Emmanuelle Ceramics
ABOUT ME:
Welcome to Emmanuelle Ceramics! All my ceramics are inspired by my mother, a master gardener and fiber artist who instilled in me a love of living things and lace. She believes that you can see history through gardens and the patterns in lace. I would look for pictures in the intricate weaving of her lace collection and hear the stories of each piece. Tree branches, flowers, and spiderwebs would loop and curl before me, creating a whole realm of possibilities. My lace-textured ceramics are my way of creating my own gardens and tapestries that honor my mother’s passions for her craft and preserve the stories of the fabric.
ABOUT MY PRODUCTS:
Using mid-fire stoneware clay, I create slab-built and wheel-thrown canvases of simple forms and shapes, making the lace and its story the focus of my work. The lace comes from multiple time periods. I receive much of it from friends and family or I find it in antique stores, fabric shops, and online. Each piece of fabric has a story, and I’m always happy when someone brings me a piece of lace to work with and tells me the story behind it. I press the lace into the clay form, then highlight the surface with colored under-glazes and glazes. The breaking of the glazes over the lace pattern accentuates the natural surface and beauty of the clay underneath. Together the lace impressions, clay, and glaze form a piece that captures a moment in time, like putting a memory, a story in stone. Fabrics will fade, yellow, and fall apart but a ceramic lace plate or vessel can last millennia. I create heirlooms from memories—gardens that can last lifetimes— and be used to make new memories.
