Berlin, Wedding. Having moved into our new studio space in February of this year we finally celebrated our official opening this weekend. With me in the studio is graphic designer Sascia Reibel. She’s helping me clean up after a fantastic evening with many friends and colleagues.

Needless to say: An opening needs celebratory flowers and vessels to hold them! Perfectly good reason to finish something I had started a few months prior: sculpting ceramic vases.

What originally was supposed to be a birthday gift for a good friend of mine, who asked for recommendations for large vases on instagram (Johannes, if you’re reading this, I hope you’re not mad that you haven’t received yours yet) lead to something entirely different. The vase was never meant to follow any specific design, idea, shape or rhythm. I initially intended to go with the flow and let my hands and material determine the direction in which the piece would grow. I shaped the clay into handy round stripes and began to layer piece by piece. Layering clay in a circular fashion around itself is a very fragile process, and you have to know when to stop and let it dry for a while before continuing. Rushing, or wanting to build the vase in one go can easily compromise the structure with the added weight and will collapse in seconds just when you thought it was strong enough. It’s delicate work from start to finish and demands patience.

I loved how the vase turned out. To my surprise it had taken on a distinct shape that looked as if it was created by a hive of bees. After sending it to its (first) mandatory bisque firing it was time to choose a glaze. Everything has gone well so far, which is a bit unusual for unplanned ceramic processes. After applying the glaze I selected, I was excited for the final firing. A lot can happen in this second round, both good and bad. Unfortunately, this particular glaze became too runny at the high temperature, and ran far down the object resulting in me having to break it off the kiln platform itself. Doing so also destroyed a significant part of the vase, and I decided to use it as a personal case study for ‘how to make large objects’… just happens!

Mistakes aside, I was still eager to put it to test and filled it with water, turned the ‘bad’ side to the back, and placed flowers inside. After about 20 minutes of enjoying the fresh bouquet, I noticed that the vase was slowly leaking, potentially leaving large stains on the untreated wood. In an instant, without thinking, I grabbed one of the ‘OBI’ buckets lying around the office (there are quite many from the renovations) and lifted the entire arrangement of vase and flowers into the quite iconic, recognisable orange bucket.

Looking at the new combination, a scuffed bucket, and the shiny, wavy ceramic texture lurking out of it, I wanted this to be the actual vase. It checked all the boxes of what an interesting piece is in my head. A mix of a ready-made, ‘found on the street’ type object combined with an ‘up-cycling’ element that gives the original object a new meaning or purpose. With this new won perspective, the ‘bucket vase’ came into making.

From here I explored different approaches to creating a ceramic dome, negotiating the relationship between the ready-made, the new and the reworked. The idea was now to specifically design a ceramic dome that could transform (any) conventional vessel into a proper vase. This happy coincidence persuaded me to turn this unintentional endeavour into an intentional design.

I’ve been very lucky to find a small ceramic studio in the same street as the office, which has enabled me to act quickly and create three original vases until the official opening. All three very different in shape and size, but following the same concept and experimenting with different type of vessels to add to. By the time I finished them, it already kicked off a new production cycle in which the making process will be turned around. The next edition will now focus on finding vessels and then customly fit the dome onto it. Until then, you can now get your hands on the first edition down below.