Ingrid: What role have boundaries played in your ceramic practice?
Sissel: I guess I have always been interested in working with and challenging certain boundaries. I was born and raised in Denmark, and I carry with me a strong legacy from Danish design and craft traditions. When I was a teenager, my maternal grandmother, who was a ceramist, taught me how to use natural materials, such as sand and seashells. In my youth I worked for Bodil Manz (b. 1943), and she taught me to seek the boundaries of materials. Manz developed a special technique for creating very thin cylinders that are at high risk of collapsing in the kiln – and which achieve a unique material aesthetic precisely when exposed to the highest temperatures.
The first time I became aware of the boundaries between the different traditions and disciplines was in the Glass and Ceramics programme on the island of Bornholm. Here I saw how functional ceramics in Denmark was operating within an industrial framework, and at this time, even conceptual ceramics was drawn towards perfection, with irregularities often being viewed as flaws.
When I continued my training, studying ceramic design at the Royal College of Art in London, I met an international, design-oriented ceramics environment, where industrial production played a central role. This provided special insight into the world of mass production, which in my case inspired a desire to challenge the disciplinary boundaries; I was one of the few students to not embrace the possibilities of technology.
My training has given me a great foundation for my current practice, although my main source of inspiration remains my earliest experiences with the raw materials I use. My grandmother and I walked along the Danish beaches, gathering whatever we could find. For me, this connected materiality to site, raw material to geology. And like Manz, I have continued to explore the potential and boundaries of materials albeit in a very different way.

Ingrid: The boundaries within design and crafts have developed considerably during your years in this field. What changes have impacted your practice?
Sissel: In recent years, sustainable design has gone from being a topic to becoming an inescapable everyday practice. Designers have always been curious about near materials, but in recent years, the design field in particular has sought to find sustainable solutions for a better use of materials. In my role as a craftsperson and maker, I always thought that ceramic mass production lacks the unique material qualities that exist in ceramics. In my experience, makers have a unique knowledge of materials based on craft and time, which is a common challenge for designers. If designers and makers could work together more closely, I think we could make major progress in several areas, especially when it comes to sustainable production. This combination can give rise to some interesting results. I have learned a lot from the design field, especially in terms of placing the user centre stage.
Ingrid: In what way?
Sissel: The strength of the design field lies in an outward-looking practice with a focus on users, needs and responsible functional solutions. I am very focused on the relationship between my hands and the user’s hands. My work consists of usable objects.
Ingrid: Do you view your production as ‘decorative art’, or do you have an artistic practice?
Sissel: At the centre of my work is the creation of a physical sensory narrative. My artistic practice is based on material research, mediated through samples, catalogues and site-specific objects. I explore the potential of utilitarian objects as narrative media – and I want each cup, bowl and plate to have a life outside of me, the workshop and the gallery space. Each piece is part of a series, and each series is part of a conceptual project that is both process-orientated and research-oriented.

Ingrid: The process-oriented aspect is essential to the field of design. For example, the design section of the Oslo School of Architecture and Design has four study programmes, but industrial design is the only one that deals with tangible objects. Designers in the other fields – systems-oriented design, service design and interaction design – don’t produce physical objects but create relations between different systems.
Sissel: Despite the different approaches, art, crafts and design are all process-oriented disciplines. I am especially interested in the boundaries between the unpredictable and the planned. Ceramic makers and artists need to plan carefully, and I always carry out in-depth preliminary studies. From art I bring with me a conceptual approach to materials, site and history that is probably not entirely dissimilar to artistic research. But even though I always do careful preliminary studies, my senses and what happens in the moment are crucial to me. My collaborations with various companies, including restaurants, for example, also require a certain degree of predictability in the production of uniform utilitarian objects. In this sense, the series are conceptual and, in many cases, also more standardized, while the individual pieces in the series are more unpredictable. The individual pieces carry traces of my raw materials and my hands; they contain both irregularities and traces from the production process. My practice is process-oriented – but in interaction with the processes of the natural materials – with the goal of combining standardization with unpredictability.
Ingrid: You were a research fellow at the Norwegian Crafts Institute. How has this research period influenced your practice?
Sissel: During my fellowship, I developed an experimental approach to my raw materials. My working process always begins with research. I delve into cultural heritage, local history and geology, and I talk to various professionals in order to learn about the area that the materials come from. During my fellowship I worked with geologist Knut Wolden, studying the Røros region. Røros was included in UNESCO’s World Heritage List due to the copper and chrome mines from the 18th century, which played an important role for the economy of Denmark-Norway. I studied the geology and the natural materials in this area and the waste materials that the extraction produced. I work with local authorities to determine which natural resources and waste products I can use. But my work changes fundamentally when I am at the potter’s wheel. Here I try to give the stories and materials a more sensuous form.
Ingrid: Clay is a natural resource. As a ceramist, you use natural resources to create new things. According to Pliny the Elder (23–79), the extraction of natural resources may serve two purposes. In his principal text, Natural History, written almost two thousand years ago, he argues that digging in the earth for minerals – mining – can either aim to improve human quality of life or to satisfy an aesthetic desire for ornamentation and luxury (1). By means of modern technology, people in mainly Western countries have treated the earth as what the philosopher Martin Heidegger calls ‘a standing reserve’. This means that we are treating natural resources as an inexhaustible resource, an approach that has become inextricably tied in with industrialized capitalism (2).
How do you relate to the extraction of natural resources?

Sissel: When I work in the landscape, I am at peace; nature is a deep source of joy to me. To me, gathering and processing nature’s raw materials is a tangible way of grasping the world. It gives me a profound understanding of materials in my work as a ceramist.
I wish to distance myself from haste, and I want my practice to make a different. But my interest in traditional crafts and nature’s processes is not based on romantic ideals. I am deeply concerned about how we, in the Western countries, are rapidly destroying nature, but I am also curious and hopeful about the possibilities that technology holds for the future. In my work with raw materials in Røros, I relate to a historical mining operation that has left big scars in the landscape. With guidance from an environmental consultant and a geologist and with permission from the authorities, I collect small amounts from selected sites, for example by river banks, where the pollution from the mining industry are deposited. In this way, I avoid damaging cultural heritage, and I can assign new meaning to waste materials.
Ingrid: In his latest book, Imagining for Real, the anthropologist Tim Ingold writes, ‘What if surfaces are the real sites for the generation of meaning?’ (3) Surfaces are often overlooked in our visual culture. When we observe a surface very close up – such as a building wall, a rain jacket, an iPhone charger or an IKEA coffee cup – global relations, power and inequities are part of the surface. Most minerals come from global mining operations in the Global South, which are often associated with risk to the life and health of workers and the local population. When we look at one of the many manmade surfaces that surround us everywhere today, these global inequities are part of the surface.
Today, a surface is not just a plane but a kind of process that is often beyond our control. But in ceramics, the surface is where the meaning takes place; I think that society could learn something from ceramics, with its emphasis on surfaces.
Sissel: In recent years, I have taken a particular interest in surfaces and glaze. A surface is also a kind of boundary. The surface of a cup, a plate or bowl is the interface between my hands and the user’s hands. Lately, I have had a focus on developing glazes with life and depth. Glazes you can gaze into and which highlight the impurities of natural raw materials – their characteristics and visual identity.
But to me, the weight itself is also an important part of the piece. Throughout art history, vision has been regarded as the principal sense of aesthetic assessment, but I think there is a great deal of beauty and an important sense of materials in the weight of a cup.

Ingrid: In Volume 33, out of 37, in his Natural History, Pliny writes about our constant curiosity to dig in the earth for minerals which he believes will ultimately lead us to inescapable misfortune (4). He writes, ‘How innocent, how blissful, nay even how luxurious life might be, if it coveted nothing from any source but the surface of the earth, and, to speak briefly, nothing but what lies ready to her hand!’ (5)
Everywhere in the world, we are digging – on land and, increasingly, at sea – so that mainly the Western world can maintain our overconsumption. Tim Ingold underscores that ‘the deepest of all are the most recent traces’. Whatever is closest – in time and space – has the greatest consequences. But often, what is closest, what lies ready to the hand, we don’t notice. I would argue that what lies ‘ready to her hand’ today is our waste.
What possibilities might waste hold, going forward?
Sissel: Waste, especially food waste, can be a great source of resources. I try to combine natural materials and waste when I make my glazes. Natural materials have an intrinsic visual quality with clear references to the area where the raw material was gathered. I like the fact that nature’s processes create visible traces.
To me, glaze is not just about chemistry and recipes but about how nature’s processes influence the surface and how waste should create visible traces and narratives. The glazes may not always turn out exactly the same way, but I delve into the melting properties of the materials and search for new ways of using waste through an experimental practice.

When I develop and produce ceramic series for restaurants or companies, there are stricter requirements for both safety and predictability. That makes it challenging to use natural materials in the glaze. For example, lead is present in nature, but ceramics that are going to be used in a restaurant cannot have any trace of lead in them. Everything I make is thoroughly tested before it can be put to use. I am challenged – and motivated – by the need to strike a balance between nature’s unpredictable processes and industrial certification requirements.
Ingrid: Maybe we actually need a more economical approach to the extraction of natural resources? In its original meaning, economics is about finding smarter ways of working with raw materials within certain limitations. Over the years, however, the concept of economics has been watered down and linked to limitless growth. It seems impossible to find an alternative to the growth rationale. We know that we need to rein in the growth rationale that is constantly expanding the human footprint. We need to demonstrate a different kind of care for nature, for each other, for ourselves. Your practice points towards a new kind of relationship between art, design and nature, where your hands are simultaneously a tool, a sensory method and a yardstick for what we get to use.
Sissel: I believe that craft-based work and material curiosity in combination with innovative methods for preserving, protecting or recycling (possibly with the use of new technology) can provide an important basis for the future. I also believe that it is an important ethical condition to focus on the production process and, ideally, to create an aesthetic expression that does not try to hide the traces of how things were made.
My cups often have irregularities and tiny small melted iron speckles from the raw materials of the mountains. I view surfaces as narrative planes. I want the utilitarian objects I create to tell stories, and we need more stories about imperfection, about processes that are beyond human control and about how we can make tings from waste materials and use methods that limit the extraction of natural resources.
Sissel Wathne
Sissel Wathne has Danish and Norwegian roots. In 2015 she moved from Denmark to Røros in Norway. She holds a BA from the Royal Academy – Craft Programme on Bornholm and a Master’s degree from the Royal College of Art in London.

Fotograf Tom Gustavsen
Notes
1. Pliny’s quote about mining is often quoted as follows: ‘For in some places the earth is dug into for riches, when life demands gold, silver, silver-gold and copper, and in other places for luxury, when gems and colours for tinting walls and beams are demanded.’ Pliny, Natural History, Volume IX: Books 33–35. Translated by H. Rackham. Loeb Classical Library 394. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1952. Book 33, section 1, ‘Metals’.
2. Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology, and Other Essays (New York: HarperCollins, 2013), 16.
3. Tim Ingold, Imagining for Real: Essays on Creation, Attention and Correspondence (London: Routledge, 2022), 180.
4. ‘We penetrate her inner parts and seek for riches in the abode of the spirits of the departed, as though the part where we tread upon her were not sufficiently bounteous and fertile.’ Pliny, Natural History, Volume IX, book 33, section 1, ‘Metals’.
5. Pliny, Natural History, Volume IX: Books 33-35. Translated by H. Rackham. Loeb Classical Library 394. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1952. Book 33, section 1, ‘Metals’.
6. Tim Ingold, ‘The Earth, the Sky and the Ground Between’, Metode (2023), vol. 1 ‘Deep Surface’.
Theme: Outlook
Formkraft gives a voice to craft artists and designers who work internationally, cross borders and see new possibilities. What stories do they go out with? What do they bring back?