Erasmus, Peter Behrens School of Architecture and Design, Düsseldorf (DE), 2017–2018.
Bachelor’s, Industrial Design & Advanced Ceramics, ISIA Faenza (IT), Cum laude, 2014–2018.
Designer in residency, Creative Residency Arita (Japan), January–March 2024.
Main lecturer in Natural Materials in Ceramics, The Material Way, January–June 2024.
Fellow Researcher, LINA x TU Wien, Vienna, October 2023–August 2024.
Tutor, Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam (NL), September 2023–June 2024.
Ceramic researcher, Bruno Baietto’s In Bones We Dwell, Dordrecht’s Museum (NL), 2023.
Ceramic workshop specialist, KABK, The Hague (NL), January–August 2023.
RAW.obj, Pioneers in Ceramics, Prinsenhof Museum Delft (NL), February 2024–ongoing.
Conversing with Matter, Princessehof Museum Leeuwarden (NL), November 2023–ongoing.
In Presence of Your Absence + RAW.obj, Open Studios, Rijkskademie, Amsterdam (NL), 2024.
In Presence of Your Absence, Hong Kong Design Institute (CH), January–May 2024.
In Presence of Your Absence, Milan Design Week, ADI Design Museum, Milan (IT), 2023.
Vestiges, Alcova, Milan Design Week, Fuorisalone, Milan (IT), 2023.
In Presence of Your Absence, Material District, Utrecht (NL), 2023.
Raw.obj, The Future of Art Making, Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten (NL), 2022.
Ciona Are Doing Well, SVA Bio Art Lab, New York, 2022.
SPAZIO 1/2: Worskshop “Clay Dialogues”, Drop City, Fuorisalone, Milano (IT), 2022.
Sea Silt, collaboration with Humade, Ceramics Museum Princessehof, Leeuwarden (NL), 2022.
Conversing with Matter, DAE75!, Fuorisalone, Milano (IT), 2022.
Conversing with Matter, Rethinking Plastic, Yksi Expo , Eindhoven (NL), 2022.
Conversing with Matter, Design Fest Gent, Design Museum Gent, Gent (BE), 2022.
Conversing with Matter, From the Ground Up, Material Source Studio, Manchester (UK), 2022.
Conversing with Matter, Design Open, Kazerne, Eindhoven (NL), 2021–2022.
Conversing with Matter, Dutch Design Week 2021, DAE Graduation Show, Eindhoven (NL).
Ciona Are Doing Well, Interspecies Futures, by Oscar Salguero, NY Center for Book Arts, 2020.
Award, Young New Talent, Material District, Utrecht (NL), 2023.
Grant, Creative Residency Arita, Japan, Stimuleringsfonds, 2024.
Grant, Building Talent, Stimuleringsfonds, The Netherlands, 2021.
Nominee, Gijs Bakker Design Award, Design Academy Eindhoven, 2021.
©Benedetta Pompili 2024
For collaborations, workshops, courses, talks, or informal chit-chats feel free to contact me at:
info@benedettapompili.com
Raw.obj
In Presence of Your Absence
Conversing With Matter
FU Review Berlin N11 Still
Sea Silt by Humade
FU Review Berlin N10 Restoration
BC/99
SILT Studio
Crú
Reclaiming the domestic and everyday spaces
Single fired porcelain wares, various sizes, 202
Developed during three months of residency in Arita (Japan), the tableware collection focuses on the Hama, one of the most ancient and applied technologies in Arita. Consisting of a porcelain disc made to shrink under the porcelain ware, the hama prevents the warping and cracking of the porcelain during firing. By design, after one use, it is tossed away. The linearity of the life-cycle of the hama as well as the recent closure of the only hama maker, have become an issue for the community. While working side by side with the local craftspeople and applying the porcelain of the area,the project aimed at enhancing the circularity of the cycle and raising conversation around the topic. As the local knowledge focuses on the making o fine tableware, HAMA is a porcelain family designed within the sizes of the traditional hama, to reuse nd prevent its waste.
On the one hand by reusing hamas already fired and thrown away by designing the sizes of a tableware collection to perfectly fit them after firing, so that the hamas can be reused as lids, coasters and holders.
On the other hand, the project included the remaking of the hamas and adding interventions that allow the shrinking plate to perform its function but adding future uses of it preventing its waste. By applying holes or indents, the hama after firing can become incense holders, drippers, hangers.
In Japan, porcelain is graded depending on its whitenesses. HAMA gives to each type equal space and presence by matching and mixing them in the collection. A playful and hidden aspect of the making process, common to each porcelain despite the grade, unifies the different shades: the light pink hue of the porcelain after bisque. Like the hama, the shade disappears after the last firing. The challenge stood in reproducing the bright and warm “bisque pink” despite the cool and dim tones given by the iconic reduction firing of Arita craftspeople. Started as a playful element, the reproduction of the bisque hue became a way to stop in time the actual composition of the most applied types of porcelains in the area.
Prinsenhof Delft Museum
Single fired and raw glazed earthenware, various sizes, 2023.
The project adapts on 3D printed earthenware vessels the ancient single firing technique, which consists on obtaining a sintered and glazed ceramic object with only one instead of two or three firings. The process drastically reduces the energetic impact of the manufacturing process.
Raw.obj combines the traditional knowledge of the craft, as the technique requires a set of technical skills and practice, with digital making. It pushes the technique to its limits by raw glazing thin 3d printed clay walls aiming at showing the applicability and functionality of the process.
Single firing was supplented by bisque firing before Modernism to make reliable replicas whilst in need of mass production. Bisque ware is less fragile, can be moved within distant facilities with less loss and it can be more easily glazed by untrained workers. The project invites to reflect and question standardied manufacturing processes. The single firing technique, among others, manifests the importance of keeping alive the know-how, with a particular propension for art and collectable design. The raw glazing represents an important aspect to reflect on, looking ahead in time, for the ceramic industry to cherish within a growing environmentally sensitive path.
In occasion of the exhibition “Pioneers in Ceramics” ATMuseum Prinsenhof in Delft (NL), the 3d printes Maas river clay is enriched by a baby blue underglaze made with 1% Cobalt Oxide in honour to the “Delft Blue”.
Relief of black mould spore ‘stachybotrys chartarum’, stoneware and asbestos glaze, 30x60 cm, 2022.
The series of ceramic reliefs depict a micrograph of the black mould spore ‘stachybotrys chartarum’. This specific species is found to grow on asbestos, a highly toxic material used within domestic and industrial construction.
The panels are glazed with ‘Quenched Asbestos’, a glaze composed of treated absestos and recycled glass, developed during the Techfellowship program of Rijksakademie in 2022.
- ADI Design Museum
- Lamp, porcelain, glaze
- made of treated asbestos,
- steel beam, LED, perspex
- tube. 33x33x20 cm.
In Presence of Your Absence is a lamp-assemblage, composed by a translucent porcelain diffuser and upcycled architectural parts. It invites to look through the core of the project: a ceramic glaze made by treated asbestos.
The design promotes circular modes of production while supporting the research to counter the issues related to asbestos. The asbestos-cement, composing the 70% of the glaze, becomes inert through a low-temperature treatment, which in turn reuses local chemical waste. The patented process is the result of a collaboration with the research center Asbetter Holding (Rotterdam, NL), focusing on reducing the toxic impact of asbestos fibres.
The project was shown at the ADI Design Museum (Milan, IT) in occasion of the echibition “Italy: A new collective landscape”, curated by Angela Rui, Elisabetta Donati de Conti, e Matilde Losi, as an example of regenerative design.
Realised in collaboration with sunday morning EKWC, Wetering, and Asbeter Holding.
Graduation project for Design Academy Eindhoven
The relative abundance of clay on earth overshadows its finite nature and the damages caused by its extraction. Starting from the conversation with the clay on the potter’s wheel and along the making process, the material research Conversing with Matter on the one hand explores the economic, social, and technical aspects entangled around the mining and the making. On the other, it proposes an alternative journey to making while minimising the countereffects of the extraction.
The research starts by investigating the reclamation of clay from the local sludge of the river Maas. The employment of river clay has multiple sustainability aims. A gradual harvesting method allows the riverbanks to clean and regenerate, keeps local colours, textures, and properties while promoting a refamiliarisation with regional river bodies. River clay urges to care for what goes dispersed into urban waters as clay absorbs and tracks the chemical contamination encompassing it.
The marbling with a common studio clay, a white stoneware from Germany, allowed for an easier application of the wild clay body, otherwise uneasy to manage. The conversations between and with these two clay bodies on the potter’s wheel materialise in an archive made of pots inspired by Jacoba jugs. Mirroring the nature of the two clays, Jacobas were traded from Germany, the origin of the stoneware, to the Netherlands, where the river clay came from. Due to shipwrecks, many Jacobas still lay down in the river bed. The inspiration from the archaeologic findings was thought as a way to tell the stories of the materials and highlight their geographial origins while crafting a shape to archive the process. Potters say that to start understanding the clay on the potter’s wheel it is needed to throw at least one hundred pots. Hence, one hundred samples of conversations were led.
By collaborating with a local research centre treating asbestos-cement and turning it in safe silica, the second part of the research explores the application of the by-prodcuct of the treatment of asbestos as a filler in the clay. This uncommon grog, thought of as such for the first time, strenghens the body of the clay while reducing the quantity of material needed. It in fact can substitute the 50% of the amount of clay needed. The material exploration was materialised in a set of 450 wall tiles, configuring the architectural and insulating possibilities of the composition while in dialogue with the uses of asbestos in the past.
Commissioned by the Dordrecht Museum
"In Bones We Dwell and For Yours We Wait" presents a collection of porcelain pieces that revive the original recipe for bone china—a type of porcelain traditionally crafted using bone as a key ingredient: Historically associated with luxury and high prices due to its aristocratic properties, bone china has been prized since its creation in England in the mid-18th century for its white, thin, and highly flexible nature, with its components often being of significant value. It typically includes 50% cow bone ash in its composition, which adds strength and gives it a recognizable milky white colour.
In this project, the bone material from the Dordrechts Museum's archaeological archive has been incorporated into the traditional recipe. The archaeological findings are calcined and utilized as a component to produce the porcelain. The result challenges the qualities of the original recipe, questioning the luxury status of a material built on whiteness and stability, and delivers a new porcelain material with a sandy quality and unexpected behaviour.
By transforming forgotten and unused bones into a durable material, this project aims to initiate discussions on the enduring relevance of Tussenbroek's paintings and his exploration of death as a creative impulse. It underscores how, throughout the 20th century, our interaction with the deceased and their remains has remained concealed yet undeniably present, especially in a post-COVID era.
The resulting pieces, including plates and vases, juxtapose the ambience of the paintings with objects commonly found in the traditional interiors of bourgeois Europe. This reclamation emphasizes the inevitability of our human mortality, even when obscured by societal norms. The objects that surround us serve as witnesses to our inevitable decay.
- Designed and developed
- with Eleonora Toniolo
- Editorial design: Benedetta
- Pompili, Eleonora Toniolo
- Printed in Berlin on
- printed FSC paper, 2023.
STILL is the eleventh issue of the independent literary journal FU Review Berlin (DE). As with each issue of the journal, a main theme, stillness, represents the core of inspiration for the selected artists. "Remember that STILL is not always quiet. Find STILL in the way the narrator seems to catch his breath. Look for STILL in the vastness of the landscape, the unspoken words, and in the way the language seems to slow down time. Find STILL even in the continuity of chaos, unnoticeable only because it takes up the entire room.
In this issue, the digital artworks of Tabitha Swanson accompany the poetries and proses of Aya Al-Telmissany, Christian Beltran, Gamze S. Saymaz, Kitty Doherty, and Moses Hubbard.
The editorial design of the journal has been curated by Eleonora Toniolo and Benedetta Pompili, with the help of the editors in chief, since 2019. The design was thought to smoothen out the readers’ experience of the journal, that had been abruptly changed multiple times in the previous issues. The typographic choices and the grid are designed for a pleasurable and airy reading with a sensitivity to detail. Each issue is unique, as the design is lightly adapted to the temporary main theme and the practice of the visual artist, changing as well for each edition.
⠀⠀⠀Special thanks goes to the JFKI Alumni Association, whose generous support made this publication possible.
Ceramics made of regional sludge, 2021, The Netherlands.
Sea Silt is a material research and ceramic product developed by the Dutch design studio Humade. The designers, renown for their kintsugi repair kit, extended their environmental research on local clay bodies. In particular, Sea Silt applies to make ceramics a sludge originating from Groningen, otherwise applied to build dikes. Containing sault and shrinking like porcelain, the material represented a chalenging material research for Humade. After two years of development, their Sea Silt collection of tile is now tested for production at Tikelaar Makkum (NL).
Selected by Humade and the Stimuleringsfonds “Building Talent” commission, the assignent consisted in assisting Gieke and Lotte for developing their publication, thw new tiles and vases, as well as helping with the digital and material production for their solo show at the Princessehod National Ceramic Museum in Leeuwarden (2022).
- Designed and developed with EleonoraToniolo
- Visuals: J.M. Lemohang
- Printed on FSC paper, Berlin, 2023.
FU Review N10: Restoration showcases a selection of Audrey Lorde's touching letters and poetries from the University Archive of the Freie Universitat Berlin. The publication hopes "to encourage others to explore and examine Lorde’s writings, correspondence, and lectures in future projects." It was our design choice to keep the scans of the original untouched.
The archival documents accompany new writings from Eric Abalajon, Indie Laras Bacas, Victor F. Breidenbach, Onyedikachi Chinedu, Iva Damjanovski, Taiwo Hassan, Shalom Kasim, Yaa Konadu, Arbër Selmani, Charika Swanepoel, Ilias Tsagas, and Allison Whittenberg.
The editorial design of the journal has been curated by Eleonora Toniolo and Benedetta Pompili, with the help of the editors in chief, since 2019. The design was thought to smoothen out the readers’ experience of the journal, that had been abruptly changed multiple times in the previous issues. The typographic choices and the grid are designed for a pleasurable and airy reading with a sensitivity to detail. Each issue is unique, as the design is lightly adapted to the temporary main theme and the practice of the visual artist, changing as well for each edition.
Special thanks goes to the JFKI Alumni Association, whose generous support made this publication possible.
- EDIT Naples, 2023.
- As part of the Young Dutch Titans, a selection of seven designers based in The Netherlands, BC-99 was on show during the design fair EDIT Napoli in occasion of the 2023 edition, curated by Domitilla Dardi and Emilia Petruccelli.