Ceramika Matylda Builds Animals That Still Work as Vessels

Ceramika Matylda's ceramics take their forms from animals. Dogs, birds and creatures that resist naming become vessels, planters and lidded boxes. They are built as usable objects rather than ornaments, and the humour arrives through that use: a handle that is also a tail, a lid shaped like an ear. The joke sits inside how the thing works.

Humour is a risk in ceramics, where the distance between charming and dismissible is short. Keeping the function intact is what balances it. An object that is actually used lives under a different regime of attention than one on a gallery wall; it is handled daily and can break. Animal-shaped vessels are also among the oldest motifs in the medium, produced for both ceremonial and everyday use in antiquity, which puts this work on solid historical ground. What is added is the refusal to make it solemn.