Opening speech: Functional Clay

During 3daysofdesign 2025, the artist-driven ceramic art gallery Peach Corner opened an exhibition titled Functional Clay. The exhibition was displayed in the former scenic atelier of the famous Danish sculptor Anne Marie Carl Nielsen. Design historian Lars Dybdahl opened the exhibition with thoughts on functional ceramics.

The design boom in the eighties – often named “the design decade” – rocked the boat internationally for all predictable and self-satisfied notions of what design and crafts are and should be. The dogmas of modernism and functionalism were knocked off their pedestals by expanding forces, and the international ceramic scene was now captured by powerful, radical, often brightly coloured pieces. With metaphorical, figurative and humorous objects, designers and craftsmen broke with the established “safe” behaviour in design and craft. Provocatively and pluralistically, they crossed the lines between the visual arts, craft, industry and design. Designers and craft artists from Italy, Spain, France, Great Britain, the United States and Japan were important first movers and had a formidable, inspiring effect.

Although the Danes avoided the most extreme reaches of the new conceptual, carnivalistic and material-mixing plays of meaning, this new postmodern departure was also visible here in Denmark – right from the multiple positions of “unique” craft items in clay, glass, textiles, metal and mixed materials to innovative product and furniture design.

The aesthetic energy in these still living gestures was a definitive break-away from the mainstream in postwar Danish design – the design tradition with its distinctive fondness for natural materials with crafted finish and its “hyggelige” focus on the “warm and friendly atmosphere”. The field of ceramics took a liberating turn when several ceramists with insistent energy upgraded and actualised clay as a free artistic medium in opposition to the established values in Danish ceramics. For this new generation of the eighties and nineties, the established values were seen as synonymous with the convention-burdened “good taste”.

Today, everything is allowed, and almost nothing is impossible in the field of ceramic craft. Contemporary Danish ceramists reveal a diverse array of far-reaching experiments with clay and glazes. While the ceramists in principle maintain and perfect their craftsman-like supremacy, they intensify their reaction to the old traditionalistic flight from civilisation in postwar Danish studio ceramics. They oppose its widespread cult of the natural essence. An urban aura is also brought into play, and both nature and the human body and mind are activated as reservoirs of potential references and expressions of the fantastical and the lyrical, as well as the conceptually critical and the highly expressive.   

Some of the characteristics of this new ceramic are a stronger emphasis on the complexity of meaning and a widened spectrum of colours, materiality and sculptural forms. Often with a more artificial look, it breaks with conventional notions about the materials and – not least – confronts the types and functional values of the container.

Some of the ceramists operate continuously and with great intensity at the autonomous pole of the spectrum. They unfold a sculptural exploration in objects that qualify as “free” works of art. Objects without any practical use. At this pole the works often – but not always – have their take-off in the “eternal” vessel and container types, the jar, the bowl, the jug, the vase, the teapot, the cup etc., a take-off in a radical artistic process we can call “functional emptying” of utility forms and decorative traditions. All in favour of the more visual, metaphorical and sculptural approach.

At the other pole, ceramists deliberately reinterpret existing functional types and construct new versions: unconventional objects that might be produced in series and have the potential to serve as a source of innovation for new industrial products intended for our aestheticised everyday life.

The spectrum in between the two poles is dramatic and manifold, as demonstrated by the striking works in this exhibition framed by the title “Functional Clay”. The exhibition is organised by the artist-run gallery Peach Corner, which is, in fact, the most important Danish platform for the borderless, sweeping and attractive spectrum of the contemporary ceramic field.

The fifteen participants are selected by the two curators, the ceramists and designers Anne Tophøj and Ole Jensen from Peach Corner. Without dogmas, they have challenged the invited makers and designers with the theme “functional clay”, and with their objects, the exhibitors indeed have fulfilled their promise. Several of them are experienced in collaborating with commercial brands – others are gifted younger talents and upcoming names. Each in their own brilliant way has created a sort of utility object – I underscore “a sort of” because what we confront today are not results we usually associate with “trivial objects of everyday life”. Perhaps it’s more precise to say, that well-known categories of utility objects, as a kind of “developers” have kick-started the artists’ alternative way to new contemporary and surprising versions of functional objects in clay.

All the exhibitors are dedicated to challenging conventional views on the limits of the material, and their commitment to confront established practices fosters insistent forms and conceptual provocations. Their pieces manifest and communicate a field with multiple, meaningful positions and approaches – from soft organic forms to hard-edge geometric abstraction.

With organic and sculptural vitality, some of the objects explore the capacities of the human hand, the grip, both as a physical gesture and metaphor. Refined hanging seed-like sculptures, blowing silently in the wind, are inspired by nature, and in other objects, the manual touch in the freehand modelling process is still alive –manifests itself in the texture of handleless cups, ring-shaped dishes and odd animalistic jugs.

That humour and joyful anarchism are often a driving force in the new Danish ceramics is obvious in these works, as well as in others on show. Drinking vessels are transformed into simple but striking musical instruments. Toast racks, domestic utensils surprisingly made of clay, communicate with heavy expressiveness and invite you to breakfast on a perfect day. A created “ready-made” ashtrays present “Archaeology of Tomorrow”. In other objects, black and strict geometrical forms with references to everyday use, such as cups and vases, are connected in dynamic sculptural forms in pulsating rhythm.

In contrast to this anarchy, other geometric pieces possess the realistic character of prototypes for serial production in thin porcelain. Thoughts of sustainability and reuse are of vital importance to several of the designers, and sized-down bricks in clay meant for children are a playful mini-architecture anticipating a post-plastic age. A wooden table with a top made of clay explores the material’s potential in furniture, and significant 3D-printed ceramic objects, stripped of their outer shell, demonstrate how the digital, conceptual, and manual approaches can interact aesthetically on a high artistic level.

All the pieces in this performative parade of ceramic objects confirm that high-carat craft is driven by innovative processes, transforming processes that combine emotional, intelligent, and sensuous qualities in distinct forms. Across all positions, the questioning and reflective memory or statement play a challenging role. Together, these high-quality works form a multifaceted and complex reflection of the innovative energies at the function-related pole in Danish contemporary ceramic art.

A warm welcome to all of you and thank you for listening!