“Like a jazzman, I interact with porcelain or stoneware
by improvisation,” she says. “sometimes even submitting to this organic matter. After a first drying, I accentuate their shape. I fire them a first time and I decide
on the enamel that will dress them, then comes
the second firing, with it also its part of randomness,
due to the reactions of the enamels.”

With her Bobol Ceramics pieces, Mourgues-Narcy hopes to bring the element of play she feels as she makes each piece into the home of their eventual owners.
In this way, she believes, our objects can connect us all
to each other.

For the last 30 years, Belgian artist Fabienne Withofs
has been making unusual pieces that are an attempt
to break free of preconceived ideas of what ceramics should look or feel like. Withofs’ clay sculptures
are reminiscent of everyday objects, but their forms
are both fractured and fantastical.

“My sculptures explore the connection between form
and decorative pattern, showing the view of a fanciful composition between decadence and fantasy,
always in tune with current society.”

Withofs paints intricate patterns and compositions on to the pieces
of ceramic. These colourful drawings are like scrawls of joyful handwriting on the faces of the work. These often include images borrowed
from other cultures and are aimed to trigger memories
and a sense of nostalgia.

She describes her latest collections as exploring the “bursting of everyday life”. A kind of energetic shifting from one fixed form to a new one.
Her techniques reflect this idea of bursting: Withofs literally breaks apart her own work to rebuild it in new, more angular ways.