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- Hi, my name's Elizabeth Di Prinzio of Earth and Element,
and I am a Los Angeles based ceramicist.
Earth and Element is a ceramic studio,
and we're inspired by nature,
and we try and bring those elements into your home.
We create colorful, functional, day-to-day use tableware.
It's a really beautiful relationship
between food and plating.
You have your plate that you've made with your bare hands,
and you've created this beautiful meal with your hands,
and you combine the two, and it just makes
the experience so much more beautiful and organic.
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The way we make our plates is,
we roll out a large piece of slab.
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We then take our plate template
and we cut out our plates.
We then take the clay and we throw
it down on our plate mold.
From there, we bring down our jigger arm.
And the jigger arm has a profile tool connected to it,
so once you pull it down, it actually starts
molding and shaping the plate.
From there, we adjust the plate a little bit,
we put it out in the sun to dry for 30 minutes.
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So, first when I'm making a cup is, I measure out my clay.
And usually with my cups, I measure out about a pound.
From there, I throw the clay on the wheel,
I wet my hands, I wet the piece and I just get to work.
The first thing you wanna do is cone your piece up.
So, when you're coning, it looks like a little cone,
and we're doing that just to get all
those weird little air bubbles out.
So, once you do that a few times,
you then bring the cone down into
this little birthday cake, is what we like to call it.
Take your two thumbs, insert it into the middle
of the piece, and you're gonna start pulling
the walls out and creating your bottom of the cup.
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From there, you're gonna start pulling the walls up,
and this is what gives the cup its height.
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I then cut out all my little moons,
and I attach those moons one by one by hand.
What we use is we call it, slip,
and it's basically, it's like the potter's glue.
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What's so important about a mug,
is people start to get attached to their mugs,
and it becomes their everyday mug,
and it becomes their morning ritual,
and it's how they start their day.
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With a bowl, you really wanna make sure
that the shape is something that's easy
for someone to hold, and easy to eat out of.
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I really try and make sure that the bowl is really round,
and that it feels good in my hands.
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Trimming is basically cleaning the edges
and the rim of either a bowl or a plate.
Just so that it's smooth and it doesn't scratch.
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Once bone-dry, it gets fired for the first time.
When we fire, that's at around 1800 degrees,
and it becomes what we call bisquewares.
Bisqueware is fired pottery that is ready for glazing.
Once the bisqueware comes out of the fire,
we sand the piece, we put it back on the wheel,
and we wax parts of the plates, and parts
of the pieces that we don't want glaze to touch.
So, that would be the bottoms of cups,
the rim of a plate, and the rims of bowls.
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After the pieces are waxed, we then mix our glaze,
and we have all of our colors in each
of their own glaze bucket, and we mix each one,
just to make sure all those elements and compounds
are mixed well together,
and that it gives one beautiful coat to a piece.
A lot of our plates and our cups have this stripped design.
So, we keep that design going, and we dip half the plate,
we let that dry, then we dip the other side.
And it creates like, this stripe in the middle
of all of our plates and bowls.
What's so special about a plate is,
it's almost the canvas for a painter.
Especially when we're dealing and working with chefs
and designing for their restaurant and what they're cooking.
They're playing with colors, they're playing with textures.
So for them, it's also really important to have something
that's just as beautiful, and looks well
with what they're making and what they're cooking.
Once we have everything glazed,
it enters the kiln and we fire
at 2200 degrees.
It'll fire for about 12 hours overnight,
and then the next day we let it sit
for about five hours to cool down.
Once it reaches around 2, 300 degrees,
we start like peeking and taking pieces out.
The clay is called speckled buff clay.
And those pop up during the glaze firing.
You can't see them during greenware or even bisqueware,
you see the final product once it comes out of the glaze.
After we take those fired pieces out,
we have to sand every single piece,
make sure the bottom is smooth,
that way it doesn't scratch the surface of somebody's table.
From there, we pack it, and we ship it out to our customers.
What makes us unique from other
pottery studios, is our colors.
We're not afraid to color outside the lines,
and redefine what tableware should look like.
Some people have a relationship with their food,
they have a relationship with their favorite sweater,
and I think there are a lot of foodies and chefs
and people like me, that have a relationship
with their tableware and their favorite cup.
A cup, a bowl, a plate to me, is something that
you use every single day, what we drink and eat from
is really important, it's how we start our day,
it becomes part of your day-to-day ritual.
And so, I think it's really important
to love what you eat off of.
That's the best part of this whole thing,
is bringing joy to other people.
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