On a quest for new glazes
- Water is an important source of inspiration for Martine
- She has a special creative bond with Japan
- She can spend years researching specific glazes
Martine Mikaeloff fell in love with ceramics around her 40th birthday. “But I always had a love for arts and crafts, at first for drawing and painting, and I studied fine arts in my youth,” she says. “When I tried my hand at throwing clay on the wheel, I was immediately captivated by the contact with the material.” In the following years, she opened her own workshop and made this new passion her profession. She also gradually started to specialise. “I focus on the search for new glazes, which is a truly vast field,” she says. “I sometimes spend one to two years on specifically researching a glaze.” The forms of her creations – cups, bowls, plates, dishes – are simple and pure, but always different.
Interview
- What does well made mean to you?
- That is a big question! A small defect or deformation can give your work a more humane touch. I learned a lot about this in Japan, a country that I have a special bond with since I participated in a Franco-Japanese exhibition.
- What was a memorable moment in your professional life?
- The moment when I found myself in a room in Kyoto, at a large table on which 30 tea ceremony bowls of mine were lined up together with their wooden boxes. I had to sign them all by hand, one by one. That was a very emotional moment.
- What are your sources of inspiration?
- Nature in all its forms, but water in particular. The changing colours of the sea fascinate me and are very present in my work, which is predominantly blue, grey and turquoise. I also get inspired in museums by the shapes of the work of previous generations.
- Do you train apprentices?
- Not yet, I still have too much experimenting to do, but one day I want to pass on what I have learned from my predecessors. I find it natural to give to others what was given to me, even if this is above all a profession of individual research and personal experience.
Martine Mikaeloff is an expert artisan: she began her career in 1993
Where
Martine Mikaeloff
