A Studio Story from Jingdezhen
In Jingdezhen, clay is never only a material. It belongs to the ground, to the kiln, to the hand, and to a long history of people who have learned to work with fire, patience, and uncertainty.
BanBan Studio: A Shared Life Around Ceramics
The first thing you notice in BanBan Studio is that nothing feels particularly separated.
Finished works sit beside tools. Test pieces share shelves with completed objects. Fragments, experiments, and unfinished forms remain visible throughout the space. The studio feels less like a showroom and more like a place where things are constantly being made.
BanBan lives and works in Jingdezhen with her partner, who is also a ceramic artist. Their days move through the familiar rhythm of ceramics: shaping, drying, waiting, firing, observing, and beginning again.
It is easy to see this rhythm in the studio itself. Nothing appears rushed. Objects seem to arrive gradually, shaped through repetition, adjustment, and time spent with the material.
Jingdezhen is often introduced through its history, but for artists working there today it is also an everyday environment. Materials, kilns, workshops, craftspeople, and artists exist close to one another. Knowledge moves through conversations, shared experience, and daily practice as much as through formal teaching.
Terra Forms: Forms That Grow from the Hand
Terra Forms is a series of hand-built ceramic candle holders.Rather than being produced from a fixed mould, each piece develops through direct contact with the material. Small differences emerge naturally. Some forms stand taller, some sit lower and wider. Curves shift slightly. Openings vary. Surfaces record traces of the making process.No two pieces repeat exactly.Some resemble small standing figures. Others feel closer to something geological, as if they have slowly emerged from the ground.
Although designed as candle holders, they are difficult to think of only as functional objects.The open circles, stacked forms, and uneven surfaces give each piece a sculptural presence. During the day, light moves across the ceramic surface. In the evening, candlelight settles into the openings and casts shadows beyond the object itself.The work changes with the light, but never dramatically. The shifts are subtle, encouraging a slower kind of attention.
Terra Forms begins with earth, but it carries more than material. It carries the rhythm of a studio, the memory of a ceramic city, and the quiet persistence of an artist who has chosen to keep making by hand.
