Handcarved from a single block of unglazed stoneware using the kurinuki technique — a slow, deliberate process of carving form from a solid mass of clay. Raw in surface and deliberate in form, each piece sits somewhere between contemporary ceramic sculpture and functional object.

The choice of creating these objects with kurinuki technique wasn’t coincidental. ‘Vilnius yra mokykla’ is built on a belief that real learning happens outside the classroom, in real life — in companies, on streets, in open spaces, in the uncomfortable and the unfamiliar. Kurinuki works the same way: you begin with a solid, closed form and slowly carve away what isn’t needed, until something unexpected emerges. The process is slow, at times uncertain, and the results rarely match what you imagined at the start.

For this reason, these sculptural vessels felt like the right gesture toward the institutions and partners who chose to be part of that hard work — organisations that opened their doors, their processes, their people, to a different kind of education. Like these ceramic objects, that kind of change is rarely smooth. It asks patience. It leaves marks. And yet what remains is a vessel. Something that can hold things.

Interested in a commissioned work for your project, company or event? Get in touch.

Photography and words are courtesy of Ondou Studio.