Craftsmanship in an Industrial Era – Preserves the Imprint of the Hand

Anne Black started her career making one-off ceramic pieces in a small workshop in Copenhagen in the late 1990s, and the contact to her customers was close: She rode her bike delivering the goods to a handful of shops. Today her porcelain is sold in many parts of the world, from Oslo, Norway to Tokyo, Japan. Every piece is hand-made – not by her, but according to her model – by Vietnamese ceramicists, whom she has trained, every single one of them, so that they can reproduce each new piece with meticulous skill, impeccable quality and attention to detail.

The development from one-off pieces to global distribution started in 2001, when she moved towards serial production of objects for everyday use, made of porcelain and initially produced in various workshops in Copenhagen: Victoria, Keramikbutikken, Designer Zoo and, since 2005, in her own workshop on Vesterbrogade in Copenhagen.

Anne Black is loyal to the workshop-based production, which is the craftswoman’s starting point. Her design is characterised by a simple idiom, often combined with decorative details. The products are cast, thrown, modelled and decorated by hand.

Together with a group of colleagues Anne Black represents a new direction within ceramics in Denmark. Around the turn of the millennium she and her colleagues became the trend setters in the commercial end of the spectrum selling their products to numerous design shops domestically and abroad. Her design draws on references to classic Scandinavian minimalism, and early in her career there was great interest in Anne Black’s products for example in Japan. That has meant that over the years she has arranged exhibitions in Japan, co-labs with Japanese designers, etc.

In 2003 Anne Black started a process where she moved away from her Copenhagen based workshop towards manufacturing, including production abroad. That led to the establishment and development of her own factory in Vietnam in 2005. Today the factory is owned by Anne Black in collaboration with a Vietnamese family. It is fully CSR optimized and has – under Anne Blacks leadership and supported by Danida – become widely recognized for its social and environmental responsibility.

The plant’s characteristic is the handmade, high quality porcelain, produced in small series and with the use of Anne Black’s techniques and approach to production. Through reproduction of these techniques and the use of the right materials, the factory manages to preserve the imprint of the hand in each product.

Throughout her career the craftswoman and designer Anne Black has demonstrated, in new and exciting ways, that it is possible for a ceramicist to establish a company in the field; first by starting her production in Vietnam and later, via the concept shop Black (2013) at Frederiksberg, where she has taken the classic ceramics shop one step further to a curated concept, where Danish and international designers, within the fields of fashion, furniture etc. present high-quality products in an interaction with Anne Black’s porcelain.

In her practice Anne Black has discarded the perception of the conditions under which the ceramicist has to work and has used ceramics as a lever to ensure a continued dissemination of and insistence on craftsmanship in a time dominated by mechanisation. And it is her insistence on the relevance of craftsmanship in this industrial era which is Anne Black’s primary drive as a craftswoman and a designer.

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