Generations : interpreting Iron Age ceramics
digital ceramics, 2025.
This is a collaborative investigation with ceramicist Anna Andersen that explores how generative AI can function as a creative tool in ceramic practice, supporting rather than replacing our creative decisions and material knowledge. We're working in dialogue with Iron Age vessels (500 BC - 400 AD) from Horsens Museum in Denmark. The artifacts we work with have been excavated from well-known burial sites like Hedegård as well as discovered at everyday construction sites.
What draws us to these pots is their complexity. Ceramics from this age were used for everything from cooking to burial rituals; they display nuanced regional styles, different types of clay, and decorative techniques. They are direct reflections of who made them and where they were made. We're not trying to recreate these historical forms, but instead asking: what new forms can emerge when we use history as material for contemporary design? What does it mean to work with "tradition" and “authenticity” in contemporary craft practice?
We use AI in our working process in two ways: "reconstructing" 3D digital forms from photographs and generating "Iron Age" vessels from text prompts. We treat these outputs as digital sketches, as design prompts for us. The creative decisions remain ours; generative technology helps us to expand our design sensibilities. We then physically build the vessels through clay 3D printing and hand sculpting. Our use of generative AI to has helped us to bring historical archives into our studio workspace; to create a digital-physical making practice that for us, supports our creativity and expands the possibilities of what we choose to design and make.
What draws us to these pots is their complexity. Ceramics from this age were used for everything from cooking to burial rituals; they display nuanced regional styles, different types of clay, and decorative techniques. They are direct reflections of who made them and where they were made. We're not trying to recreate these historical forms, but instead asking: what new forms can emerge when we use history as material for contemporary design? What does it mean to work with "tradition" and “authenticity” in contemporary craft practice?
We use AI in our working process in two ways: "reconstructing" 3D digital forms from photographs and generating "Iron Age" vessels from text prompts. We treat these outputs as digital sketches, as design prompts for us. The creative decisions remain ours; generative technology helps us to expand our design sensibilities. We then physically build the vessels through clay 3D printing and hand sculpting. Our use of generative AI to has helped us to bring historical archives into our studio workspace; to create a digital-physical making practice that for us, supports our creativity and expands the possibilities of what we choose to design and make.
3D-printed and hand sculpted earthenware, mineral pigment, wax, twine. Various dimensions.
Set detail.
Mug vase and Window jar; 3D printed and hand sculpted earthenware, wax and mineral pigment, 2025. 15 x 15 x 35 cm and 18 x 18 x 20 cm.
Detail, Mug vase.
Fracture pot and Ear urn; 3D printed and hand sculpted earthenware, wax and mineral pigment, 2025. 20 x 20 x 26 cm and 19 x 19 x 31 cm.
Detail, Ear Urn.
Wavy jar and Standing jug; 3D printed and hand sculpted earthenware, wax, mineral pigment, twine, 2025. 20 x 19 x 24 cm and 20 x 20 x 38 cm.
Iron Age clay jug fragment, from the collection at Horsens Museum.
Iron Age clay flask, , from the collection at Horsens Museum.
Iron Age clay pots, from the collection at Horsens Museum.
Iron Age clay jug, from the collection at Horsens Museum.
Iron Age pot, excavated in Horsens, DK.
AI-generated 3D model of an Iron Age pot.
Fracture pot; 3D-printed and hand sculpted earthenware. 20 x 20 x 26 cm.
Iron Age pot, excavated in Horsens, DK.
AI-generated 3D model of a “Danish Iron Age pot excavated in Horsens, Denmark.”
Window jar; 3D-printed and hand sculpted earthenware, wax. 18 x 18 x 20 cm.