Though he majored in ceramics as a RISD undergrad, Andrew Molleur had his heart set on going to grad school for architecture — until he moved to New York and began working for an architecture firm, that is. “It was all monotonous computer work, all day long,” he recalls. That experience drove him back into the arms of his first love, and to the Woodstock, New York, ceramics studio of a fellow RISD alum who needed an assistant. In 2013 he founded his own studio, and has been working upstate ever since, slip-casting vessels and tableware that draw on his interests in the formal language of buildings, and in Japanese and Scandinavian design aesthetics.

Molleur chose to focus on the slip-casting process partly because he was inspired by a formative project he worked on at the Miessen factories in Germany, and partly because it satisfies his need to plan things out in advance. But lately he’s been looking for ways to interrupt the reliability of his mold-driven technique. “With slip casting, it can sometimes be a challenge to create unique pieces,” he says. “Recently I’ve been casting several forms at once and then collaging them together to quickly work through new forms. I’ve also developed an inlaying technique that adorns the outside of many of my works. Every pattern is hand-cut so there’s no way to replicate any one piece. The inlaid surface is accomplished by tinting the porcelain with various pigments, then cutting a pattern into a slip base and inserting a different color into the void. This can be done over and over to create intricate patterns.”

Check out the overview of Molleur’s work below, then make sure to pre-register to attend our Sight Unseen OFFSITE show in New York May 13-16, where a selection of his pieces will be for sale in our pop-up ceramics bar. Registration is free and lets you skip the line to enter — see you there!