Friday, January 29, 2010

Spooling Ceramics


I recently found the work of Mara Skujeniece, a dutch ceramic artist who's slip-cast spool vases first caught my eye on Zilu, a European version of Etsy.  I was also pretty smitten with her faceted vases in lovely shades of grey!
I know there is a huge trend in ceramics these days to slip-cast found objects and there are some that I find more interesting than others.  I guess I'm more interested in the original object not being a vessel form to begin with.  I find the translation into porcelain a whole lot more engaging as I re-think the origin and function of that form.  In any case, I do really love the clever translation of spools of string into a vase.  Any thoughts?
On another front, I also just found the blog Craft Hope, a blog dedicated to raising funds via sales of hand-made objects on their Etsy shop.  It's such a great concept and so far $27 000 has been raised for Haiti!  Please do have a look at their shop and consider buying as all money raised will be donated to Doctors Without Borders for Haiti.
I recently re-kindled my friendship with a child-hood friend who's father is Haitian.  My friend's parents were in Haiti visiting his family during the Earthquake, and although they are alright, efforts are now being made to get them home along with finishing paperwork for more of her cousins and relatives to come to Canada.  It is truly a dire situation out there.  My best hope and prayers go out...

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi Heather, I'm the founder of Zilu. I'm happy to read that you like Mara's stuff. I will make sure she reads your post. A few days ago I added a new series by Mara on Zilu. Hope you like them too. I am hoping to add 2 new series of hers soon as well. So keep an eye on the site ;-) Thanks again! Ghazaleh

dahlhaus said...

Thanks for stopping by Ghazaleh! I will be swinging by Zilu more often as I've just bookmarked it! All the best! Heather

Up in the Air Somewhere said...

What a beautiful find! It's a really interesting take on slip cast ceramics. I am pretty much over the trend of "it looks like this, but it's really this!". The spool vases seem more like a thoughtful exploration of the object rather then just a one liner.

I found your blog today and I'm excited to get to have a peek at your process :)