A machine that leaves decisions open
Floris Wubben's studio designs the equipment through which some of its ceramic objects take shape. Its account describes custom-built extrusion machines working in a balance with material behaviour and the designer's guiding hand.1
The tool therefore participates in the form. Changing how material is shaped can open a different set of possibilities before the finishing work begins.
This is a useful way to understand a practice concerned with both objects and production. A result can carry decisions made in the machine, in the material and through later handling. The workshop's method becomes part of what the viewer encounters.
A ceramic process reaches the table
The studio describes Hills Table through a combination of extruded ceramic forms and hand finishing. It places the table in its 2025 Frieze Los Angeles presentation with The Future Perfect, within a dining-room setting reimagined by Nicole Hollis.2
The furniture scale makes the relationship between process and object especially tangible. A table has a top, supports and a presence within a room; its making has to arrive at that larger arrangement.
Hand finishing remains in the studio's account. The shaped components continue through another stage of judgement as they become the final piece.
Different transformations, a shared interest
Stripped shows another way Wubben works with a material's possibilities. In his submitted description, a branch is split into three legs and its bark peeled and wound into a lampshade. A sequence of actions gives related material several new roles.4
Princessehof's Design #2: Licht exhibition offers a separate ceramic example: it describes Wubben working the surface of porcelain lamps with a gas burner to enhance their translucency. The transformation changes how the object can meet light.3
These examples keep the interest in making specific. A branch, a porcelain light and an extruded table ask different things of their materials.
Begin by asking what action helped the form appear. In Wubben's work, shaping, splitting or finishing can be the clue that connects the visible object to the tool and material behind it.