Inspired by Venice Lagoon, our design is a contemporary and unique revisitation where some elements of the Japanese “wabi-sabi” aesthetic tradition merge with an elegant and sober style, natural materials and neutral colors as Scandinavian main traits.

©TheFreakyRaku ceramics

The Art of Imperfection

Worn out objects seem to have a history of their own that reveals itself in every single blemish caused by wear and tear.
Plates with broken edges, cracked little bowls, marked tools… In those small defects we see its uniqueness: there isn’t another one like it. For us, imperfection is an added value and it’s priceless.
We’ve started to use the word freaky when speaking in Italian, here and there, and often someone would ask “What did you say?!”- “Freaky! You know, something which is unusual and a bit odd.
Absurdly imperfect!”.

Freaky is the cracked plate left aside because it doesn’t match the others any more. But for us, freaky has become more than just a word; it’s another way of approaching what is around us.
Perfection doesn’t exist. In our opinion there is a variety of beautiful imperfections which make things and people unique. But it’s also the passing of time that plays a fundamental role in this vision because it inevitably changes every single thing.

We’re not saying anything new, the Japanese aesthetic concept of Wabi-Sabi is based on the temporariness and on the imperfection of things.
Nothing is perfect – Nothing stays forever – Nothing is incomplete: beauty is linked with the transience of things and with the effect of time.
We found a perfect example of this kind of aesthetic in Raku ceramics; from the first time we learned about it, we've loved this technique and its firing process, which is something like an event where all the primordial elements such as water, wind, earth and fire combine together in an equilibrium that is given both by a bit of chance and a bit of chemistry. The impossibility of perfectly foreseeing the results is, in fact, part of this technique.
Raku is not simply making objects, it’s an ongoing experimental process that is viscerally linked to Nature.

We’ve built our kilns in our garden, near the bamboo thicket, and when the sun goes down we wait for the evening to arrive. That is the perfect moment to remove our bright red heat works from the kiln and to see the thick cloud of smoke covering the garden like a mantle of fog.
In the silence of the night, our expectations are always fulfilled by all those small setbacks that make each piece unique. Raku means finding great pleasure in those moments because they contain the core of this ritual. We strongly feel that beauty often lies in the freedom of being able to surprise ourselves with the unexpected.

The “freaky raku” is a project about the search for beauty that can be found in the uniqueness of anything that is not perfect.
Every object has its own story, its own time and its own soul.