Practice | Anchor Ceramics

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Tableaux is a collection of one-off coffee tables that provides the Anchor studio a framework to explore the new material atmospheres developed through the studio's ongoing R&D program.

Tableaux

An article by author and design commentator Karen McCartney about the design approach behind VAS: A reimagined vessel and the exhibition of the collection with The Front Room Gallery.

Karen McCartney writes about VAS

The VAS collection is an evidence base as to how radical and unexpected the results of experimental practice-based research can be. We applied design thinking through the process, from material to form to surface finish to create a wholly reimagined vessel made from studio resources diverted from landfill.

VAS – An Experiment in Research-led Making

Our practice-based approach to research and development combines both creative and critical enquiry to assist us in purposefully considering materials, objects, space and place.

Anchor R&D: why conduct material research?

At Anchor, we are curious about waste and how we can re-imagine and reposition it as a material resource.

Material mutations and waste transformations

Anchor is always exploring opportunities to develop new materials from studio waste, which is why we set out to create our own brick waste grog.

Structure: brick waste

The story behind how we turned our material waste, a natural by-product of a busy studio, into a new, ever-changing clay body, which we call the Studio Process Clay Body.

Reclaim / Remake - waste in our process

Surface isn’t just something we apply (like a glaze) it can also be the development of an internal quality that, through the process of finishing, is revealed in the object.

Surface: coloured grog

Meeting in Kigali, Rwanda in August 2018, Anchor and a team of designers and makers from the US, Australia, The Netherlands, Rwanda and the UK convened to undertake a workshop exploring the nature of the local manufacturing capacity and local materials. In that workshop we examined what role design could play in kick-starting local design and manufacturing industries.

Rwanda : Mass Design Group

Aunty N’arweet Carolyn Briggs and Sarah Lynn Rees’ project explores the indigeneity of the materials that make up our public spaces and asks what it might mean to create ‘the sense of connection and belonging that people feel with place’.

ACCA - Gathering Space: Ngargee Djeembana

Using one of humankind’s oldest and most common materials — terracotta clay — we crafted symbolic silhouettes of over 200 objects of domestic life.

Rigg Design Prize