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
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, lowers the CO2 impact of the transportation, keeps the connections with regional colours, textures, and properties. River clay urges to care for what goes dispersed into urban waters as clay absorbs and tracks the chemical contamination encompassing it, promoting a refamiliarisation with river bodies.
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 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.