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I can hear a faint echo as the potter Danny Kaplan He speaks to me from his studio in Brooklyn. The 180-square-meter space, a prewar bottling factory, was chosen for its capacity to house his oversized front-loading oven. Inside there are no ceramic tiles, no tableware, but coffee tables, floor lamps and chairs.
“Growing in scale was a really fun challenge,” Kaplan says of his early forays into ceramic furniture, a rapidly growing trend. “I really wanted to do sculptural work but stay in the design world.” Rather than throwing wet clay on a potter’s wheel, his team uses soft clay that’s easier to handle: Kaplan’s textured Basket Chair ($4,650) is assembled from long coils, while his Demilune tables (from $4,500), are built from large, flat slabs. The latter are inspired by the refined wooden side tables popular in 18th-century France, but, made in clay, have an imposing presence.
Many of her works have an organic quality. The Arno Club Chair ($7,000), for example, is structural with an artistic edge. “There’s a lot of symmetry in it,” she says, “but then the curves and the way the clay comes together at different points feels very natural. I love the idea that something like that could have come out of the earth.” Matte brown glaze contrasts with a fitted cushion, in a tight bouclé of Zak + fox.
Thousands of kilometres away, in northern Belgium, an even larger workshop produces huge ceramic surfaces for Nestor and RotsenThe brand’s popular Fiery wardrobe (from €20,955) uses nearly metre-long tiles for its one-touch-open doors. Its recent Shelby collection (from €8,133) has an even more impossible look, with perfectly curved edges. Its patchwork patterns and rich hues are inspired by aerial views of Earth’s landscapes.
“The use of colour is a little against the current trend,” says founder Devi Vervaeke, “but it is crucial for a welcoming home. With enamel,” she adds, “you can create an intense palette of colours that seem to glow from the surface.” For bespoke projects, including kitchen islands and built-in shelving, the studio incorporates coloured glass, terrazzo and patinated metals.
British designer Daniel SchofieldThe Conran Shop’s Mag tables also have an ultra-gloss finish. Inspired by traditional glazed roll-top baths and Belfast sinks, the coffee and side tables (from £575) have soft, rounded edges, making them less likely to chip or crack. Combined with a quartz-enriched clay developed for laboratory benches, the range has a handcrafted look but industrial strength.
New furniture brand Nine produces the designer’s second collection, Landmark. These tables (from £381) are more compact. “On the Mag tables,” says Schofield, “the top is pressed ceramic and the base is cast ceramic. [in a mould]. Then, with the Landmark tables, I wanted to push the limits of slip casting, so they are manufactured in a single casting.” Pink shape‘s Wave Chair ($7,500) was the result of a similar experiment, but instead of being minimalist and boxy, it is wavy and sleek, with two-tone glazes dripping down and accenting its contours.
French artist Agnes Debizet She never intended to make furniture. For decades she created sculptural ceramics, before being approached by a Parisian gallery to turn 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 heavy and solid, the orange Crustacé perches on pointed legs, and the pale, bubbly Bergère—named after the wigs worn by Marie Antoinette, who liked to dress as a shepherdess—is a striking example of the natural world. bergèreDebizet’s Galet tables (POA) could be mistaken for stones, with imaginary creatures inscribed on their surfaces. All of his furniture, while undeniably functional, gives the impression of being works of art.
The same goes for Reinaldo Sanguino‘s stools, benches and tables (from $4,000), whose loosely 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 being short a few chairs at a dinner party. “I didn’t know this object would become a staple of my work,” he says. “That was over 30 years ago!” Sold by The future perfectHer pieces are patterned in bright oranges and pinks, metallic golds, and deep browns and blacks, adding an “unexpected touch” to rooms that are too drab.
“Fragility is part of the ceramic-making process,” says Sanguino, “especially when you’re working on a large scale.” Every studio that embraces full-size furniture has a history of trial and error, of carefully balancing humidity, temperature and thickness to avoid cracking or, worse, explosions. But the greater the risk, the greater the reward for a jewel-toned, handcrafted finish. “We have crazy ideas in the studio,” says Kaplan, who is not intimidated by the process. “The goal is to make them even bigger.”