Meet a Local Business

Emmanuelle Ceramics

What makes your products or services unique? What will people get from your business that they won’t get elsewhere?

My mission is to preserve memories and make modern, handcrafted heirlooms that will last a lifetime. Using clay, I can take fabric, something fragile and make it permanent. I can take a memory and make it concrete.

What’s the best way that interested customers can connect with you or find more information?

They can go to my website emmanuelleceramics.com and follow me on Facebook @emmanuellewambachceramics and Instagram @emmanuellewambach.

What inspires your work?

All of my ceramics are inspired by my mother, a master gardener and fiber artist who instilled in me a love of living things and lace. She believed that you can see history through gardens and the patterns in lace. I would look for pictures in the intricate weavings in her lace collection. Tree branches, flowers, and spiderwebs would loop and curl before me, creating a whole realm of possibilities. My lace-textured ceramics are my way of creating my own gardens and tapestries that honor my mother’s passions for her craft.

How can people best support you or your community as we recover from the pandemic?

I think it’s important for people to go on small makers websites and support them through their shops. It’s also important to come out the few shows that people are doing. Also following on Instagram and Facebook may not seem like a big deal but it really helps makers find their audience. Sharing posts especially can really help.

Are there any unique events, initiatives, sales, or opportunities at your store or community that people should be aware of?

I am taking part in the origins Virtual a Marketplace that will happen over the Juneteenth holiday from June 17-20. You can find more information at https://www.handmadearcade.org/marketplaces/2021-origins-virtual-marketplace/

Please provide any other information you want to share that these questions did not cover!

Using mid-fire stoneware clay, I create slab-built and wheel-thrown canvases of simple forms and shapes, making the lace the focus of my work. The lace comes from multiple time periods. I receive much of it from friends and family or I find it in antique stores, fabric shops, and online. I press the lace into the clay form, then highlight the surface with colored underglazes and glazes. The breaking of the glazes over the lace pattern accentuates the natural surface and beauty of the clay underneath. Together the lace impressions, clay, and glaze form a piece that captures a moment in time, like putting a memory in stone. Fabrics will fade, yellow, and fall apart but a ceramic lace plate or vessel can last millennia. I create heirlooms—gardens that can last lifetimes.