About me
I am Marie Martin. I grew up in the French Alps, in a house that was always full, full of people, full of noise, full of ordinary moments that only become precious later.
My earliest memory is a sheep transhumance stopping every year right outside our door. I have been collecting moments ever since.
At ten, I received a pottery wheel toy for Christmas. I loved it immediately, but could barely use it because of the mess. Fifteen years later, I left Europe for China, breaking away from the expected path. One of the first things I did was find a ceramic studio. My teacher spoke no English. I spoke no Mandarin. We worked in silence, and I learned more than I expected.
I spent eight years learning technique in China, then four years in San Francisco exploring materials. After a decade of daily practice across many different studios and different countries, I knew this was where I belonged.
To work as a ceramist is to be in my place. There is nothing else I would rather do.
What the work is about
Memory is at the heart of everything I make.
Not nostalgia as a retreat, but memory as a way of paying attention. Of saying: this mattered. This person, this song, this recipe, this moment. I write words into clay because clay lasts.
What we listen to, what we cook, what we read, what we say to the people we love. These are the traces of who we are. I believe they deserve to be kept. Each piece I make is a small act of preservation, a fragment of our culture fired into material that might outlast us all. A testimony left on purpose, for whoever comes next.
The words I inscribe are embossed, not engraved, raised from the surface so they catch the light. To fully experience one of my pieces, you have to come close. You have to touch it. The letters are made to be felt.
How I work
Everything is thrown on the wheel by hand or hand built with molds, in stoneware fired at 1250°C. The text is added on top using the same clay body, letter by letter. Two firings, long drying times, and the kind of patience that this material demands and eventually teaches.
No two pieces are identical. The glaze moves differently each time. A slight variation in the firing, a mark left by the hand.
My studio is currently based in Spain. Before that: France, China, California. The work carries all of these places, without always naming them.
