Galilea is the Mallorcan refuge chosen by the artist Paco Romero to work clay the way it was done before the wheel and the mould: with his hands, with stones and pieces of wood gathered on site, letting the material decide much of the piece — one that does not seek to imitate ancient forms or reproduce a decorative style, with a way of working in which the material takes centre stage.

The evolution of his creative process

Romero was born in Alicante and trained at the higher school of art and design, focusing at first on painting and sculpture on canvas. The decisive turn came in Barcelona, where he spent a season in the studio of the Catalan master ceramicist Ramon Fort, from whom he learned the craft that still drives his passion. “That was when I understood the language of clay, and the infinite possibilities it offered both in ceramics and in painting.”

In 2016 he moved to Mallorca and set up his own studio. He began by making functional pieces that he sold in shops and markets across the island. Over the years, that work evolved into sculptural and decorative objects designed for interior spaces, many of them born from commissions and later turned into permanent installations. It was also during this period that he changed his technique, giving up the wheel to focus on hand-building, a process he calls “more organic and moving.”

The wheel imposes its own geometry; when a piece is shaped by hand, that symmetry disappears, and with it any hurry. The piece grows by accumulation, in a process that can stretch over days. The tools he uses — stones, pebbles or pieces of wood gathered around Galilea — are what give each piece its shape. Each one leaves a distinct mark; the surroundings end up, quite literally, inside the piece.

Time as material

He fires every piece in stoneware at 1280 degrees, which produces work that is highly resistant and properly vitrified despite its raw, weathered appearance. The glazes, formulated in-house, can develop a craquelure over time that Romero regards as part of the piece’s natural ageing. The erosion of the pieces, left unpolished, is part of the story each one tells.

Romero controls just enough to know what he is doing, without “switching off” the piece before its time. “When you control the whole process, leaving no room for intuition or improvisation, there is no room for emotion,” he explains. “In my work I always try to leave part of the process to chance; that part of the process is what gives the piece its soul.”

That relationship with time runs through all of his work. “My references are the effects generated by the passing of time,” and his work is grounded in “the memory accumulated by the objects, places and people” that inspire him. Even the craft itself follows that same cumulative logic: “Over the years you also learn that hands have memory — they are a tool that accumulates years of learning, of mistakes and successes.”

That idea gives rise to his different series, each built on the same hand-modelled clay, but asking the material a different question.

Estratos series

Estratos points to the earth, to primitive cultures and to the mark time leaves on objects. Each piece is built from overlapping layers of different clays, which reveal veins and sediments until the surface becomes a kind of geological cross-section.

Pieles series

Pieles seeks clay in its purest state, with no layers standing in to interpret it “a study of the possibilities of clay in its purest state, without surface layers.”

Invierno series

Invierno is an ode to liquid porcelain seen through a wabi-sabi sensibility, “seeking the beauty of asymmetry and imperfection in the simplicity of ancient primitive ceramics.”

Tótem series

Tótem, the series that engages most closely with architecture, proposes ring-shaped forms that repeat themselves until they find the one the place calls for: “the shape and size of the piece is not fixed from the start, and changes as it is built, according to what it conveys to me. It is also the most flexible in scale — the same form works as a floor piece or as an object for a shelf, depending on the space it has to occupy.”

Painting with clay

His investigation continues into painting. At times, Romero looks toward primitive architecture and the urban layout of ancient Mediterranean settlements, building surfaces where clay, local earths and acrylic engage in different layers. In other works the reference becomes more essential: primitive symbols, forms and marks emerge from sediments that build up on the canvas until they form compositions of mineral sobriety. In both cases he also revives ancient processes such as terra sigillata, a Roman clay-decanting technique that he adapts to contemporary sculpture and painting. “It is both a privilege and a responsibility to be able to recover and keep alive techniques that have been in use for centuries, to honour their history and to do so respectfully toward the people who, centuries ago, developed these techniques with the scarce resources available to them,” he explains. “In a way it is my tribute to those people, a return to the origins, to the first inhabitants.”

Romero’s work has steadily found its place in architecture and interior design projects: collaborations with studios such as Durietz Design, Melt Spaces and Contain Studio, totemic pieces on display at the Hotel Nobis in Palma, permanent installations at Terraza Balear and Tea Ritual, the Lab Oliver Prize in 2023, and his recent inclusion in Kave Home Gallery, which has added his sculptural ceramics to its selection of artists. All of it without altering the scale or the pace of a studio that remains small, and deliberately limited in output.

What Romero ultimately seeks is for his pieces to feel as though they had always been there. “With my work I try to create a sense of timelessness, a point of peace, of balance,” he says. “I would like anyone who looks at, or lives with, the piece to feel that it was always there, that it has witnessed the passing of time and has a story to tell.”

All photos @ Paco Romero.

Born in Verviers, Belgium, Pascale Zintzen grew up surrounded by objects, tools and manual processes. From an early age she was drawn to craft and to the capacity of the hands to transform matter. That curiosity led her to explore different disciplines before arriving definitively at ceramics: she studied Archaeology and Art History, trained in traditional upholstery, and always maintained a close relationship with manual trades.

After travelling through different countries, she settled permanently in Barcelona in 2016, a city from which she has developed her artistic practice and studio. Shortly afterwards she discovered ceramics almost by chance, thanks to classes a friend gave her as a gift. That experience marked a turning point. The artist recalls the moment as a revelation: working with clay brought her a profound sense of calm and an immediate need to continue creating. Since then, she admits, rarely more than forty-eight hours pass without shaping earth with her hands.

From that discovery emerged Oikos Estudio, an artistic project whose name derives from the Greek term oikos, understood as house, home or the space where life unfolds. The choice is not accidental: for Zintzen, the studio, family life and the creative process form part of the same vital continuity. Her practice unfolds between her studio in Barcelona and her house-studio in Baix Ebre, a rural landscape near the Ebro Delta where the artist finds the slower rhythm she needs to work. In this environment, surrounded by countryside, olive trees and silence, domestic life and artistic creation coexist naturally. The studio is not a space separate from the world, but an extension of everyday dwelling.

Gesture, matter and memory

Pascale Zintzen’s work is built through deliberately slow manual processes. Her pieces are shaped without moulds, using traditional techniques such as coil building and slab construction. Each vessel rises gradually, layer by layer, in a process that demands attention, repetition and patience.

The artist works primarily with stoneware and high-temperature clays, materials that allow her to explore dense surfaces, irregular textures and deeply tactile finishes. She often incorporates natural pigments gathered during her walks, a practice that introduces the surrounding landscape directly into the pieces.

The result is a body of work that seems to exist somewhere between archaeology and contemporary sculpture. Vessels that recall ancient containers, forms that evoke ritual artefacts or fragments of an imagined culture. This archaeological dimension is not incidental: the artist openly acknowledges the influence of her academic background and her fascination with the everyday ceramic objects of ancient civilizations.

Over time, her work has evolved from pieces closer to the domestic realm toward an increasingly sculptural language. Volumes grow larger, proportions become more radical and surfaces more expressive. The pieces cease to function solely as containers and begin to assert themselves as autonomous presences.

Between ceramics and bronze

In 2025, Zintzen expanded her practice by introducing bronze, worked through the traditional lost-wax casting technique. This addition does not represent a shift in direction but rather a natural extension of her formal vocabulary.

One of the first sculptures in this material is Buffalo Moon, a figure that synthesizes many of the tensions present in her work: strength and fragility, archaism and contemporaneity. Produced in a limited edition of twelve pieces, the work transfers into metal the gestural quality and tactile sensitivity that define her ceramics.

The presence of bronze opens a new material field within her practice, while maintaining its connection to ancestral techniques and manual processes.

Artefacts of Shelter: a collaboration with Matter Edit

On 24 March 2026, Artefacts of Shelter was presented, a collection developed in collaboration with the British studio Matter Edit. The project proposes three pieces — designed to contain liquids, store dry elements and hold ceremonial fragrances — that refer to fundamental human needs: dwelling, preserving and ritualising.

The collaboration draws inspiration from primitive gestures: the moment when the first humans began shaping earth to create shelters and vessels. From this anthropological perspective, the objects in the collection occupy a territory where design, architecture and art intersect.

More than decorative objects, the pieces function as symbolic artefacts — small architectures of clay that speak of protection, identity and collective memory.

Contemporary art and tradition

In recent years, Pascale Zintzen’s work has gained visibility across various European galleries and spaces. Her pieces are represented by Etesian Gallery in Menorca, Galerie Lalune in France and Scenario Collective in Milan, and form part of exhibitions and curatorial projects in several countries.

Her presence also extends into the field of contemporary design through collaborations with brands and cultural initiatives, while maintaining a direct connection to artisanal making.

Despite this growing international visibility, the centre of her practice remains unchanged: the studio, the earth and the repeated gesture of the hands.

A practice as a way of life

In Pascale Zintzen’s work there is no clear separation between personal life and artistic practice. Her work is nourished by domestic rhythms, by raising her children, by walks through the countryside and by time shared with family. Shaping clay becomes a form of attention — a way of remaining present in the world. Each piece emerges from this slow dialogue between body and matter, between cultural memory and everyday experience.

At a time when design tends toward speed and serial production, Zintzen’s works propose another relationship with objects: quieter, more patient and profoundly human. Like her own vessels, her work speaks softly — but with a persistence that endures.

Born in Madrid, she initially trained in Antique Restoration, Sculpture, and Art History at university, and worked as a museologist. At the age of 34, she opened her first art school in the centre of Madrid. In 2010, she founded Espacio Creativo Creae, her second school, and she currently runs Latrés — her third school, gallery, and studio — located in the heart of the Serra de Tramuntana in Selva, Mallorca.

Today, her work focuses on artistic ceramics, a practice in which gesture carries the same weight as the final result. “Creating is not a quick or immediate act: it is a process that demands care, patience, and respect for the rhythms of the material.” This philosophy permeates her entire body of work, shaping both the tempo of production and the essence of each piece.

In her studio, time takes on a different dimension. “When I begin to work, nothing else exists — only the clay, the breath, and the moment that opens.” Practice becomes an exercise in presence, where the artist accompanies the material without forcing it, embracing imperfection as part of the process and trusting that the act of making itself will refine what is unnecessary. Over the years, this learning has also become a way of being in the world — calmer and more conscious: “Today, I choose a different rhythm. To create slowly.”

Nature is a constant reference, not as an image to be reproduced, but as memory and substrate. The mountains surrounding her studio and the Mallorcan coastline — with stones eroded by sea and salt — remain latent in her work. “I do not try to reproduce these landscapes, but to approach them with humility,” she explains, understanding all creation as an inevitably imperfect and human interpretation.

She works with raw clay and her own mixtures, incorporating sand, stone, volcanic textures, earth, and ash. The process may involve multiple firings and subsequent interventions on already fired pieces, combining the use of fire with cold patinas: waxes, bitumen, oils, and ageing processes that add layers of time and memory. “I use the kiln as a form of fire — as a living element — but I do not abandon patinas that require no firing.” Each object thus becomes a small vessel of experience, carrying history and presence.

Virginia Torrego avoids repetition. Her production is slow, limited, and deliberate, oriented towards unique pieces that understand exclusivity as authenticity. “I never want two identical pieces,” she says, in search of silent, essential forms, close to minimalism. She favours neutral tones, surfaces that retain traces, and forms that breathe. She does not adhere to wabi-sabi as an aesthetic, but as a way of life: to accept, to simplify, and to allow time to converse with matter.

She is currently developing a project of clay lamps weighted with stone and suspended by rope — objects that evoke the ancestral and ancient ways of inhabiting space. Pieces that, like the rest of her work, occupy an intermediate territory between art, object, and presence.

Her work is exhibited and sold in galleries in Mallorca and Menorca, as well as in the gallery of her own studio. She defends the value of craftsmanship and the need to return to honest materials and slow processes in an accelerated world. “My work is earth, fire, and silence,” she concludes. In ceramics, she has found a place of calm and refuge — a space where material and hands meet — from which her work continues to evolve with coherence, stillness, and depth.

After years working through styling and creative direction—selecting, ordering and giving meaning to objects designed by others—Mar chooses to place herself elsewhere. Without abandoning what she has learned, she distils it. Lempickaemerges when the designer understands that the time has come to create from the origin, to assume matter as language and to accept that designing also implies exposure.

The collection takes its name from Tamara de Lempicka, an explicit reference to a strong, feminine geometry. Added to this is the Egyptian conception of time, understood as permanence. Two influences that do not appear literally, but are translated into proportion, weight and presence.

The origin of the project is linked to a moment of introspection and to a solo journey to Egypt, which acts as both conceptual and emotional trigger. There, the designer assimilates a lesson that runs through the entire collection: “Egypt taught me that transformation needs time,” she explains. This learning is reflected both in the rhythm of the process and in the final result, where nothing feels rushed or superfluous.

To materialise this universe, Mar Gausachs found in ceramicist Montse Lozano, from the workshop Areté d’Empordà, the necessary accomplice. The partnership is conceived as a shared endeavour grounded in common values: respect for craftsmanship, artisanal excellence and an understanding of time as an essential component of design. Each piece is hand-thrown, layer by layer, in chamotte stoneware fired at high temperature, embracing controlled imperfection as a mark of identity. The sober, essential finish refers to materials that are part of the designer’s habitual visual language—cement, lime, iron, textiles—and reinforces an aesthetic that moves away from ornament to focus on structure.

The collection consists of seven objects that respond to essential domestic typologies: vases, bowls, a lamp, a centrepiece and a cup. Functional pieces that here acquire a sculptural dimension, not through monumentality, but through their ability to occupy space with serenity.

The Hathor vase, dedicated to the Egyptian goddess of beauty and protection, is tall and contained, conceived to represent feminine energy. The Nefer vase, lower and more compact, asserts fullness through balance. The Metameric lamp, the largest piece in the collection, introduces one of its key concepts: metamerism. Depending on light and surroundings, its surface shifts between greys and browns, revealing a changing identity that never fully settles. The Quantum centrepiece alludes to the constant transformation of matter, while the Kheper bowls, in two sizes, celebrate the continuous cycle of everyday life. The series closes with the Mar cup, initially conceived as a gift: an intimate object, designed to accompany daily gestures.

Each piece is signed by the designer with the word MAR, a conscious decision that reinforces the intimate character of the project. Here, her name appears not as a brand, but as a presence. On the base, the signature of the ceramic workshop Areté is also inscribed.
Lempicka does not seek to define any trend; it is a collection conceived to endure, to coexist with the passage of time without losing meaning. With Lempicka, Mar Gausachs opens up a territory that goes beyond a product line. A territory in which design is understood as a conscious gesture, matter as memory, and time as an ally.

The official presentation of Lempicka is taking place at Maison&Objet Paris, from 15 to 19 January 2026, as the natural culmination of a process that has known how to wait. From there, the pieces begin their own journey, available through the designer’s channels and, from February, on her official website.

Project: Lempicka Collection.
Design year: 2025.
Designer: Mar Gausachs.
Photography: María Pujol.
Ceramics: Montse Lozano. Taller Areté d’Empordà.
Source: Marta Alonso. MASmedia.

Mar Gausachs

There are professional trajectories shaped by the quiet coherence of a long journey, marked by talent and a deep sense of vocation. This has been the path of Mar Gausachs. Through more than twenty years of work, she has gradually built a language of her own, one that now culminates in her new collection, Lempicka, conceived as a turning point in her career within the fields of decoration, interior design and design at large.

Trained in Visual Merchandising at the IED Istituto Europeo di Design between 2003 and 2005, and later completing a postgraduate degree in Retail Design at Elisava (2006–2008), Mar began her professional career with a precise understanding of space as a narrative medium. From the outset, her focus was never decoration understood as surface, but rather use, experience, and the relationship between object, context and person.

This perspective was consolidated through her work with companies such as E. Furest, Mandarina Duck and Textura—environments where product and storytelling coexist, and where space acts as a mediator between brand and user. For seven years, as creative director of Grupo Casa Viva, Mar developed an extensive and complex body of work. With more than twenty stores across Spain and Andorra, the brand became a testing ground where she learned to make decisions with real impact, sustained over time.

In 2018, she began her freelance practice, focusing on styling, creative direction and set design. Since then, her work has unfolded with increasing precision: editorial projects, domestic spaces, and commissions for brands and private clients seeking more than a refined image. In her practice, every choice responds to a clear intention. Aesthetic construction has been the defining thread of her work throughout this period.

At the same time, for the past two years, she has shared process and reflection with photographer María Pujol. Together they founded Kanela Estudio, a tandem in which photography and styling engage in dialogue based on mutual respect and creative independence. This partnership is not a fusion of authorship, but a conscious collaboration, where each project is approached through the convergence of perspectives.

After years working with objects designed by others, Mar takes a further step and decides to produce from the origin. To design beyond an exercise in style. Ceramics emerge here as a slow, resilient material, capable of absorbing time and returning it in the form of presence. Her Lempicka collection distils her poetic sensibility and translates it into form.

Mar Gausachs belongs to a generation that understands design as responsibility. Technical knowledge, cultivated sensitivity and an honest relationship with process define her work. In a context saturated with fast images, her practice proposes a different pace—the pace of slow time—marked by rigour and by a voice that does not need to raise itself to be heard. Mar Gausachs already occupies a privileged place within the contemporary landscape of interior design, decoration and design.

A graduate in Fine Arts and specialized in painting restoration, Silvia worked for several years restoring mural paintings in archaeological sites until she discovered ceramics. She trained at the Escuela de Cerámica Francisco Alcántara and has turned her work with clay into the place where her creativity breathes with the greatest clarity: “For me, ceramics is the way to build a world in which I feel well. But above all, what I seek is to make beautiful pieces that occupy their space with dignity and expressiveness.” Her work is instantly recognizable: rough surfaces, earthy colours, deep oxides, glazed interiors that contrast with textured exteriors. That sensitive tension between hardness and caress defines her language.

Ancestral echoes

There is something ancestral in her renunciation of the wheel. Silvia understood that this method did not belong to her way of creating: “I realized that the wheel was not for me, when I discovered other constructive techniques that allowed me to escape the symmetry and perfection of pieces made with an electric wheel.” She works exclusively with refractory clay, an honest material that allows her to embrace chance, the unexpected, what happens between the hands when the idea stops being an idea and becomes form: “a material… that enhances the creativity of everyone who comes into contact with it.” In her process, the clay enters into dialogue, changing as she changes it. And together they find a direction: the clay guides her, telling her what it wants to become.

Although her work exudes modernity, Silvia understands it as a historical continuity: “objects of futuristic or timeless archaeology,” an expression that precisely defines the identity of her work. It is no coincidence that she visits archaeology museums as one visits an oracle, nor that she admits to being moved by a prehistoric ceramic piece. This heritage is perceived not only in the forms but in her essential search: “its organic essence, without adornments or technical embellishments.” Her handmade enamel mixtures, her rough textures, her unexpected profiles announce a personal language that expands the boundaries of the craft. Her pieces recall ancient ceramics, yet with a very distinctive style that renders her work contemporary. Her legacy is a bridge: from the archaic to the present, from the intuitive to the designed.

Ceramics as an inner space

Working with clay is, for Silvia, a way of inhabiting herself: “a kind of meditation that connects with dormant memory, a sensation of full, instantaneous concentration, without effort.” There lies the truth of her work: every bowl, every platter, every vase is a silent conquest against haste. An invitation to recover attention, to return to touch, to allow objects to remind us that beauty, when honest, is born from the essential.

Silvia Valentín’s pieces write, in irregular lines, a new page in contemporary ceramic art. They preserve ancestral echoes, yet speak in a present voice. They are art, yes, but also companionship. They are object and gesture, utility and poetry. They are, above all, a way of seeing life with the hands.

Photographs: Silvia Valentín.
Cover photo: Álvaro López del Cerro.

Artist Beatriz Gil, through her studio Pellizco Cerámica, represents the contemporary voice of a ceramic tradition passed down through generations of potters. With a Fine Arts degree from the University of Barcelona, her work pursues the purity of the organic, shaping forms and textures that evoke landscapes and memories deeply rooted in the territory. Her pieces are a delicate reinterpretation of the passage of time, a visual expression of her profound connection with nature.

The work of Pellizco emerges from an intuitive exploration of clay. Each form and texture becomes the result of an ongoing dialogue between the hands and the material, making every piece unique. In a world dominated by mass production, Pellizco offers a return to the essential: to matter, to slowness, to the object that breathes. There are no molds, no haste—each piece is born from an instinctive, almost ancestral impulse, a deep search for connection with the natural world.

Guided by a biophilic perspective, a human need to feel close to the presence of the natural world, Pellizco’s ceramic work manifests in organic, one-of-a-kind pieces. They speak of bark, seeds, erosion, rocks, fragments of an inner landscape taking shape in the everyday: a pitcher, a bowl, or a sculpture.

“I see this art not just as a craft, but also as a way to connect with the earth. I work with my hands, but also with patience and with the sensitive memory of what nature reveals to me,” Beatriz reflects. “Building a piece from a solid block of clay is a meditative practice. Removing material is like emptying the mind, stripping away the excess to retain only what is essential.”

More than a craftswoman, Beatriz is an architect of visual stories. Her ceramics speak of the body that inhabits and the landscape that embraces, recognizing in every crack and surface the reflection of living land. In her work, human gesture and matter converse to invoke the stillness of a moment, the touch of an emotion, the imprint of a place.

The pieces by Beatriz Gil are born of deep observation of natural rhythms and a craft practice rooted in the unique and the imperfect. Through her Pellizco project, she proposes objects whose material and emotional language resonates with interiors that value authenticity, texture, and sensory experience, bringing more than just form into a space: they bring memory, rootedness, and meaning.

Pellizco Cerámica is also a place of learning and creation, dedicated to the pinch technique, a method that encourages spontaneity and manual sensitivity.

Erosiones Series

Erosiones is a series inspired by natural processes of wear and transformation. The forms evoke fragments of earth, stones shaped by time, mineral textures. These are silent yet dense pieces that invite us to pause and contemplate the beauty that time leaves imprinted upon matter.

Geoma Kurinuki Series

The Geoma Kurinuki series, on the other hand, explores emptiness through the traditional Japanese technique of block carving. Here, the piece is not built, it is revealed by subtraction. The result is raw, intentional forms, bearing the visible marks of the gesture, like small geological formations.

Both series, Erosiones and Geoma Kurinuki, are conceived to dialogue with contemporary interiors. Not as mere decoration, but as living presences that bring texture, weight, and warmth. Objects that invite touch, silence, and contemplation, capable of transforming a space into a soulful place.

Cognet’s work is both bold and delicate. It moves effortlessly between sculpture, design, and interior architecture, with pieces that seem to emerge from the earth to touch the sky. Large-scale ceramic murals, totem-like lamps, tables that resemble sacred ruins: her visual language speaks of a primal connection to materials, yet it is filtered through a refined and contemporary gaze. Within her pieces, the sensuality of fired clay, geometric precision, and an innate sculptural intuition coexist in perfect harmony.

Olivia Cognet reinvents the poetic experience of creation, shaping her vision through the purity of the material. This is the magic of the artisan, combined with the promise of a vibrant beauty that elevates everyday life.

Her admiration for Roger Capron is not only aesthetic, but ethical. Like him, she believes in ceramics as a way of life, not merely as a medium. Like him, she sees objects as extensions of an artistic soul. “I am inspired by his ability to merge art and function with timeless poetry,” she has said in interviews. In her Vallauris studio, the echo of Capron’s kiln can still be felt —but now the fire belongs to her.

The world has taken notice. Her sculptures and furniture pieces have been embraced by some of the most influential contemporary design galleries. In the United States, The Future Perfect has showcased her work in Miami, Los Angeles, and New York, establishing her as one of the most distinctive voices in ceramic art today. In Europe, Galerie JAG in Paris has presented her pieces like rare treasures: with silence and wonder.

Halfway between the monumental and the intimate, Olivia Cognet’s work proposes a new ceramic humanism. An alchemy in which hand, matter, and memory come together to give shape to forms that are not only seen, but felt. As Capron once said, “ceramics must speak to the soul.” And Olivia Cognet’s voice does so, with depth and light.

Source: Olivia Cognet.

She studied Fine Arts at university, where she first encountered ceramics. But it wasn’t until nine years ago that she began experimenting, first with porcelain, then with clay, to create organic sculptures, strangely beautiful, as if they had emerged directly from the earth. “I discovered that the collective Gasworks NYC had its studio right across the street from my home, so I joined. It’s wonderful to be part of a creative community,” she explains.

Tania Whalen has found her true voice in clay: a wordless voice that speaks through stillness. Her work doesn’t seek perfection, but truth. “My work celebrates the natural identity of clay, highlighting its textures and organic forms through gesture—just as wind, water and sand shape the earth, my surfaces convey movement and depth. I’m inspired by nature, architecture, art and music, and I collect notes on striking everyday silhouettes to reimagine them in clay,” says Tania.

More than objects, her pieces are miniature landscapes, emotional topographies. There is something ritual, almost sacred, in them. Tania works not only with clay, but with time: the time of the wheel, the drying, the fire. “Ceramics forces me to listen,” she once said in an interview. To listen to internal rhythms, to fertile accidents, to the resistance of matter.

Her creative philosophy rejects the haste of the market and aligns with a notion of beauty deeply rooted in sustainability, in respect for artisanal processes, and in a way of life that is mindful and attentive. In a world inclined towards speed and surface, her work is an act of quiet resistance.

At Exágono, we celebrate artists who create with purpose—who offer visual and tactile sanctuaries, and who remind us of the enduring value of the handmade. Tania Whalen is, without doubt, one of these essential creators. Her pieces are not just ceramics: they are gestures suspended in time, fragments of an eternal dialogue between humankind and the earth.

Tania Whalen
gtaniawhalen@gmail.com
www.taniawhalenceramics.com
@taniawhalenceramics

“I am a ceramist born in Madrid who, after many years in Menorca, has ended up settling in Mallorca. I have come to the world of ceramics by the longest route, but I have learnt something from each step along the way that I have ended up applying to my pieces. Many years ago I studied Antiques Restoration and worked for a long time with materials and tools that were not well known to most people. Interspersed with sculpture and art history classes at university, I eventually became a museologist“.

“At the age of 34 I opened my first art school in the centre of Madrid, and I’m already on my third, in the heart of the Sierra de Tramontana (Mallorca). And I married a Basque painter who has a house full of paintings and brushes. In short, it’s not that my life revolves around Art, it’s that, without Art, it would be meaningless.

At this point in my life, when complication is no longer an option, what ceramics transmits to me is peace. It is my most personal and intimate creative part. So much so that all the pieces carry within them my own state of mind. Because the clay is porous, permeable, and absorbs everything that I feel every day that I dedicate with care to each piece. A clay that is also fragile and hard at the same time, like me“.

“I have a lathe, but it is never plugged in and the enamel shelf is very high. I like silence, calm, simplicity. The purity and authenticity that I find in the most elementary things is something that no addition or artifice offers me, and I literally run away from visual noise and anything that doesn’t feel authentic.

The clay, its texture and colour, always neutral, always earthy, is what I love to see on my table surrounded by tools and the remains of other muds that sometimes mix with the new one… That’s all. Nothing more. And nothing less.

“And so the pieces emerge, sculptural, imperfect, full of wounds or polished, depending on whether the day is good or not. The hours go by, absorbed in the treatment of each piece, without any expectations, without ever knowing where I’m going to end up with it, how it’s going to end, or if it’s even going to make it. I let myself go, I see no point in putting up resistance. Sometimes I go back to the workshop the next day and modify everything, break and bang without drama. I never get a piece through that I don’t connect with emotionally. It doesn’t matter. The important thing is that you feel it. It is part of the process. A process without objectives. Because the objective is the process itself. I don’t look for perfection, nor do I want it, because as I always say: My imperfections make me who I am, and so do my pieces“.

“Consequently, all my pieces are made in very different ways, and always by hand. I can work in block and hollow or I can work with plates and churros, there is no single path to take with all the pieces, because each one is unique and different. Even so, I like the idea of composition, of family, of series. I look for connections and resonances between the pieces, and that’s how I present them in my gallery. Sometimes they are not even made of the same clay, nor do they have the same shape, but they speak well with each other, and that is what is important, to let them find their place, their own space.

After the modelling phase, the kiln is always a bet on red, and although I respect the manufacturer’s advice, I enjoy experimenting in various temperature ranges, using the firing as another tool with which to explore creative resources, with which to let the pieces find themselves. And finally, the finishes, in keeping with this search for purity in simplicity, are usually with waxes, mixtures of pigments, or talcum powder, observing each piece under different types of light, seeking to accentuate its most interesting characteristics, taking care that nothing competes with the naked clay itself, with its character and texture“.

“Outside the creation in my workshop, my work as a director and art teacher keeps me in contact every day with all kinds of materials, processes, projects, ideas, books… and with students who keep me up to date with countless questions, and who enrich my own vision, often taking me out of my comfort zone, which is always necessary.

And if I go a little further away, I always end up in a museum, or lost in nature. These are the places where I have learned most of what I know. It is an almost unhealthy passion, but for me, Museums are my temples, my refuges. They are libraries of beauty that open my eyes to a whole world of inspiration. And living as I do in the Sierra de Tramontana, in Mallorca, where contact with nature is absolute and absolute, I can’t help but lose myself in its forests full of wood, stone, rocks and earth, marvelling at all its possible forms, and also the impossible ones. That’s what I feed on before returning to my workshop and starting the circle all over again”.

“And where can you find my pieces before they become independent and find their definitive home? Well, first of all in Latrés: my own gallery, workshop and school, located in Selva, Mallorca. But also in different art galleries in Menorca, a place with which, after so many years living and running an art school there, I always maintain ties, both emotional and commercial.

If you come to Selva one day, I would be delighted to welcome you to my small and simple world of shapes, contrasts, beauty and emotion; and to chat with you for a while“.

His connection with ceramics began a few years earlier in a well-known pottery workshop-coworking space in London, where he took several courses and taught himself. Back in Catalonia, he continued his professional training at L’Escola de Ceràmica la Bisbal de l’Empordà, a town with a long history and tradition of pottery, and at the Ramon Fort School, where he learned from the great masters of his homeland.

Intuition and exploration are key aspects of her practice. Jordina feeds her imaginary of ideas through nature and the resources of her land that lead her to develop unique designs. Fascinated by shapes, corporeality, textures and natural tones, her work seeks to highlight the simplicity and nakedness of the pieces by leaving them unglazed or partially glazed, highlighting the texture and colour of the fired clay to appreciate the essence of the natural and the organic.

Each piece is created by hand with delicacy and effort, respecting the process and time needed for its development. His pieces have singularities and variations that reflect the craftsmanship behind the creation process, giving each piece a unique essence. He works with various techniques, but the most prized is churro modelling. Little by little and churro by churro, the piece is constructed, a practice that allows her to achieve perfectly imperfect organic forms with a very marked manual stroke. Captivated by the corporeal, this is for her the most grateful technique with the greatest freedom of expression.

The aim of his work is to bring beauty and harmony to spaces, seeking a balance between artistic expression and the functionality of the object. He collaborates with galleries such as Llop Madrid or Kave Gallery to present his work, and works with professionals in the design, architecture and interior design sectors, carrying out customised projects.

Collaboration is very present in his practice, each partnership is a new opportunity to create something unique or to innovate an existing concept. He has recently started a collaboration with the French fashion brand Sessùn, known for its savoir-faire and love for craftsmanship, where we will soon be able to find his pieces in some shops. She is also currently working on two exhibition projects, which will come to light during the first months of 2025, at the Design Festival in Madrid and in L’Empordà, where she will exhibit her work together with other artists.

Her passion for design and art, as well as her admiration for gastronomy, have also led her to connect these two worlds and work with clients in the hotel and catering sector to create exclusive collections of tableware and decorative pieces for their establishments, such as the Hotel Palau Fugit and the Can Xapes Restaurant in Girona.

Jorceramics is gradually gaining recognition as an artistic project. At Revista Exágono we like to support talented young people. Jordina has us fascinated by the delicacy of her art that she shows in all her pieces.

If you would like to know more about her and her work, you can do so by visiting the website, with an online shop that she has just published.

Photos: Mònica Casas, Bel Gestí, Laura Pujolàs.
Text: Jordina Ferrando.

Jordina Ferrando

In Banyoles (Girona), her homeland, the artist Jordina Ferrando aims to express through design and ceramics the love for the territory and the essence that the Mediterranean offers. With the desire to connect with a more genuine way of life, she feeds her imaginary ideas through her commitment to her environment and its natural resources. He is fascinated by shapes, corporeality, textures and colours, essentially the constant search for beauty in the simplicity of things that leads him to explore new ideas and unique designs.

Intuition, organicity and creative freedom are essential in his practice, from the inspiration phase to the realisation phase. His work focuses on the responsible production of unique sculptural and decorative pieces, as well as limited edition tableware. Everything is handmade with care, delicacy and effort in his workshop, respecting the process and time necessary for the creation of each piece. The objects present singularities and variations as a result of the manual work involved in the elaboration process, which gives a unique essence to each work of art.

His intention is to bring authenticity and aesthetic harmony to spaces, seeking a balance between artistic expression and the functionality of the object. His work can be found in design and fine craft galleries such as Llop in Madrid and Gla in Empordà, as well as online platforms such as Único Gallery and Kave Gallery. His work has also appeared in lifestyle, design and architecture media such as AD España, El País Semanal magazine and Arquitectura y Diseño.

His love of art and design coexists with his admiration for gastronomy, and ceramics is the medium through which he connects both passions. He has collaborated with award-winning establishments such as the Palau Fugit Boutique Hotel and Can Xapes Restaurant, both in the counties of Girona, to create bespoke tableware.