…F Ceramics to Spend Your Money on

The word ceramics, in my mind, has always evoked an image of thick-walled cups, uneven plates and tacky hand-crafted bowls. Melanie Follmer has managed to turn around that dusty image of ceramic art. She makes ceramic tableware with style, class and a veritable design standard.

Standing in her studio just 50 km outside of Hamburg, I was tempted to buy everything from egg cups to cake stands. The abundance of beautiful crockery in this place is something every kitchen cabinet can only dream about. Two collections are at choice: ‘Süd’ stands for cheerfully curved shapes with a hint of country home made from light pug, while the ‘Nord’ series is made from darker clay, more simple, serious and very urban.

Ceramicist Melanie Follmer is a textile designer originally. Her love for workshops and her invendiveness however, have made her start all over again professionally in 2008. The passionate cook has always liked ceramics but felt that it was missing any kind of contemporaneity. So she decided to set her hands to it, got herself an old potter’s wheel and the result were simple, elegant plates, bowls and cups for daily use. The three dots in her brand’s name …F represent the three elements used for pottery: earth, water and fire; the F is her last name’s initial.

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The dishes of the mother of four have become food stylists’ favorites by now. Hundreds of magazines display anything from sweet and savory food to jewelry and other crafts on charger plates from her collections. And I’ve wondered many times: just where do they get these beautiful plates? The answer: Melanie Follmer’s online shop. Either that, or you take a trip to Bardowick to meet the incredibly nice artist in person. Her sun-flooded studio is situated in an old country home and exhibits her ceramics in a way that makes you notice what good they’ll do to your home.

I went home with a few of her gems and could already feel that I was in for a new collecting addiction. …F designs ceramics that instead of getting dusty will make you want to live with them.