-note.
“Fragility is embedded in the process of making ceramics,” says Sanguino, “especially when working on a large scale.” For every studio embracing full-size furniture, there is a story of trial and error, of carefully balancing moisture, temperature and thickness to avoid cracks, or worse, explosions. But the greater the risk, the greater the jewel-toned, hand-finished reward. “We have these crazy ideas in the studio,” says Kaplan, who is not intimidated by the process. “The goal is to get even bigger.”
This content was originally created by decorwhim and is © 2024
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