Six years ago, London-based Emma Szkolar took a sabbatical from her career in financial services and moved to Paris for three months, where part of the challenge she set herself was speaking French. “I've noticed that for some reason, as adults we just stop learning. We stop seeing the value in picking up a new skill whereas as a kid, you do that constantly. I had this revelation that there are lots of things I don’t know how to do in life but I can have a go at,” she recalls of that time, which she also spent in a studio, honing her pottery practice. “When I first did a taster course in ceramics, I was truly not very good. I don't even know if I enjoyed it much but I think I saw value in something that I had to work really hard at to get to a place of relative competency. What I like about ceramics now is that it’s an endless learning quest. I could be in my nineties, still experimenting with glazes and forms.”
So far, experiments have led Emma to create functional stoneware inspired by nature (for TOAST this includes vases, mugs and candleholders) and to shift her mindset from thinking of pottery as a hobby to, in 2020, setting up SZ Ceramics as a business – the result of friends’ encouragement during a Covid lockdown. “There's such pleasure in making bowls, mugs and serveware, things that people enjoy using day to day. Someone asked me recently what kind of pots I make and I replied that I think I make sad little pots,” she says matter-of-factly, referring to the earthy, smudgy tones of her storm mugs. “There is a melancholy to them and I think that can be a beautiful, comforting thing; I like the idea that someone can sit and wallow while drinking coffee in the morning.” It comes, she explains, from growing up near the coast in west Sussex, and those “gloomy beach days, which are sometimes the best, where the sea meets the horizon and it all blurs into one”.
All Emma’s forms begin with the wheel – one of her favourite parts of the making process. “Those days where I put my headphones on, get into a steady rhythm of throwing and listen to an audio book are so engrossing. I don't find it relaxing, which I know lots of people do, but I really am in the moment with the clay and that’s quite a peaceful existence,” she says, revealing that Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights is her current listen at the Leyton studio she shares with three other potters, including Jiayao Peng of PPP Lab (whose work is also stocked at TOAST).
Among the characteristics that make Emma’s pieces stand out are the often hand-shaped, waved edges. “I like the idea that a candleholder begins perfectly circular and then I add little twists or flourishes to make it more interesting and accentuate the handmade qualities. It's funny because when I started, I wanted to show how capable I was by making everything exactly as it ought to be. Then I realised, I was basically making pieces that looked factory-made, and what is the point in that. Now, I crave those imperfections. I like it when the glaze doesn't look as thick or when it pools around where my fingers have moulded the edge of a vase. I want to add kinks that show off the fact that something is made with my hands.”
In her spare time, Emma goes to the occasional dance class, something she once considered seriously as a profession. “I always had this battle between creative and academic subjects. I ended up going down the law route, putting my creative self in a box until I got to a point in my twenties where I felt a bit lost. That’s when I realised that I’d stopped having hobbies outside my career. I started basic dance classes again, just for the joy of it, and there’s a real freedom in that.” What would she like to try next? “Glass-blowing. Now ceramics is a business, I do feel like I need to get back on that train of learning something for the sake of it again.”
Emma wears the Cotton Poplin Wrap Shirt and Lia Garment Dyed Boat Neck Tee.
Words by Emma Love.
Photography by Lesley Lau.
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