CONTACT

BIO - CERAMICS

I'm Claire, the designer/maker behind Studio Lehmann. Based in Melbourne i’ve been making ceramics for about 9 years - on the wheel, by hand and slip casting - whatever suits the object.

Operating as Studio Lehmann, my ceramic practise spans product design, prototyping for clients, lighting design for commercial buildings/property, lighting design for exhibitions, curation and exhibition design.

Have a look around and contact me if you see something you'd like to buy or have a custom design idea.

My ceramic partnership with Jia Jia Chen is Fluff Corp. - together we use the material’s history to inform a range of ceramic activities, aiming to explore the connective and social potential of the medium, it’s intimacy and ubiquity in daily life and its relationship to food and design culture. We have been included in Melbourne Design Week 2019 and have another show for Design Week in 2021.

BIO - ART

Claire has an Arts Degree from Melbourne University with a major in Art History, specialising in contemporary art theory. She then studied Electronic Design and Interactive Media (EDIM) at Victoria University. EDIM is a New Media Fine Arts qualification which included 2D imaging, animation, sound design, interactive media design, immersive spatial design and 3D. After becoming more interested in physical sculpture, Claire went on to study a Diploma of Ceramics at Holmesglen, TAFE. Her arts practise has similarly evolved alongside study, shifting from painting, drawing and digital media, to object design, sculpture, lighting design, exhibition design and an interest in relational arts practises.

Ceramic lighting design for exhibitions:

Claire designs and produces porcelain lighting influenced by non-domestic objects whose design is purely functional and unmediated for human touch, such as plumbing, air-conditioning, heating and wiring. Claire takes cues from industry to shape the finest domesticated material; porcelain. Claire’s ceramic lighting stems from an obsession with luminosity, shape, texture, process, weight and material tolerance; she uses Bone China which is one of the finest, ‘purest’ and most luminous ceramic materials, but also the hardest to work with. Taking cues from industrial design to create delicate domestic objects relates to an interest in challenging the boundaries and assumptions around materiality in object design.

Residency:

After graduating with awards in ceramics in 2017, she was awarded a $20,000 grant to attend a residency at the European Keramic Work Centre (EKWC) in The Netherlands. This renowned program offers 10 international artist/designers a 3 month live-in residency with 24/7 access to assistants, technicians and cutting edge facilities to deliver large scale artworks in any material.

Fluff Corp. - Curation and exhibition design:

In 2019 Claire co-curated an exhibition with Jia Jia Chen for The National Gallery of Victoria’s Melbourne Design Week.

2019’s prompt was How can design shape the future? With most participants coming from architecture, industrial design and academia, the festival has an emerging technology focus. In this context, they wanted to offer a counterpoint to technology and question it’s effects on human experience, most notably the increased reporting on social disconnection and loneliness. Their exhibition, But First We Eat brought 160 random guests together over 7 nights and placed them in an immersive space to experience an ancient ritual of communal dining, sharing and community building.

The dinners showcased the ancient technique of baking food encased in clay in a gallery converted into a dining room, featuring the tableware, lighting and furniture of six contemporary designers. All of the food was wrapped in clay and cooked with fire, guests used handmade brass tools to break open the ceramic exterior to reveal an edible interior, which remained a mystery until this act of destruction.

By bringing guests back to basics and creating a temporary social group that had to share and experience a different form of eating, the show created a relational social experience which became an entity in it’s own right.

Claire and Jia Jia have funding for Melbourne Design Week 2021, their show, The Talking Ornament, is about colonialism and the role of public sculpture in community engagement and discourse.

ABOUT THE CLAY

I use a mix of different clays, mainly from Australia. If it hasn't been fired, all clay is reused and recycled.

Care Instructions:

My ceramics are all made from quality porcelain and stoneware clays and are twice fired to a stoneware temperature - 1240-1280 degrees celsius. They are nonporous, oven, microwave and dishwasher safe - having said that i would recommend a hand wash for peace of mind. Every item is unique. Slight irregularities in size, shape and glaze finish are normal and to be expected with a hand made product.