Casey Zablocki poses ceramic narratives of clay, fire and landscape at the Guild Gallery

Untamed, textural and carved by fire: Casey Zablocki's latest collection hosted at the Guild Gallery, New York, is a series of ceramic furniture pieces that stand as an homage to the natural forces that shape Montana's landscape (where he is currently based). In this series on view from September 12 - November 22, 2024, the artist's experimentation with size, colour and local materials yields furniture designs that feel at once, ancient and enduring.

Known for his large-scale, wood-fired ceramics, the US-based furniture designer has taken his practice to new heights with over 20 stoneware pieces that channel brutalist influences. Crafted into coffee tables, side tables, chair designs and thrones, each form in the series emerges from the kiln with a rawness that reflects both his rugged environment and his experimental approach. Challenging his skills as a ceramicist, this new body of work also redefines the scope of functional ceramics.

This latest series of ceramic designs departs from Zablocki's previous solo exhibition at the Guild Gallery titled Modern Relics (2022), which focused on the process and transformative power of the kiln. In contrast, this new collection is about scale and ambition, as he tests the limits of clay and fire to create monumental and functional pieces.

"Ceramic furniture is about pushing the medium to its largest scale whereas the first showcase was about process and showing how he worked with the kiln. Through rigorous determination, experimentation and material innovation, the product designer alchemises art and science to create works that are wholly unique within the ceramic furniture movement," explains Robin Standefer, co-founder and curator, Guild Gallery.

Zablocki's connection to Montana has always been central to his work and this collection deepens that. In the past, he's incorporated local ash into his glazes, enabling its tones and textures to leave an impression on his work. This time, he furthers his exploration with the use of local porcelain, a delicate material new to his practice. While porcelain was too fragile to build large-scale structures directly, he discovered it could serve as an ideal glaze. Applied as a slip, it brings out complex hues across his sculptural designs, adding soft tones of blue, green and orange apart from a gold-flecked opalescence—a nod to the region's gold rush history. This glazing method, combined with the textural depth creates a visual contrast unique to the designer's fresh work.

Zablocki spent two years refining a custom clay mixture for the new collection that would withstand the intense firing demands of his anagama kiln, one of the largest wood-fired kilns in the United States. It necessitated a high-performance clay composition that could endure both the weight of the product designs and the extreme temperatures without cracking. After extensive trial and error, he formulated a blend of fireclay, kaolin and ball clay, strengthened with fibrous glass feldspar; a binding agent that fuses the materials under the kiln's intense heat. This custom clay mix not only helps the sculptures maintain their shape but also imbues them with a rugged texture, mirroring the terrain the Missoula, Montana-based artist frequently explores.

Each piece is crafted using more than 15,000 pounds of clay and traditional Korean paddles that reinforce the artist's connection to handmade processes and the primal nature of his materials. The final forms are both craggy and complex, rising from the gallery floor like stalagmites or lying flat like dried river beds. Thrones and side tables possess a raw, almost geological feel, while his other minimalist benches and table designs emphasise broad, open surfaces, allowing the porcelain slip to enhance the work's natural tones.

Using the anagama kiln, the firing process involves 10 continuous days and nights of stoking flames, a laborious task he and his team undertook with care and precision. They worked with more than 30,000 pounds of local wood to sustain the roaring fires, relying on the distinct sonic cues that signal when more air or fuel is needed to maintain the kiln's temperature. The process gives the ceramic art pieces a texture and strength that would be unattainable in a conventional kiln. Zablocki's approach reflects his commitment to the craft while echoing the flow of the natural world, drawing from ancient processes that shape both his materials and his artistic philosophy.

The ceramic artist describes his work as a balance of contrasts. "All of those tensions between rough and soft, weight and weightlessness, refined and unrefined; hopefully they can be as timeless and vast as the landscape” he conveys. The resulting pieces resemble architectural remnants or ancient rock formations, as though they've been cleaved from a mountain or unearthed from an archaeological site.

The pieces in this new collection evince how Zablocki engages with ceramic as a medium and a concept, reflecting on the interplay of human creativity and the natural world. By using locally sourced materials and traditional firing techniques, Zablocki's furniture embodies a harmony between modern craftsmanship and ancient forms. As he delves deeper into this evolving landscape of ceramic furniture, his work remains consistently informed by the patterns and materials of the land he calls home.

Casey Zablocki's solo exhibition of ceramic furniture is on view from September 12 - November 22, 2024, at the Guild Gallery, New York.