Under the supervision of Karen Swami, Learning Ceramic Smoking Techniques explores the art of coloring and texturing pieces using the smoke generated during firing. This method gives ceramics varied shades and unique visual effects, while revealing the depth of colors and material.
During this discovery course in an artistic craft open to all, you will learn how to prepare pieces for smoking using two techniques: polishing with agate or applying a previously prepared sigillata engobe. These pieces will be fired together. The objective of this course is to rediscover the finishes known since Antiquity while integrating the contemporary creativity of the participants.
This is the challenge of this course, beyond the acquisition of very specific techniques for choosing clays, preparing the pieces and of course conducting the firings.
At the end of the training, the trainees will have acquired the following skills:
The training offers participants the opportunity to take an interest in the technical processes related to plastic recycling: injection, rotational molding and thermocompression.
Thanks to the rise of DIY and more generally to the sharing of knowledge on technical networks, these types of processes have left the industrial world to invite themselves into human-sized workshops.
A workshop on plastic?
The idea may seem completely retrograde in the era of bio-sourced and local materials. Understanding this material is the best solution to stop its eradication in the form of waste. Mastering processes for reusing the material, often recovered from our trash cans, or even from nature, opens up an infinite field of possibilities.
Designer Alexandre Echasseriau suggests taking the time to produce one or more sustainable objects by thermocompression. The question of the resource will be important: identification of a deposit (offcut/company waste/fly dump etc./trash cans).
Day 1
Presentation of the speaker and participants
Introduction to smoking techniques
Modeling of the pieces to be smoked
Day 2
Modeling of the pieces
Day 3
Theoretical point on polishing versus sigillata/polishing
Polishing
Day 4
Polishing and preparation with engobe sigillata
Application of engobe sigillata and firing
Day 5
Conducting smoking firings in the kiln
Removal from the kiln
Polishing
Treatment of impressions
Parisian, Karen Swami discovered pottery at the age of five and took ceramics classes throughout her childhood. After studying at business school, she worked in real estate, then opened an antiques shop at the Paul Bert market before launching into film production.
In 2010, she did a ceramics internship led by Thierry Fouquet who encouraged her to take her CAP. Which she did as an independent candidate the same year. She then installed a kiln and a wheel in her production office and made ceramics alongside her work in the film industry. The great Parisian decorator Christian Liaigre discovered her work and began a collaboration with her that continues to this day with Maison Liaigre.
In 2014, Karen Swami set up her studio and opened a gallery in Paris, and devoted herself exclusively to her passion for ceramics. Her creations quickly seduced the big names in design and fashion: the prestigious Maison Alberto Pinto, Bruno Moinard, the luxury scenographer, former partner of Andrée Putman, Christian Dior Maison, Guerlain, Cartier, l’Oréal… Karen Swami also had a series of exhibitions in Paris (Lionelle Courbet gallery, Minsky gallery, NAG gallery, Atrata Paris…), Brussels, London, Lisbon and in the United States: in 2017 and 2023 at March Fine Art, in San Francisco, in 2019 at Design Miami-Art Basel in Miami, in 2022 and 2024 at the Ateliers Coubert in New York.
Karen Swami likes to play with materials, flames, oxides and pushes know-how to the limit by confronting earthenware and stoneware.
It is by simplifying volumes that she magnifies color and texture games. If the shape of Etruscan vases inspires her, a simple pot is transformed into a unique art object under her fingers. Her approach exudes shadow play, mystery, clean lines and modernity.
From shagreen trompe-l'oeil to the art of kintsugi, including smoky earths, this enthusiast since the age of 5 touches, turns, smooths, incises and encrusts the material in her Parisian workshop.
An artisan, Karen Swami is one with the earth that she has tamed over time and through its manufacturing stages.
Pro : 1580€ excluding tax
Alumni Campus MaNa : 1000€ excluding tax
Students : 750€ excluding tax
Price(s) including the cost of training, accommodation and full board, materials and personal protective equipment.