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Blake Clay is a small handmade ceramics business based in Sydney. Ceramicist Rhianna Blake produces wheel thrown and hand-built items in her home studio in Leichhardt in Sydney’s Inner West.
She creates ceramic pieces with a focus on practical application and tactility, producing everyday products with a characteristic aesthetic. The two methods of production provide Rhianna with an appreciation of contrast, from the freedom to hand make complex and sculptural silhouettes to the rhythmic precision of wheel throwing.
Influenced by minimalist architectural design, classical ceramic forms and the science of glaze development, form and function are paramount to Rhianna’s practice. Blake Clay products are created in a variety of Australian clay bodies and original glaze palettes.
Rhianna’s experience with ceramics derives from a strong family history of makers, potters and artists. From her uncle’s pottery studio on the family farm in Cowra NSW to her mother’s backyard studio in Sydney’s suburbia in the 90’s, Rhianna has fond memories of her immersion into ceramics as a child. She enjoyed hours of making hand-built figurines and sculptures whilst her mother was practising her own work on the pottery wheel and firing up the ‘big gas kiln’ in the backyard.
In addition, Rhianna studied ceramics formally at UNSW’s COFA (now UNSW Art & Design) within her degree in Art Education. Blake Clay is a passion project for Rhianna as she works as a Visual Arts teacher at a selective high school in Sydney’s Inner West whilst juggling 2 active and cheeky little boys.
