photo: Hella Jongerius

In 2000 I stumbled upon the work of Dutch artist Hella Jongerius in a magazine. At the time I had recently started teaching myself to work with clay and was stuck in a very commercial and static mindset. Her embroidered porcelain dishware definitely gave me a moment of “joyous jealousy”. Jongerius takes a historically functional craft and pushes the limits. She doesn’t stop at merely embroidering her dishes but continues her thread work from the dish directly onto the tablecloth.

photo: Diem Chau

Another amazing artist working with embroidered porcelain is Diem Chau who is originally from Viet Nam. Her work is especially appealing because of its figurative images. Each piece is like a snippet from a storybook.

photo: Claire Coles

Claire Coles is an incredible designer who makes these alarmingly sweet embroidered teacup and saucers. Be sure to check out her website for her amazing embroidered wallpaper too.

photo: Emily Jull

I bumped into this seller on Etsy, Nesting Emily, and fell in love with her “stitch porcelain”. I love the organic shapes of her vases and the simplicity of the embroidery.

I wouldn’t call embroidered ceramics an actual trend yet but I do think that with the explosion of hand embroidery and the resurgence of ceramics as fine art we are in the happy position to be seeing some fantastic innovations that combine these two mediums.

Perhaps this will become a new category of ceramic, Stitchware anyone?