Caroline Harrius’ Ceramic Vases Are Only Complete With Embroidery

Blue Mem­o­ries

Ceram­i­cist Car­o­line Har­rius crafts ves­sels that mar­ry two seem­ing­ly dis­parate mate­ri­als: thread and clay. Each piece uti­lizes poked holes in the clay that are lat­er con­nect­ed like dots via thread. 

Car­o­line’s newest piece titled Blue Mem­o­ries con­tin­ues this tech­nique but turns it up a notch. Dur­ing a three-month res­i­den­cy in a porce­lain fac­to­ry in Pors­grund, Nor­way, Car­o­line want­ed to test the lim­its of what’s pos­si­ble with non-plas­tic indus­tri­al porce­lain clay. She want­ed to see how “large and frag­ile” she could work with­out the piece col­laps­ing. The result is a large flo­ral motif stitched in blue inspired by the artist Geor­gia O’Keeffe.

One glance at Car­o­line’s work and you under­stand the ten­sion that comes from the materials—and that’s part of the point. “The meet­ing between tex­tile and ceram­ics is irra­tional and full of resis­tance,” Car­o­line writes. “I embroi­der on porce­lain with cot­ton thread in an attempt to recon­tex­tu­al­ize the crafts.” She con­tin­ues, “By com­bin­ing tex­tile tra­di­tions with dec­o­ra­tive porce­lain with my con­tem­po­rary ceram­ics, I want to make an attempt to high­light all the pre­cious and impres­sive craft objects that are often left behind with­in the walls of the domes­tic space, con­tin­u­ing to chal­lenge the hier­ar­chies in the field and make tra­di­tion­al female craft visible.”

Learn more about Car­o­line on her web­site. To see what she’s up to next, fol­low her on Insta­gram.

Ceramicist Caroline Harrius crafts vessels that marry two seemingly disparate materials: thread and clay.

Blue Mem­o­ries (detail)

Blue Mem­o­ries (detail)

Each piece utilizes poked holes in the clay that are later connected like dots via thread.