Cape Town-based multidisciplinary artist and designer Jan Ernst’s ceramics take inspiration from the natural world and elaborate on the organic in transformative and visionary ways.
Text Robyn Alexander
Production Sven Alberding
Photographs Greg Cox
As a teenager, multidisciplinary artist and designer Jan Ernst said he had little sense of what to do after high school. “I was creative, but also very logical – and when my career guidance assessments arrived, the counsellor said my left and right brain scores were pretty much equal,” he remembers. “They suggested I study architecture.” That’s exactly what he did, but architectural studies were indeed the right choice for Jan, with their characteristic blend of creativity and practicality – drawing while doing maths, if you like – he never really felt like a career architect. The urge to create beautiful objects, perhaps more so to work with his hands, was too strong. This is how the world of architecture lost out, and ceramic design gained a new and remarkable exponent.
Jan emerged onto the diverse and vibrant Cape Town ceramics scene in 2020 with a series of organic yet otherworldly candleholders and candelabra that instantly caught the eye. Biomorphic and nature-inspired, his work’s playful, almost irreverent, felt delightfully fresh. Those early pieces formed the basis for his ongoing and very popular Forest Candelabra range and have subsequently been rendered in various materials other than white stoneware – in a range of bright and bold glazes and colours.
Immediately characteristic of Jan’s work was its combination of expressive, biophilic forms and a bold approach to colour – including embracing its complete absence – as well as his willingness to continually experiment with materials, methods, decorative finishes and the wide variety of objects he chooses to make. The fact that he grew up in a rural environment, surrounded by nature’s shapes, colours and rhythms, is clearly a major influence on all these aspects of his creative process and output.
Jan’s creations are nature-inspired, yet they also eschew obvious realism. Through exploration and alchemic play, they reach out towards a sense of transcendence that perhaps paradoxically conveys a sense of the power and grandeur of the natural world.
His work has appeared in prestigious international craft exhibitions, as well as in the pages – and on the covers – of design magazines both in South Africa and abroad. When we visited his studio, Jan was preparing both his Dubai commission and a substantial custom-made piece for a client in Singapore. Simultaneously, he was in the process of creating sculptural pieces for the Cape Town Art Fair. All in all, it’s very clear that many more uniquely beautiful things can be expected from this rising star of the ceramic world.