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Harnessing Earth and Fire to Create Natural Vessels

This article is part of a design feature on making the environment a creative partner in beautiful home design.


Based in St. Paul, Minnesota, Mitch Iburg makes ancient tableware, vessels, and sculptures primarily out of clay he digs from the earth with his hands (and a few tools). His two-and-a-half-hour drive of the truck into an open valley near the Minnesota River brings him home with about £1,000 (about £1,000). (He has a permit from his own mining company.)

Clay was not where his journey began. He was born in Wisconsin, across from Minnesota, and grew up in Iowa, Iowa. Mr. Iberg, 33, studied painting at his college in Coe, Iowa. But he had to take his 3D foundation class, where he developed an understanding of clay and its roots in nature and antiquity.

In 2015 he applied for a residency Cobb Mountain Art and Ecology Project In California, the studio was once on a bed of clay. And when he and fellow Cobb resident and now-fiancée Zoe Powell decided where to open their workshop, Studio Albium, he chose Minnesota in no small part because of his familiarity with clay. .

In addition to the earth problem, there was the fire problem. During his stay, Mr. Iburg was attracted to a specialized wood-fired kiln, which he continues to use. “My work varied in each setting, depending on the clay available and on the community of other wood-fire artists in the area,” he said.

Firewood firing results in different results depending on the type of wood used, how dry it is, and the amount of oxygen put into the kiln. The clay is usually fired without glaze and changes texture, color and pattern over several days.

For his wood-fired creations, Yberg mostly burns dead trees that must be felled for the safety and health of the forest. Or a tree that fell in a storm. Or traditional sawmill leftovers.

“At least we have it working,” he said.

Today, he fires approximately 40% of his work in a wood-fired kiln at St. Benedict’s College in St. Joseph, Minnesota.

About 20% of his ceramic objects do not use any heat energy and are raw. These works are made of clay in its natural state that he finds, including stone, wood chips, brick fragments, fossils and organic matter.

“If you put them in water, they’ll melt back into a workable clay. “So there’s this extra element of vulnerability.”

For more practical pieces, such as teapots, he removes the non-clay parts. “Firing the clay alone with these stones would likely result in catastrophic melting,” he said.

Iberg also works in an electric kiln in his atelier, but does not follow the common practice of firing the clay twice, before and after glazing. He formulates glazes that can be applied to raw clay and require only one firing. “This was primarily a decision to reduce our electricity usage,” he said.

Mr. Iburg’s work can be seen in several galleries and retail outlets. Tommy Zung, who runs a design store in Manhattan called Shop Zung, said he discovered Iburg on Instagram while looking for artisans with a “careful approach to craftsmanship.” He described Eyburg’s technique as “intimate and deliberate, from how the clay was procured to the meditative imperfections left to be accepted by the viewer.”

For now, Iberg said his unpublished work is “not forced or powerful, but a step that feels positive.” The moment he started making these pieces, “it took some of the pressure and the guilt away, so it made a lot of sense.”

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