Project Waste & Leftovers

PROJECT WASTE & LEFTOVERS

We celebrate the 30th anniversary of my kiln and 30 years of professional studio ceramics!

'I can intervene at all moments of the making process, embrace imperfections or the unexpected, like life itself'

- Marjoke

As a sole proprietor, I am responsible for all steps in the production and sales process together with André ‘from start to finish’. During the making process and especially while spinning behind my potter’s wheel, all kinds of clay residues are created. As long as clay has not been fired, you can easily reuse it, I actually never have any waste and I really like the unexpected in my recycled clay. I collect glaze residues and use them again as recycled glaze in the inside of my vases.

Sometimes I see beautiful clay curls and shapes passing by behind my potter’s wheel and when cleaning before they go into the recycling bucket. I really enjoy the delicate, vulnerable movements they have.

PROJECT WASTE & LEFTOVERS

Photographer Remko Kraaijeveld is an award-winning photographer and I have known him for years. If you follow me on Instagram, you also know him… from my portrait photo, all the photos (and my tableware) in the cookbooks Indorock, Indostock and Insane by his wife Vanja van der Leeden and of course many more beautiful images! In our Waste & Leftovers project, Remko captured my clay curls razor sharply and poetically.

'The clay curls follow the same natural shape as budding ferns. My focus in this series was to quietly capture a movement’

- Remko Kraaijeveld

In Hasami, a pottery town in the Nagasaki prefecture in Japan, there is a work division system in which specialists are responsible for every part of the pottery production. Hasami ceramics are passed on from craftsman to craftsman and have a beautiful tradition, but also industrial waste… everything that does not perfectly meet expectations is thrown away, just like discontinued products. And there are more materials that are no longer usable during the production process and become waste, such as plaster molds, oven supports and tools.

Ranko Motomura is an interior designer and founder of her own company called ‘ate’. based in Amsterdam. Together with Hasami ceramicists, she also founded a new project/brand called “Utte” in June 2021 to reduce the industrial waste generated in the pottery production area of Hasami. Their first approach to reducing local industrial waste is to develop terrazzo made from pottery they could no longer use. As Utte’s solo exhibition and creation by Ranko Motomura, she turns industrial waste and discarded tools into small objects.

We met a while ago and I asked her to be my anniversary guest. It has become a beautiful encounter between the industrial waste from Hasami pottery and my leftovers after throwing and trimming … Ranko has started working in my studio and has created a number of new, small objects.

Yuta Sawamura is a photographer and makes beautiful short films, also from the project ‘Utte’. Yuta is married to Ranko and also visited me in the studio a number of times. He also processed the industrial waste from Japan and the leftovers from my studio, but in a beautiful 2D image.