Anna Grazia Perlini

Ceramicist

©Anna Grazia Perlini

The invisible role of beauty in gestures

Anna Grazia creates minimalist decorative and functional everyday ceramic objects
She is very focused on the research aspect of her practice
Her objects are mainly made with wheel throwing techniques

Anna Grazia Perlini's journey with ceramics is shaped by her continuous search for the best ways to express her feelings and creativity. She opened a ceramics workshop with a friend in 1982, but felt the need to search for her own artistic identity and went on to explore different approaches and techniques on her own in 1987. Anna Grazia eventually found her personal style, leaving aesthetic clichés behind and opting for a minimalist visual language. "I work with a white earthenware mixture and a translucent glaze that I developed in 1990," she explains. Anna Grazia opened her own atelier in 2004, where she creates both decorative and functional objects. "I love sharing the pure language of ceramics with my students. The only rule I enforce is the need to exclude unnecessary action," she says.

Interview

©Anna Grazia Perlini

©Anna Grazia Perlini

Why did you choose ceramics?: Ceramics allow me to express my personality, my creativity and my emotions. The craft gives me the opportunity to continue exploring and experimenting, always striving to create new syntheses of essentiality and harmony.
What was the first object you made using an approach you developed?: A small, minimalist coffee mug. Its cone-shaped handle allowed the glaze to thicken around it, bringing out its translucent characteristics when fully fired. When I opened my atelier, I worked mainly on glazes, with a focus on their texture and the role they play in the object.
What are the cornerstones of your work?: I love natural geometries and the possible connections I can draw from them. Even everyday objects inspire me – I like to reinvent them by giving them new, unusual shapes. I use almost exclusively a white earthenware mixture and translucent glaze that I developed myself.
Is there something that people do not know about ceramics?: Beauty is not always visible, but even its invisible presence plays a role in its aesthetics. In ceramics, it takes multiple steps to reach a final object and each one has its own gestures and beauty.

Anna Grazia Perlini is a master artisan: she began her career in 1990 and she started teaching in 2004