Throbbing Stillness Vessel by Maru Meleniou is a highly esteemed winner of the very prestigious 2022 Bronze A' Design Award in Fine Arts and Art Installation Design Competition Category.
BronzeFine Art· 2022
Throbbing Stillness Vessel
Client: Maru Meleniou Ceramic art &design lab
Bronze A' Design Award Winner in Fine Art Category
Verified Award Winner
Verify Award Status for #136403The Design
About Throbbing Stillness Vessel
Throbbing Stillness is part of a series of vessels exploring abstract ideas, concepts and existential questions. The paradox of Throbbing Stillness is that instead of the expected functionality of a flower vase, it implies the existence of a space capable to contain further communication with the viewer. Through its organic form it manages to transcend the rigidity of the medium and it seems to be vibrating with vital energy. Its shape and color highlight concepts such as emptiness, potentiality, expansion.
The Recognition
About the Bronze A' Design Award
Throbbing Stillness Vessel is a Bronze A' Design Award winner, a highly prestigious recognition granted to outstanding designs distinguished by creativity, ingenuity, and astuteness. Bronze winners are amply skillful and strikingly creative artifacts that authenticate the vast experience, imagination, and resourcefulness of their designers. Throbbing Stillness Vessel is expected to be a highly regarded, admired, and cherished object that is notably professional and innovative. This Bronze A' Design Award-winning design incorporates best practices in art, science, design, and technology, and is excellent for its attention to detail. Throbbing Stillness Vessel splendidly satisfies needs, touches desires, charms feelings, and appeals to curiosity.
Interviews
Grand Interview
Your innovative approach to ceramics in Throbbing Stillness Vessel challenges traditional vessel functionality - could you elaborate on how the concept of containing 'nothingness' shaped your creative process?
The idea of containing “nothingness” guided me to focus on the vessel’s inner space rather than its function. Instead of holding objects, it holds quiet potential. Through the slow coiling process, I shaped the form around this void, treating emptiness as something alive and meaningful. The organic shape and imperfect whiteness emphasize this subtle presence. Throbbing Stillness aims to invite viewers not to use it, but to experience a moment in time where emptiness balances between existence and stillness, a space of uncanny familiarity.
The organic form of Throbbing Stillness Vessel appears to transcend the rigidity of ceramics - how did your exploration of Kenya Hara's work on 'White' and Zen Buddhism influence this delicate balance between form and emptiness?
Kenya Hara’s writing on “White” and the Zen concept of emptiness encouraged me to see form not as something to define, but as something always in the process of becoming. Instead of shaping the vessel into a perfect, controlled object, I allowed it to develop an organic, almost breathing presence. The choice of color follows the same principle: the whiteness of the surface is not meant to be pure or flawless, but a quiet, open state that creates space for the viewer’s perception. Zen reminds us that emptiness is not absence, but potential.
As a Bronze A' Design Award winner in Fine Arts, Throbbing Stillness Vessel masterfully combines ancient coiling techniques with contemporary artistic expression - what inspired you to choose this traditional handbuilding method to convey your modern artistic vision?
I chose the ancient coiling technique for its slow, meditative rhythm, allowing both the form and myself to develop gradually, like a living organism.
Behind the Design
Press Kit
Credits, team members and technical details provided by the designer.
- Unique Properties
- Throbbing Stillness is not the vessel that flowers will be beautifully arranged in. Throbbing Stillness is a vessel that aims to contain abstract ideas, thoughts and images. A vessel that contemplates the concept of "vessility".
- Dimensions & Packaging
- Height 40cm
- Tags
- Sculptural vessel, Naked ceramics, Contemporary Ceramics, Handbuilt ceramics, Raw minimalism, Slow design
- Production Technology
- It is a hand-build ceramic vessel, with the coiling technique, an ancient technique that involves creating forms without a pottery wheel, using the hands, fingers, and simple tools. That way small details, differences imperfections and qualities mirror the honesty of the creative process. A slow almost meditative process that after years of practise creates a unique relationship between artist and medium.
I used stoneware clay and painted it with porcelain slip, glazed and fired at 1220C - Design Challenge
- The most challenging part was to work on the piece as much as I would not manipulate clay to the point that it would lose its properties and its own life and substance. To create an object that carries the message powerfully. An object simple in form and yet not simplistic.
- Research
- I am interested in the materiality of my medium and I wish to highlight its raw nature and properties. After practising with a variety of colors and glazes I realised that all this would be a kind of cover up, making it hard for the medium to carry its message. So I decided to move forward with my material being almost naked.
- Inspiration
- My inspiration comes from the book White by Kenya Hara, Zen Buddhism and the human body.
In the field of ceramics, one creates forms to contain the emptiness. The purpose of a vessel is to hold nothingness within, a purpose greater than its function. White is delicate, fragile and from the moment of its birth it is destined to be “polluted”. My vessel is not trying to be a perfect white, rather it carries a layering, in an attempt to search for a way to feel whiteness.
A vessel, a human heart, a vital organ, or a musical instrument always inhaling/exhaling, pulsating in a space of closeness and familiarity yet distant and unknown. A space out of time, far from personal feelings and agendas that is dedicated to personal contemplation. - Project Duration
- Throbbing Stillness was created in 2020 in Athens, and was exhibited in Milan Design Week 2021 at 1000Vases
- Operation Flow
- Human beings are designed to communicate.
We define ourselves through relationships and interactions with our environment, with others, with the objects that surrounds us.
Throbbing Stillness is a unique object that aims to offer a space for connection, an invitation to interact. - Image Credits
- Image No1, No2, No3 No4 Nikos Koustenis
Image No5 Maru Meleniou
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