Why Argilla NYC?

Argilla means clay in Italian. By choosing it as the name of my studio, I wanted to place the material itself at the center rather than my own name. Clay is older than us, yet inseparable from us: it has carried civilizations in the form of vessels, bricks, and tablets. In many cultures it also appears in the story of our own beginnings—human beings rising from earth, molded from clay, animated into life. Its simplicity is striking, and it speaks to how deeply clay is tied to our sense of being.

I am drawn to how constant clay has been through time. Civilizations have risen and fallen, but clay remains: carrying grain, storing oil, preserving stories pressed into tablets. Its forms shift, its uses expand, yet the material is the same. It is both functional and symbolic—ordinary enough to cook in, resilient enough to preserve archives, and meaningful enough to stand at the center of myths. Working with it in Brooklyn, I feel less like I am inventing and more like I am continuing—adding one more gesture to an unbroken chain of handmade ceramics.

Adding NYC situates that history in the present. A basement studio in Brooklyn where porcelain rings, confetti pitchers, and small stands for a single cupcake take shape. The name carries both sides—an old word, a new place, and a practice that continues to unfold between them.