FLORENCE PENAULT

AVAilable pieces

about

Lives and works in Boston, USA

Florence Pénault is a French artist whose natural and organic ceramic pieces have been inspired by the Buncheong style, a Korean technique from the late 14th century. This style is known for using white slip applied freely on stoneware.

Florence was also inspired by the philosophy and works of the English artist and designer William Morris (1834-1896) “The true secret of happiness lies in taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life. ... Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful”, and of Soetsu Yanagi (1889-1961) “The Unknown Craftman”. She then decided to create only functional pieces, light and simple for the everyday life.
As the Korean Buncheong ceramics had been a great source of inspiration to her, as was the roughness and the colors of the granitic rocks of Brittany where she grew up (…). Florence started working in clay in 2004 in Connecticut. “In my childhood I met the mysterious world of some potters in the middle of a magical forest in Brittany, it was very romantic to me, it looked like the perfect life. Later, while I was a student in Art History in Bordeaux, France, I studied the history of ceramics and did a memoir on the techniques of Bernard Palissy, a famous French ceramicist from the 16th century. So I always have had an interest in ceramics but it was only when I went to the USA that I was able to put my hands at work with this wonderful material called CLAY”. Most of Florence’s ceramics are thrown for the most part. They are in brown stoneware covered with a white porcelain slip and then decorated with pigments.

Each piece is then unique, with some looked after “perfect imperfections”.»