While simple off-white ceramic dinnerware is our go-to for setting the table—sometimes a pop of color in the dining room is just the ticket. San Antonio native Susan Rodriguez has been working as a ceramicist for…
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Generic terracotta and cement planter pots do little to save space with their conical shapes, making them less than ideal for compact living spaces. The Ma-ce-ta series resolves this issue with a collection of pots in varied size and geometric shape that fit together like a puzzle. The modular series makes it possible to create an indoor garden that’s custom-taylored to spatial requirements while it’s clean, minimal, white aesthetic compliments a variety of interior styles.
Designer: Design Pott
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(Puzzle Pots was originally posted on Yanko Design)
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Adam Silverman’s affinity for texture translates to his self-titled book about ceramic art. It’s a book that achieves its goal of being an object rather than a merely a catalogue of work. Many of the glossy…
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As the Helsinki-based brand gears up to celebrate the 50th anniversary of its iconic Unikko (poppy) print, Marimekko is still very much the prolific and relevant design house that it was when it was founded by…
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Ten years ago Catherine Bailey’s interest in lending a design hand to the small but established California pottery company Heath Ceramics took a detour that resulted in Bailey and her husband serendipitously buying the Sausalito-based company….
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Japan’s Starnet share their most recent creations at Heath Ceramics Los Angeles
In their first visit to the United States, Japan’s famed Starnet artisans fill Heath Ceramics in Los Angeles with a gallery of handcrafted designs. Curated by Shin Nakahara of Playmountain and Heath’s Adam Silverman, the Starnet Works summer shop features delicate ceramics, hand-worked leather goods, dyed textiles, wooden boards and chopsticks, photography prints and light boxes.
Founded in 1998 by designer Baba Koshi, the original Starnet location in Mashiko, Japan has grown into a gallery, cafe, studio and shop. Now Starnet has gallery spaces in Tokyo and Osaka and a growing number of fans throughout the world.
Shin toasted the summer shop and its showcase of modern Japanese pottery with Silverman upon its opening. “This line is very daring and offers a new challenge for Starnet,” he explains. “Its sensitive approach to its design, directed by my friend and pottery master Baba san, uses a specific type of clay and glaze from a town in Japan called Mashiko. I believe the series of Nukajiro is truly indigenous to Mashiko, while quietly breaking new ground in Japanese pottery.”
The Starnet Works Summer Shop is on view at Heath Los Angeles until 10 September. Pieces can be purchased in person at the Los Angeles location or by viewing the online gallery and calling Heath Ceramics Los Angeles to place orders by phone.
Resurrecting Depression-era designs in California
Southern California’s Bauer Pottery Company first made a name for itself in 1932, when the company released California Color pottery after the Great Depression. Before its sunny introduction, ceramics came in white, cream or brown—Bauer was the first to liven up kitchenware with brighter options, at a time when the people most needed the boost in their homes. Today, Bauer is run by president Janek Boniecki, who revived the defunct pottery company and has since built a staff of 25 full-time employees, including his wife, Ruth Ammon, a television production designer responsible for the company’s LA showroom.
Boniecki, who oversees all aspects of the brand’s quest to recreate the vintage designs of the 1930s, describes the Bauer Pottery Company as “a family business…a happy place.” We caught up with him to discuss the company’s heritage and how it informs present and future.
I started a candle business called the American Bee Company. Everything was poured into ceramic containers. I was always inspired by Bauer colors. Since the early ’80s, when I lived in San Diego, I have been collecting Bauer. When American Bee took off, I was a one-man show, and to this day I’ve made every candle.
I was contracting with small pottery companies making these candle pots for me, and we put out a little vase. I was trying to come up with a name for a pottery company. I went looking for how to register trademarks. One of the first ones I tried to get more information about was Bauer Pottery, to see how they registered their trademark. Well, it didn’t exist. I found out that when Bauer went out of business in 1962, their trademark eventually expired and became public domain. We registered as Bauer Pottery Company of Los Angeles. We published in 1998, got the approval and got the name. At first I still made everything myself.
A lot of people think I own the original Bauer molds, but they were all destroyed. So we are constantly buying original pieces—I got two in this week that I won on eBay. Some people donate original Bauer pieces that came from that period. Last week a man called and said he had two beautiful old platters. We are working on one period: the early to late 30s. We’ll take a piece and make a model from that.
We make the model about eight to ten percent larger than the original. We make the model out of plaster then it will shrink down the right size. I have a very good model maker that can essentially copy the design. The Russell Wright line was the most difficult to do. It was really hard to get it to be as good or better than the original. It was a challenge with the different shapes.
From the model we then make the master mold and cast one or two off of the master mold to make sure we don’t want to change the thickness of the handle or the rings or improve upon it. If you are happy with the master mold, you make the permanent thing called the block and case. With the block and case you make the working dies or production molds. So the block and case is it. That’s the thing that is worth a thousand dollars plus. You treat it gingerly. It’s something you can use forever. We have two walk-in safes in the factory that have been there since the ’20s. We keep the blocking cases in there so they don’t get knocked around. Then we have them forever.
We started with the one little vase and I think we have about 150 styles in our catalogue now. So far all of the pottery has been manufactured in California. We ship pieces to more that twenty countries in Asia, Europe, and also all the way to Australia and New Zealand.
When I launched the company, a friend who works for Sunset Magazine caught wind of what I was doing. She asked me to send up some pieces. They published a small article in the December 1998 issue. We did not even have a website at that point. We got over 6,000 calls, just like that. We now have an ongoing collaboration with Sunset Magazine. It’s a license we have with them, Home By Sunset by Bauer.
We also hold licenses with Russel Wright, and the latest one we are working with is Sister Mary Corita and the Corita Art Center. LACMA is carrying her pieces in the gift shop at their Pacific Standard Time show, California Design, 1930-1965.
When Barack Obama was running for president, everyone was amazed by this man. His stump speech was pretty overwhelming at times. There were certain things he was saying. My wife has given me a serigraph of Corita as a birthday gift. It was a Yes Thank You—a beautiful piece. Then I bought the book and I looking thought the book of all her work and I thought, “this sounds like Barack Obama.” Hope. Yes We Can. We Believe. I thought, we have this factory and we do decaling and decorating, maybe we can make some mugs with her work. At the time the foundation was not interested in putting anything out commercially, but we kept in touch. Then when the Pacific Standard Time show at LACMA came along and they were going to be exhibited in it, they approached me and said, “We’d like to do something.” Corita’s work is exhibited in more that fifty museums around the country. We started with the mugs and vases in time for the show. We have access to the whole collection and submit each piece we’d like to make approved. LACMA has become our biggest customer. They are selling hundreds of pieces a week right now.
Bauer Pottery is available on their website, in store throughout the world and at their monthly Los Angeles showroom sales.
Contemporary crisis and mythical inspiration in a Greek design collection
by Ikechukwu Onyewuenyi
When one thinks of Atlantis, a phantasm of decadence and splendor floods the senses, harkening a city at the height of its glory. For the “Atlantish: quite like Atlantis” collection, design collective Greece Is For Lovers (GIFL) turned to the present to communicate the allegorical allure of the past through modest design classics synonymous to Grecian culture. GIFL designer Thanos Karampatos says he wanted to “play with the idea of how the current and the antique are often blurred.” The ubiquitous and somewhat nondescript styrofoam water cooler is peppered throughout fishing docks and port cities across Greece, while disposable paper cloth adorns the tables of provincial tavernas all over Greece. Yet with Greece on the brink of a financial crisis, these objects possess a nostalgia quite like Atlantis, symbolic of a bygone era of innocence.
In that vein, as an ode to the historical vestiges of Atlantis, a plastic water cooler was sculpted into a luxe red earthen clay pot while trite tablecloths were turned into precious silk twill scarves emblematic of the lost city. The end result straddles the line of calculated irony and metaphoric reverence, with neither evoking a retrogressive aesthetic. At the same time, utility and integrity are not lost in the beautifying process. “Our products always have a utilitarian aspect but we insist on giving priority to emotive qualities and metaphors,” reflected Karampatos. Indeed, both recreations are sensitive to the distinction of Atlantis, but in their functionality do not capitulate in addressing the present. Karampatos feels this mirrors his current country’s plight in that Greece “obsess over the glory of the past rather than firmly focusing on the problematic present and future to come.”
“Atlantish: quite like Atlantis” had a recent unveiling at the 2011 Tent London design trade show and the metaphorical significance of the collection resonated among fair-goers. Despite standing as one of their more opinionated pieces of work, Karampatos comments that “this is by no means a campaign for Greece. Of course the Greek crisis has been an inspiration factor around this in a symbolic way of how Greek people interpret the chasm between the glorious past and the bleak present.” In keeping with the ephemeral beauty of Atlantis, the limited series of just seven ceramic decanters sell for €350. The scarves, on the other hand, will be a permanent part of the GIFL product range and will be available soon online.
Heat-conducting earthenware handcrafted according to traditional techniques
Doing his part to reintroduce pottery for daily use, Brian Grossnickle creates beautiful eco-friendly cookware out of micaceous clay, a material with properties making it remarkably well-suited for cooking. The New Mexico native, drawing on over 15 years of pottery experience, produces a wide variety of food-friendly pieces including cook pots, teapots, cups, bowls, and even platters.
The clay used in all the pieces has an extremely high mica content, one of nature’s best conductors of heat. Food cooked in micaceous pottery can stay hot for up to an hour or more after it’s removed from the heating element.
Also setting Grossnickle’s pottery apart, the traditional coil and scrape techniques that he employs were first developed by Apache Indians in New Mexico nearly eight hundred years ago. The creation process is truly raw, requiring only micaceous clay, a plastic scraper, and a bowl of water. With hand-dug clay, no chemicals or additives, and a wood-fired process fueled by local pine trees, Grossnickle’s earthenware is sustainable from start to finish.
The freedom of handbuilding and the unpredictability of the firing process yields beautifully unique pieces, which sells from select galleries in New Mexico and Michigan, or contact him online for more information.
Inspired by the spectacle of matadors and bulls, potter Adam Silverman’s new works merge “beauty with ugliness, elegance and violence.” The artist, also the L.A. director of Heath ceramics, will display his gorgeously tortuous works in the upcoming show “Faena Nueva” at Heath’s L.A. studio.
Drawing on childhood memories of bullfights that his uncle took him to in Spain, Silverman combines the vivid hues of the sport’s unforms with a crackling glaze surface, suggesting the violent nature of the man-versus-beast event. After testing several colors and textures, he eventually came up with six new glaze bases to tell the story. One dramatic red vessel particularly articulates the concept, with a swirl of glaze echoing the movement of a matador’s cape.
With a focus less on function and more on investigative and experimental works, Silverman leads the way in custom and design-focused ceramics. Recently working with architect Nader Tehrani, the duo created “Boolean Valley,” a 400-piece site-specific installation comprised of cobalt blue clay objects based on the Boolean logic principle.
The colorful Faena Nueva exhibit runs from 10-25 April 2010 at Heath Ceramics, with an opening reception on 10 April from 6-9pm.
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