Juxtapoz Art and Culture-Spring_2019

32 SPRING 2019

DESIGN

The ghosts of Studio Arhoj grabbed me.

Haunting a table at Denmark’s Louisiana Museum,

they conjured a youthful delight so powerful,

I immediately adopted one, and then another;

my ghost needed a pal. And so began a collecting

obsession with the work of Anders Arhoj, an artist

producing expressive ceramic sculpture alongside

his tight-knit crew of potters who make artful

snackware. From Chug Mugs to Brick buddies,

absolutely everything Arhoj produces oozes joy.

Studio Arhoj represents just one of Anders’s many

talents as a designer, author and artist.

Kristin Farr: I like to imagine hosting a dinner

party served exclusively on Arhoj objects, but

I fear the aesthetics of my food could never live

up to the beauty of your tableware. Do you get

this comment a lot?

Anders Arhoj: No, never actually! In these

Instagram days, many people, including chefs,

really love to plate their food on something that

plays along with it, instead of just being a white

canvas. You can make some bold and dramatic

dishes with magenta pink cherries on an Yves

Klein-blue ceramic plate, or black ice cream in

a shockingly sunbeam-yellow bowl. It’s about

having fun and staging your dish to tell a story.

Tell me about the popular “mysterious mistakes

gone good,” one-of-a-kind objects in your shop.

There must be funny stories behind these

creations.

Oh, yes, often. Most recently, last Christmas,

I was home at my parents’ house in the Danish

countryside and heard about a local clay digging

site. There’s no public access, but I snuck in there,

along with my dad, and dug out some fresh local

clay. Back in the studio the week after, I made some

sculptures in the clay and put them in the kiln. But

instead of staying in shape, the high temperatures

made them collapse completely into a flat pool

on the kiln plate! If there had been more, it might

have completely ruined the poor kiln. The clay

was never meant to be fired so high. However,

the melted pool was so beautiful—like a brown,

rustic, glassy glaze full of earth particles and bits of

Portrait by: Andreas Houmann All photos: Courtesy studio arhoj

Studio Arhoj

Anders Arhoj on his namesake ceramics

atelier in Copenhagen

minerals. We now use this local clay as a glaze for

our products—and I need to trespass again soon to

bring home even more of the good stuff, ha!

You should probably wear a disguise. I noticed

you’ve been releasing more sculptural work,

including pieces with that raw, textured finish.

Does your crew seamlessly switch between art

and functional objects?

Actually, I’m the sole sculptor in the studio. I make

more or less all the pieces myself, as I really love

to work with the clay in that way. Wheel throwing

is not my primary interest of expression; I leave

that to my potters. I prefer building, cutting and

manipulating the clay itself. However, sculpture

is definitely becoming a thing, even though our

studio is not super interested in trends. I think

people are buying less junk these days, and so

instead of spending $100 on 10 crap items from

distant parts of the world, you buy one beautiful

piece from a local artist—it’s sustainable and

much more of a personal object to have in your

home instead of a mass-produced item.

Tell me about the series and how they develop,

like the Ghosts, Bricks and Mountain Mine

series. RELIC also seems to have a mysterious

origin story...

I have always loved sculptures, local folk art,

brown ceramic money banks from the 1970s—

my home is full of that stuff, so I think it’s just

a natural extension of creating characters and

moving in the physical, three-dimensional

direction. I have worked as a character designer

for 18 years now, doing children’s TV websites,

animation, visual identities, children’s books and

more, so creating creatures in clay is just another

medium for my work.

Regarding RELIC, our A/W 2018 collection,

I was inspired by the Danish museums I grew

up visiting. My parents took me to all these

buildings around Denmark that were designed

in the 1960s and housed ancient viking masks,

swords and ships—old objects but exhibited in

very modern, boxy surroundings, with exhibit

glass displays dressed in fabric with different

panels and small notes about the item and

year. Something that was cool then, but today

looks sort of dated—which I love! So I kind of

wanted to take that feeling of old and new and

see what came out of that. I’m also interested in

digging into my own Northern heritage and my

ancestors’ dimension without it looking like an

episode of Vikings on HBO.

What kinds of experiments or innovations

have happened in your studio that you are most

proud of?

I’m still proud of our Ghosts—the little cone in