The Genesis – Ceramics as a material

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There are materials that transcend eras without ever going out of style. Ceramics is one of them. Shaped for millennia, it has traversed civilizations without ever losing its symbolic significance.

Today, it is once again driven by a creative impulse that blurs the lines between craftsmanship, design and contemporary art, and is exhibited everywhere, in the heart of interiors, certainly, but also in galleries and workshops.

© Camila Basurco

In a world saturated with standardized objects, ceramics reintroduces gesture, the unpredictable, and uniqueness, where each piece is born from an encounter between humankind and matter. It is not merely a material: it is a language, a universal language with a vocabulary brimming with forms and textures. One can read in it the creator's hesitations, the variations in glaze, or even the variations in firing time.

Far from industrial uniformity, it affirms the beauty of the singular and no other material embodies it so well, because ceramics can be smooth or granular, bright or matte, fragile or solid.

© Studio Aoao

Long confined to tableware and utilitarian objects, ceramics were brought back into the spotlight by the great masters of the 20th century, such as Picasso, Miró, and Chagall, who found in it a fertile ground for experimentation where colors and forms meet in the fire like a kind of almost primal alchemy. Today, it is returning to homes, championed by a new generation of artists who reveal its expressive power and raw sensuality through sculptural, organic, almost architectural works.

© Johnson Tsang

And then there's the philosophy it embodies. Far from industrial perfection, it celebrates imperfection. Kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing cracks with gold, is its most beautiful metaphor: instead of erasing the flaws, it elevates them. It reminds us that beauty sometimes arises from fragility and imperfection.

Perhaps this is where its charm lies: in its ability to unite simplicity and nobility. Ceramics don't follow trends, they inspire them. Timeless, they stand today as a manifesto: a manifesto of a return to authenticity.