Extra/ordinary Design Workshop and Exhibition, Zagreb, 28 March - 1 April 2011, organised by the School of Design, University of Zagreb, Croatian Designers Association in partnership with URIHO and the Association for Promoting Inclusion (UPI), funded by The British Council, Croatia
Ceramics Team
Context
Ceramic is a dynamic material and the skill required to manipulate it can take a long time to develop. Each of the ceramicists we worked with at Uriho has their own style and sensitivity, yet each is highly efficient and able to make at a batch-production scale. For the ceramics team, this presented unique opportunities and unique problems. How could we build in craft values and aesthetics yet retain the quality, efficiency and consistency required by the brief? How could we add value to materials and skills and how could we increase the efficiency of making handmade products?
Two Product Ranges
The first range we developed is a family of pendant lights and bowls aimed at high-end design stores in Zagreb city centre and would be a new market for Uriho products. The second range consists of smaller products and is aimed at Uriho's existing retailers and contemporary outlets such as the museum shop at the new Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb.
The designs pay attention to the individual and unique skills of Uriho's craftspeople. The products also flip the technical and material limitations of the workshop on their head: in particular the problems they have with their clay which is brittle and porous when fired to low firing temperatures, which due to their kiln limitations, cannot currently be changed.
Range 1
This range consists of pendant lights and bowls and was designed around Goga's throwing technique. We sought to add value to her craft by designing handthrown concave shapes. Previously Uriho has made ceramic lamp stands and bought in 'off the shelf' light diffusers. We designed a range of pendant lamps using ceramic as the primary focus. We paid particular attention to efficiency by stripping out labour-intensive processes such as hand painting.
Dipping and Glazing
The team identified dipping as the most efficient and glaze technique. We subsequently designed a sharp line/rim into the clay forms to act as a guideline for the dipping. The inside of the lamps were glazed to increase the diffusion of light, and the rest of the shape was left unglazed.
Introducing distinctiveness and an individual voice. We also asked each craftsperson in the ceramics workshop to design their 'maker's mark' which we converted into stamps that will be pressed into each piece. On completion of the first prototypes our workshop partners Tatjana, Goga and Vera asked if we could extend the range, and we happily developed a large and medium bowl and small tea light holder using the same language of form.
Range 2
This consists of small products that exploit the qualities of Uriho's low-fired clay.
Pestle and Mortar
The first was a set of pestles and mortars for grinding locally-grown herbs such as lavender. The shapes were designed to be throw. The pestles are hollow with a thicker wall at the grinding end for strength and weight. The porous nature of the clay was utilised by leaving the grinding surfaces unglazed to absorb and slowly diffuse the lavender aroma.
Plant Pots
The second product was a family of small hand-thrown pots for plants. One is stamped with a graphic impression of perforation lines. It comes with a packet of seeds and when the plant needs repotting the user should break the small pot on the perforation lines into the bottom of a larger one - the fragments as drainage material. A steel tool was designed to make the perforation marks. The second two pots also took advantage of the proximity of the ceramics and metal workshops at Uriho. Both come with variations of simple metal hooks designed to hang the small pots in a different ways. One hook creates a hanging basket that also supports the growth of the plant. The other pot can be hooked on the sides of walls, fences or other larger pots to form clusters of planters.
Pendant
The final product in this range is a small pendant necklace designed around Tatjana's working process. She cannot throw on the wheel as she has no movement in one hand. So we asked Goga to throw a range of small discs of her and Tatjana's design. We then used those shapes to make master plaster moulds of a manageable size for Tatjana to press clay into. The front of the pendant is left unglazed in order to absorb the scent of the user's perfume. The back of the pendant is to be stamped with Tatianas makers mark and dipped in a rich red glaze, a classic Uriho and Croatian colour.
