Offered as a Bee. Dana Bechert's Unlikely Patterned Prairie

"My way in the garden is similar to that of my ceramics practice.

Things are unpredictable and fragile with most of the results

stemming from forces outide myself. The landscape is laid out in a vibrant all over pattern; everything is planted everywhere.

As a beekeeper and cultivator I try not to place privilege on the species that provide for us, and instead gladly host any and all who find themselves wanting to share the refuge and abundance of the garden." *

Dana Bechert is a designer and a ceramist living in Baltimore. As a cultivator, a beekeeper and an artist she enjoys working with chances and "forces outside herself" to create balance through "chaos and variation". 

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee -
One clover and a bee
And revery.
The revery alone will do
If bees are few.

Emily Dickinson

* The Garden Edit, Garden series.  The Garden Edit was founded by English gardener John Tebbs

To the Unknown Friends. Kaori Tatebayashi's World of Clay

To Ink

Kaori Tatebayashi grew up in the Japanese village of Arita famous for its Imari ware. As a child, she spent a great deal of time playing in the pottery factory of her relatives. She breathed the atmosphere of ceramics making mesmerized by the work of the craftsmen. I imagine her sitting near the potter's wheel, silent as a cat, unobserved and totally absorbed in the assimilation of all she could sense. Her work is fed by the thousand details of her daily life in South London - a squirrel paying a visit to her Austin roses, her black cat sniffing a stag beetle, a black bird filling his chubby cheecks with grains, baby pigeons playing hide and seek in the dusk. Nature is omnipresent in her work. Creating her pieces of clay is a way for her to encapsulate and to transform the memory of her chidhood landscapes. She explains how the pattern of Kage plate, named after the Japanese word shadow was inspired by the silhouette of a plant. Similarly, the edges of Kumo series resemble mountain ridges. Browsing through the pages of her Tumblr is like being admitted to have a  peek at her sketchbook, to share some of her inner world and harmony power. To me it is an endless source of joy and meditation. It is like tasting the essence of Japanese Spring.   

 Photographs © Kaori Tatebayashi

Bestiary (2) Dietlind Wolf's Ceramics and Workshop

All photographies, copyright Dietlind Wolf

Dietlind Wolf is a visual designer and propstylist  from Hamburg.  She created Flow 1 Ltd to sell  her unique pieces and photos.  She feels deeply connected to  her favorite materials, porcelain , ceramics  paper and metal.  I love the  everchanging views of her workshop. 

Royal Tichelaar Makkum

B-set ceramics service by Hella Jongerius for Royal Tichelaar Makkum

Frysian clay

Royal Tichelaar Makkum is one of the Netherlands' oldest company.It lives up to a long lineage but does not let itself tie down by the chains of history. The projects developed with iconic designers of our time like Marcel Wanders are fascinating. I love the mix of tradition and design. Let's add that the ceramics are still made with Frysian clay as in Golden century, an inspiring blend between history and modernity. René Knip and his wife Jorien van Nes received Hella Jongerius'B-set as a wedding gift;could you spot it in the blue niche of their dining room?