Erasmus, Peter Behrens School of Architecture and Design, Düsseldorf (DE), 2017.
BA, Industrial Design & Ceramics, ISIA Faenza (IT), Cum laude, 2014–2018.
Founder & designer, vuur collective, Amsterdam (NL), October 2024-ongoing.
Designer in residency, Creative Residency Arita (Japan), January–March 2024.
Lecturer, Natural Materials in Ceramics, The Material Way, January 2024–ongoing.
Fellow Researcher, LINA x TU Wien, October 2023–August 2024.
Tutor, Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam (NL), September–June 2023.
Ceramic workshop specialist, KABK, The Hague (NL), January–August 2023.
Tech Fellow, Rijskakademie van beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam (NL), Jan-Dec 2022
RAW.obj, Pioneers in Ceramics, Prinsenhof Museum Delft (NL), February–June 2024.
Conversing with Matter, Princessehof Ceramic Museum (NL), Nov 2023–2024.
In Presence of Your Absence + RAW.obj, Open Studios, Rijkskademie (NL), 2024.
In Presence of Your Absence, Hong Kong Design Institute (CH), January–May 2024.
In Presence of Your Absence, ADI Design Museum, Milan (IT), 2023.
In Presence of Your Absence, Material District, Utrecht (NL), 2023.
Vestiges, Alcova, Milan Design Week, Fuorisalone, Milan (IT), 2023.
Raw.obj, Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten (NL), 2022.
SPAZIO 1/2, Drop City, Fuorisalone, Milano (IT), 2022.
Ciona Are Doing Well, SVA Bio Art Lab, New York, 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 (BE), 2022.
Conversing with Matter, From the Ground Up, Material Source Studio (UK), 2022.
Conversing with Matter, Design Open, Kazerne, Eindhoven (NL), 2021–2022.
Conversing with Matter, DDW2021, DAE Graduation Show, Eindhoven (NL).
Ciona Are Doing Well, Interspecies Futures, NY Center for Book Arts, 2020.
Grant, Starting Design Grant, Stimuleringsfonds, 2023-2024.
Award, Young New Talent, Material District, Utrecht (NL), 2023.
Grant, Creative Residency Arita, Japan, Stimuleringsfonds, 2022-2024.
Grant, Building Talent, Stimuleringsfonds, 2021.
Nominee, Gijs Bakker Design Award, Design Academy Eindhoven, 2021.
Font in use: Authentic Sans by Christina Janus and Desmond Wong.
©Benedetta Pompili 2024
vuur collective
Material Assemblies
Make no bones about
Raw.obj
Quenched Asbestos x Winnie Herbstein
In Presence of Your Absence
Conversing With Matter
In Bones We Dwell x Bruno Baietto
FU Review Berlin N11 Still
Sea Silt x 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 appliedtechnologies 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 of tableware, HAMA is a porcelain family designed within the sizes of the traditional hama, to reuse and 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.
Co-founded with Yuval Harel and Hannah Rose Whittle
2024-ongoing
The studio aims to be a ceramic workspace committed to the introduction of innovative and sustainable materials. It offers makers, artists, and designers a space to gain knowledge and develop sustainable and local materials for their own practice. The studio is a space for local research in the form of brief residencies, workshops, masterclasses, and lectures. These activities aim at making this knowledge more accessible outside of institutional frameworks.
Curated and tutored with Thomas Amann, Hannah Segerkrantz
Projects by Finn Blindow, Julia Cazar, Jacques Ernzer, Charlotte Eybl, Anna Gramm, Eugen Halbhuber, Benjamin Kislich, Martin Kohlbauer, Karolina Kolencikova, Beyza Koruglu. Sara Kosanovic, Ana-Elisa Kresitschnig, Elisa Kreuzer, Raman Levoshka, Marlene Melkus, Isabella Mundle, Lea Notsch, Jeremias Pointner, Charly Schneider, Paul Sebesta, Johanna Syre, Julius Wolff
Supported by LINA
2023-2024
"Material Assemblies" explored the bioregional resources of Vienna, focusing on alternative material narratives and sustainable infrastructures. The research was divided into four main categories: excavation, construction and demolition, food production, and agriculture. Students conducted site visits to production plants, construction sites, and museums, physically gathering materials and collecting data on their origins, locations, and availability. This data was compiled into fact sheets, contributing to a map of Vienna's resources, industrial by-products, and waste streams.
The project encouraged a deeper reflection on the ecological, cultural, and historical context of the materials. This led to a shift from simple cataloging to questioning the impact of material choices, especially on a large architectural scale. Students engaged in hands-on testing, experimenting with the materials’ properties, and creating small samples. They began crafting narratives around the materials, documenting their compositions and processes, and selecting those most suitable for scaling up.
The students scaled up their experiments in a 10-day workshop, producing small series of materials such as bricks, panels, and glazes. They worked collectively, inventing new methods and machinery to process the materials and experimenting with synergies between different materials. Each material was accompanied by a bioregional map detailing its composition and potential applications.
The final phase focused on documenting and testing the outcomes. Students collaborated with experts from TU Wien to test the mechanical properties of their materials. The results were compiled into product sheets, providing a foundation for future applications in architecture and design. The materials were presented at Vienna Design Week in September 2024, where they were used in the hospitality area designed by Studio Dreist, showcasing the potential of local resources.
2024-ongoing
Supported by Stimuleringsfonds
This project explores the history and evolution of bone china, from its invention by Thomas Frye and Edward Heylin in 1744 to its refinement by Josiah Spode in 1759. Thanks to collaborations with the Spode Archive Trust, Stoke-on-Trent City Archives, and other experts, historical recipes and letters have been uncovered, shedding light on its development.
Through archival research, factory visits, and interviews, the project has examined bone china production in both Japan and the UK. Key findings include differences in material composition—Japanese manufacturers use synthetic bone ash, while UK producers rely on natural bone ash. The visits to Stoke-on-Trent’s Wedgwood and Valentin Clays Ltd. further deepened this research.
Parallel to historical studies, the project is actively developing a vegan bone china alternative. With support from Susphos, a sustainable material called Phoenix Bond—derived from recycled phosphoric byproducts—is being tested. As production scales up in 2025, further experiments will refine this waste-based innovation.
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 standardised 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” at Museum Prinsenhof in Delft (NL), the 3d printed 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 treated asbestos glaze, 30x60x4 cm, 2024.
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
© Benedetta Pompili 2021.
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 Asbetter, a local research centre treating asbestos-cement and turning it 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 past uses of asbestos.
Commissioned by the Dordrecht Museum (The Netherlands)
"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.