By Pernille Stockmarr, 2024

Trivial or abnormal
What do we need things for today, and what do things want from us? In a time of war, climate crisis and artificial intelligence, Ole’s Simple Clayware steps forward. Calm, frugal yet extravagant. Almost as when nature takes us by surprise; straightforward yet whimsical. The shapes of the bodies seem familiar but with degrees and elements of something slightly unfamiliar. The red clay has been shaped into simple, solid models. Handles, holes and spouts push forward but have been maximized and repositioned. In a sort of understated caricature of everyday utilitarian forms, Ole embraces the simple and commonplace with these pieces while also challenging our common notions of what is normal.

Form, forming and future
In Denmark, we have always had an affinity for form and design. We have nourished and cared about form. Not as a seductive silhouette or a concealing grid but full of value and significance. To give shape to something means to assemble, condense and define the form of something that does not yet exist. In a sense, shaping and formulating a form invokes a future that is clearly based on a living present. Form can be imbued with significance and charged with purpose and intention. It may be conscious and purposeful, distinct and precise. Often, it is quite unconscious and open, perhaps vague or ambiguous. In any case, forming possesses a subtle power of its own. Without explanations, words and definitions, it has the capacity to shape our understanding of the world and of ourselves. We shape things, and things shape us.

Things in time
We are unstoppable. On this, sociologists, anthropologists and psychologists agree. With our intrinsic urge to produce spectacles, things and tunes, forms and formulations. Even in times of scarcity and a lack of means and resources, we produce and compose. We refine and distil, searching for new expressions to manifest social intentions and human reactions. In a variety of ways, we shape and share a Zeitgeist, the prevailing spirit of the time. A living cultural lens that reflects and refracts the trends, developments, ideas and values that frame and foster relationships, understandings, identities and meanings. Stored as accumulated collective memory, they provide a fount of shared references and inspirations, because they are significant things of their time and things in time.

Our time
Our time has been declared the Anthropocene, the new human era. A time when our prosperity and desire for pleasure has created an imbalance in the geological strata, disturbances in nature’s systems and the planet’s own climate rules. We are seeing a new humility and soberness emerge as water levels rise, and biodiversity plummets. Resources and consumption must be rapidly reduced, values transformed. The development of artificial intelligence is accelerating, while we fight for a greater reliance on natural terms and conditions. Climate reports and scientists point out our centuries-long failing and miscalculations. We have failed to see ourselves as a species on par with animals and plants, and now, the interest is coming due. We need to adapt. Acknowledge that interdependence and gratitude should be the new appropriately collective voices, challenged though they may be in a time of crises and war and debates about the borders around many a realm. We have to change our behaviour, and this includes how we relate to things.

Neomaterialism
In many ways, materials have become the new thing. Digital screens and virtual meetings have heightened our craving for tactile surfaces and sensory textures. We are drawn to what is handmade and unique. We feel restored and warmed by human hands and dread the lack of human touch that can lead to ‘hungry skin’. The importance of materiality and embodied experiences is now widely acknowledged by scientists, educators and theorists. Not just for their experiential potential but also for the unique gift the sensory experience can provide. In a time of depleted ecosystems and resource scarcity, biogenic materials are the new growth area. Things made of eelgrass, bacteria and fungi are seen to represent a healthier balance. At the same time, crafts have gained prominence. Like ceramics, they offer a contemporary answer. Revitalized relevance and timeliness, now that frequent replacement, growth and mass production are now longer timely or going hand in hand with nature’s systems.

Things in clay
The red clay almost lets us trace a sense of origin. We may choose to ignore and refuse to be disturbed by our own destructive debris. Here, in the top layers of the earth, there is oxygen and connections to animals, plants and circular life. In a fast-paced and ever-changing everyday life with a teetering future ahead of us, clay and ceramics offer an opportunity for us to rediscover a special sense of calm and reflection. They connect us to our cultural heritage and past and point to what we yearn for in the present. We believe that tradition can provide rootedness and a feeling of continuity in our lives. When we put our hands on clay or ceramic things, we experience an intense connection to lived life and the dynamics of simple things.

Type and typology
We love structuring, organizing and classifying differences and similarities. That lets us maintain order, recognize things and know what to do with them. This also applies, to a high degree, to our everyday objects and products. They should be recognizable, like road signs. We are, after all, creatures of habit, preferring familiar types. Originated from a purpose, refined by previous generations and tested in the preferred materials of their time, familiar everyday objects have developed their characteristic features and properties. Expression, form and format may vary, and habits and usage may differ across cultures and continents. In France, many drink their café au lait from a bowl, and many people in Asia use chopsticks to eat. But mug, bowl and jug are still archetypes whose purposes we have all recognized across generations. Vessels in scaled sizes with specially positioned handles and openings. This is about storage, handling and contents going in and out. Simple order, even for an ordinary spout.

Tooting and strutting
Ole’s red clayware presents a topological landscape of everyday utilitarian objects. Simple imagined forms, whose recognizability is secured, while certain aspects have been exalted. There are cleverly scaled archetypal features. With a nod to fables, pop and Mesopotamia, prehistoric specimens meet cartoon figures and prosaic peasant items. The potent XL handles on the mug challenge the conventional jovial balance of vessel and handle. Almost like grasping Pinocchio’s nose, we now find ourselves gripping and grinning. The jugs have specially rotated and mutated elements and modified proportions. The jugness of the jugs is evoked by voluminous, hand-friendly handles with a statuesque fullness that ensures stability and tames the almost free will of the expanding spouts, which seem to spring alive. Tall and proud, they rise up like elephant’s trunks or swan necks, tooting and strutting. Unlike their smaller variants, whose broad beaks let liquid pour forth like rivers. The rich boundaries of the jug typology are explored, defying our customary reaction patterns and calling for our attention in their abnormal simplicity.

Sun, stars and hearts
There are bowls as mighty and weighty as jars. And there are bowls with perforations organized into intricate patterns of absences. Here, customary customs can filter and fizzle out. There is no deformation or transformation but perhaps a new intention. Sun, star and heart, glazed symbols land on the otherwise raw clay forms. Delicate and uncertain in their simple symbolicness. In a play with essentials, we have moved away from complexity. The process time has been maximized, production thankfully minimized. The vessels are formulated and composed by just one man’s hands. In a single material and a single firing, their interior glistening with colour-accompanying glaze in contrast to the tactile texture of the meticulously burnished surface. The elements are all carefully selected, as the emphasis was clearly conceptual.

Things in flux
We are blinded by extravagance and, more rarely, by the familiar. When the otherwise impossible becomes possible, we are enchanted and admire it. In crafts, it is often in the scaling of form or the dimensioning of the material that the boundaries of the possible are challenged. In Simple Clayware, it is not the material but simplicity and the commonplace that is challenged on its potential. With strong threads to what we already know, simplicity as a concept is consistently explored and expressed in the caricatured characteristic of familiar types. Perhaps they are showing us new paths of simplicity that we might follow to escape out ingrained behaviour and habits. In this space of familiarity, peculiarity and wonder, we realize that we might never find a clear-cut answer to the true meaning of things. Because things and their meaning are in flux.