The process

I am my own factory, and my hands produce everything from start to finish. I have loved clay since my first scent memory at the age of 3, so easy to embrace with bare hands and shape my imagination. Over the years, more experience and knowledge have come, and there is always more to explore.

Inspiration often comes from film, music, and nature. Transience and darkness in contrast to innocent vitality. Generous organic forms with texture and colors in multiple layers.

There is a state of tension where human intention/construction is overwhelmed by natural forces. The most beautiful scenarios, in my opinion, are discovering a ruin, partly demolished and overgrown. Translated into my craft, it becomes a kind of collaboration where the ceramic process with several firings in the kiln, layer upon layer of decoration and glaze, makes each final result a humble surprise. I cannot fully control the final outcome, despite about 30 years of experience.

What I seek is a state where the object acquires a life of its own and communicates strength, power, and joy of life. An obviousness that shows that everything is right: form, function, colors, and surface. It is an exciting journey until then, with some detours where entirely new expressions can emerge, and then it is important to be alert and utilize that experience.

As a ceramist, I have a solid tradition behind me and am grateful for all the experience shared throughout history. Screen printing, drawing, and painting have long been part of my means of expression, and new techniques continuously fascinate and are explored.

For about 25 years, I have taught courses primarily in screen printing and image transfer on clay, but also in mold making, plaster casting, glass fusing, and glass casting.

I usually use an almost black clay, which is then covered with a layer of lighter clay, engobe, which provides a good background for the screen-printed motifs transferred via thin paper onto the damp clay. After the first firing, the monochrome motifs can be colored and then glazed. When the glaze firing is complete, the different layers have fused, creating a transparent depth; the motifs are embedded under the glossy surface, and the dark clay shimmers through all the layers of decoration.

I fell in love with black clay a long time ago; it makes colors more intense but can cause a lot of trouble with glazes, and I have experimented with all variations of clays, engobes, glazes, and firing temperatures to achieve the ware exactly as I want it, durable and beautiful.

Nuances and depth in the colored glazes are a fascinating and ongoing project where the kiln has a great impact, and the surprises are many.

I truly love my job, which offers me so many opportunities for development.

Contact with customers and retailers also provides excellent opportunities for product development and collaboration. Requests for the perfect espresso cup, breakfast bowl, teapot, etc., have driven both improvements and entirely new products. It is such a great feeling to see what I have created in so many homes, used and appreciated by many people around the world.

Both the practical utility of an object used daily combined with a sense of spirituality, magic, is what I want to share. A kind of escapism perhaps, contact with the underlying life force that is beyond our control.