6. Mai 2026

is ceramic fragile or for eternity?

Have you heard of the MOM project? Memory of Mankind, one of the most ambitious time capsules ever created. The most durable data carriers, in the form of ceramic tablets, are stored deep inside the oldest salt mine in the world, where they will carry our stories hundreds of thousands of years into the future (source www.memory-of-mankind.com).
The oldest data carriers of humanity are more than 5,000-year-old cuneiform tablets made of clay. Ceramic tablets are used because they are resistant to water, corrosion, radiation, and temperatures of up to 1,200–1,500°C, ensuring that information can endure for thousands of years.

I do not claim to create objects for eternity, nor for the inhabitants of distant planets who may one day pass through here. I am nonetheless fascinated by the idea of working with a material that is at once special and simple. Like a child playing with earth, shaping curious forms that, with a little water, can return to mud, yet still retain the memory of that shape. Clay has memory: if it is manipulated too much, sooner or later it will try to return to its original form, distorting what has been made up to that point.
Making ceramics is an act in which you invest experience, time, and memories, but it also preserves the traces of those who came before you. It is mud, poor and rich in life at the same time. And when it is fired, it holds the shape it has been given forever, or at least for 5,000 years, or until it is broken.

Wearing a piece of ceramic jewellery, created in a unique and difficult-to-repeat way, is an act that feels both ancient and futuristic at once. Sharing my memory, mixing it with the memories of the wearer, becomes a gesture that goes against the mainstream, especially when set against the ideal of perfection and the “investment value” of jewellery made from precious metals and produced by high-precision machinery.