Emelie Grönvall

Children’s creativity inspired a brand new career.
Emelie Grönvall’s interest in clay and creativity began when she started working at a preschool. The children’s joy while making objects piqued her interest in trying it herself, and a ceramics class ultimately launched her new career as a ceramicist. Now she is releasing a collection of pots for Markslöjd.

Emelie is a creative ceramicist. Through her work with clay, her aim is to awaken curiosity about materials which she can twist to resemble something else. At the preschool where she worked, the children got to play and create with clay. Watching the kids use their unencumbered imaginations to make objects made her so curious that she decided to take a ceramics class, which is how she began her own path as a ceramicist. From thinking of clay as strictly utilitarian, she now thinks in sculptural and experimental terms. She decided to study at Capellagården on Öland and the Academy of Design and Crafts at the University of Gothenburg. Emelie now runs her own company and has a studio in Gothenburg.

Her greatest source of inspiration is storage at home, where both form and function must be given equal weight. Emelie explains that her designs for Markslöjd were originally based on the basic shape she uses when making many of her objects.

When designing the pots, she was thinking primarily about the home and storage possibilities. She wanted them to fit into different environments and rooms, which meant that uniting form and function was key in order for the pots to be useful for plants, for different kinds of storage, and simply for decoration. When asked how she thinks people will describe her as a designer in 10 years, she says that she hopes they see her intention to create balance between innovation, function and design. But curiosity is also a source of motivation as she creates and playfully navigates her path among colors, shapes and different materials. Mainly clay, of course.

NAME: Emelie Grönvall
PROFESSION: Ceramicist
LIVES IN: Gothenburg
COMING UP: A collection of pots for Markslöj