Chocolate fizz or Strawberry lemon pie, Baby Jane or Peaches and cream – nothing will cheer you up like the Copenhagen-based independent design studio of Studio Arhoj who creates colorful ceramic. But it’s not magic, it’s craft and chemistry.

Located in Copenhagen, Denmark, Studio Arhoj is run by founder Anders Arhoj, who began his work in interiors and design while studying in Tokyo, Japan in 2005. After moving back to Denmark he began operating a small design studio from his apartment in Vesterbro doing graphic work, identity, branding and kids illustration – and eventually moving into the world of ceramics.

– I worked for many years as a designer and a kids book illustrator but I started getting problems with my neck and back from sitting down 12 hours a day. I’ve always liked character design but never liked plastic so when I met a ceramicist through friends we started talking about doing something together and he liked my designs. We started to hang out and experimenting. I brought drawings and he threw them. That’s how the ghosts were born, ten years ago. That’s the first product we did, and still one of the most popular ones, says Anders Arhoj.

By 2013 he was able to officially start Studio Arhoj in an old envelope factory in Islands Brygge, a former industrial and dockland area just outside central Copenhagen. Today all of their stoneware are thrown in the studio from scratch.

Pieces of pottery have survived for thousands of years, all because clay met fire. The temperature needed to transform soft clay into hard ceramic is extremely high and is usually provided by a kiln. Firing is the process of bringing the clay and glazes up a high temperatures. The goal is to heat the object to the point where the clay and glazes becomes ”mature”— meaning; where they have reached their optimal level of melting. To the human eye, pots and other clay objects do not look melted because the melting occurs on a molecular level. This process is usually accomplished in two steps: bisque firing and glaze firing.

– Glazes are made from a mix of glass and clay, basically. That’s what makes the glaze stick to the clay when you fire it very high. It’s like a chapter of itself. It’s a lifelong journey to learn about clays. But basically it starts in the mountains – old, old minerals that have been weathered through time and millions of years, then dug up from underneath the earth or from the mountains and finally been polarized and refined in different plains, in different places of the world to make raw materials. Then it’s all a chemical reaction and a very complicated process where you need to control a lot of different things, depending on what glaze, what materials you glaze, what temperature of heat and the compound of the materials, says Anders.

So the choice of recipe  is based on what ”bread” you want to bake?

– Exactly, and how you fire it too. You’ll get different reactions if you fire something very quickly or very slowly, how hard you fire and how fast or slowly you cool it. So it’s a difficult process if you want to make sure that you obtain the certain result that where imagining.

Your pottery is all different from one and other?

– We have like 200–300 different products and each one has a certain glaze. Everything is made just by hand and with every piece it’s like painting a canvas. With every item you get the chance to create something unique.

But at the same time that can make things hard too. For example, if a store or a costumer wants something specific, because in this kind of production that’s nearly impossible to control. You don’t really know what’s going to happen inside the kilns. It’s very hard to control ceramics, compared to, let’s say fashion – because it’s not just to sew something.

Elaborate…

– I mean, I don’t know many fashion designers that are that good at sowing to begin with. The really good ones, like Alexander McQueen, he could start to drape and sew immediately but he was technically educated at Savvy Row in London, that’s why he knew what he was doing. And I think that is also why the best architects are the ones with an education in building or construction work.

If you know where the boundaries are you can push them and you can play with them.
For us, the process of making a piece from start to end result, takes about a month and there are so many different stages in the process so it’s really hard work. And again, the end result is always hard to control. You really need to learn the craft.
That’s why many of the people here have an education in design but when they start here they have to start from scratch, even if they have taken a five year ceramics course. People don’t know a lot about the practical stuff, it’s all theory these days. We’re studying and writing reports on design, art and crafts but we don’t really know what we’re talking about.

What’s your opinion regarding sustainability in the design industry?

– We try not to order a bunch of stock of something that’s made elsewhere and get stuck with it. It’s better for us to be on our feet and make the products here, and if a trend changes or a customer wants something different we can adjust what we are doing and even start a whole new series. And we are sustainable in the way that we don’t import huge pallets from China and put them somewhere in a warehouse. We only make the items that are being ordered and we also recycle everything that ended up bad to make new products.

And there’s so much bull shit in the business and overall, in general. People talk about themselves and what they want and then do nothing. If we only would admit what we’re actually are doing. People are talking about buying organic, about the importance of sustainability etc. and then just watches Netflix and goes on holidays. And that becomes a problem for us. If people don’t buy our products we’re out of a job, so if we should be super sustainable we should stop making stuff and go out planting trees, but that’s not going to pay the rent.

How do you decide on which stores and retailers to work with?

– That’s like a constant weekly discussion. I mean, if you sell to everyone you will make a quick buck but your brand will soon be dead, but if you only take a chance on certain ”smaller” stores and they buy almost nothing you’re also dead – but cool.

If we would try to go big, I feel like we would be kind of like the cool new tv-show of the season and then, in three months time everything’s on sale – ”next!”. It’s better to build up long relationships with stores and retailers that you believe in.

Any plans for the future?

– We will do a collaboration with a big American brand later this year which is going to be our biggest thing so far, but what it is is still a secret.

And we’ve always dreamed about having a tiny, tiny factory inside an airport with just one wheel and a tiny kiln, producing only ghosts. But it’s impossible to get in at the airports. You have to know and meet the right people and put up like a million dollars on the table.

But wouldn’t it be a perfect fit for the new Copenhagen airport?

– Yeah, they’ve talk about it but they also want the money. And the rent is ridiculous, we would never be able to pay it.