From ancient Greek pottery to fine Chinese porcelain, the art of ceramics has endured for centuries. Across cultures and eras, people have been always drawn to the creative possibilities of clay. Whether shaped into everyday tableware or transformed into elaborate sculptures, clay remains a timeless medium with endless potential. And today’s ceramic artists continue to innovate, turning pieces of raw earth into incredible works of art and beautiful functional forms.
2025 has been a particularly exciting year for ceramics, with many artists throwing, molding, firing, and glazing incredible creations that push the boundaries of tradition and redefine what clay can be. Read on to discover our favorite artists and projects from the last 12 months.
Best Ceramic Artists of 2025
En Iwamura
Artist En Iwamura creates whimsical ceramic figures filled with playful expressions, unexpected forms, and richly tactile surfaces. His lighthearted works resemble charming doodles or characters from a children’s book, vividly brought to life in 3D. In his recent series, he’s begun experimenting with tile portraits, assembling flattened blocks of color like pieces of a giant ceramic jigsaw.
Iwamura lives and works in Shigaraki, a small pottery town in Japan’s Shiga Prefecture. At first glance, his colorful, character-like sculptures seem far removed from the area’s centuries-old Shigaraki ware. Yet each piece is deeply rooted in tradition. “I use the most basic and simple techniques with ceramics,” he tells My Modern Met. “I have no special tools or secret methods. I just do the same thing as ancient people. When I see my work for the first time from a distance, I start to think of these sculptures as unfamiliar artifacts made by an unknown person or culture.”
Kaori KURIHARA
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Paris-based Kaori KURIHARA creates colorful ceramic sculptures that look like otherworldly tropical fruits. She draws inspiration from the plant world, intrigued by organic shapes and nature’s infinite geometric repetition. Her stunning, hand-sculpted pieces feature an abundance of intricate, plant-like details that look familiar, but also surreal and strange. Texture plays a big part in her work, with many pieces featuring fruit “skin” with countless cell-like dimples, ridges, and nodules.
“I have a deep desire to make the fruit represented in my mind concrete and to be able to contemplate it through my own eyes,” KURIHARA explains. “With this in mind, I try to create pieces that are both realistic and dreamlike.”
Le Lu
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Artist Lena (known as Le Lu on Instagram) creates one-of-a-kind ceramic works that are both beautiful and haunting. Blending the worlds of tattooing and ceramics, her opulent vases, plates, and sculptural forms are adorned with illustrated memories from her childhood in post-Soviet countries. Each piece tells its own quiet story, inviting viewers to reflect on their own memories and experiences.
Her hand-sculpted Trash Bag Vase from 2025 explores capturing realism in clay, finding beauty in what’s often overlooked. Glazed in a glossy, plastic-like black, it almost looks like a real garbage bag. But when it’s used to hold flowers, the piece challenges how we see beauty, turning something disposable into something worth keeping.
“I have always been drawn to the darker aspects of life, and this is reflected in my art,” Lena admits. “Whether it’s a tattoo design or a ceramic piece, there is always an element of sadness or nostalgia present. I find beauty in the raw emotions that we often try to suppress, and I strive to capture these feelings in my work.”
Sarah Ritchie
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Sarah Ritchie is an independent artist based in Mohkinstsis, Alberta, with a background in archaeology. Her work celebrates the often-overlooked species that share our world, from moths and dragonflies to snakes and beetle grubs. Her illustrated vessels often feature embossed and sculpted designs that bring brilliant 3D texture to her work.
Ritchie’s Fossil collection from earlier this year featured a striking series of dinosaur skeletons etched into rich black and earthy brown clay. Each piece beautifully brings together natural and historical themes, uniting her archaeological roots with a love for experimental contemporary craft.
Ritchie’s collections sell out almost instantly, so sign up to her newsletter to be the first to shop her latest work.
Shae Bishop
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Virginia-based artist Shae Bishop combines textiles and ceramics to make a new kind of craft. He’s spent more than a decade creating ceramic tiles that he stitches together into bandanas, suits, hats, and other garments. Much of Bishop’s work draws on Western style and cowboy identity, exploring how fashion shapes ideas of gender and self-expression.
By using a fragile material like clay to build clothing associated with durability and “toughness,” he turns familiar symbols of American culture into beautifully detailed, wearable works of art that invite us to question stereotypes. “With a seemingly infinite power of reinvention, the American cowboy embodies every time, always changing and always the same,” says Bishop. “Cowboy never dies.”
Bishop’s work is currently on display at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Part of the State Fairs: Growing American Craft exhibition, the collection includes some of the most exceptional examples of modern American craft. If you’re in Washington, D.C., it’s open until September 7, 2026.
Ebony Russell
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Australian artist Ebony Russell is a ceramicist whose work showcases the incredible versatility of clay. Inspired by the art of cake decorating, she uses piping bags to sculpt whimsical forms adorned with thick, swirling, and colorful layers that look convincingly edible. Russell’s practice questions long-held ideas about cultural and artistic traditions historically labeled as feminine and therefore often undervalued. Through her work, she reclaims and celebrates the aesthetics of cake decoration, excess, and indulgence, exploring themes of pleasure.
Maryam Yousif
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Born in Iraq and now based in San Francisco, Maryam Yousif draws on a blend of cultural influences. Her ceramic figures explore Mesopotamian mythologies, histories, and artifacts, reinterpreting these ancient motifs with a contemporary twist.
Her Habibti series—named after the Arabic term of endearment—beautifully captures a balance between her personal and cultural experiences. The series features female figures in long dresses, inspired by ancient Sumerian votive statues once made to communicate with the gods on behalf of worshippers. Yousif reimagines these timeless forms in her unique style, adorning her ceramic figures with flowers, ruffles, and contemporary patterns.
Moran Trabelsi
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Artist Moran Trabelsi crafts elegant ceramic vessels inspired by seashells, underwater creatures, and other organic forms. Her pieces seem to move even while standing still, capturing the fluidity of the sea in sculptural form. Each sculpture is hand-built from a variety of stoneware clay using pinch, coil, and slab techniques. Trabelsi carefully shapes each form into a flowing silhouette, then layers and carves soft clay to create her signature shell-like curves.
“From an early age, I have been fascinated by the intricate patterns and infinite harmony of underwater creatures, which has always inspired my imagination,” reveals Trabelsi. “I aim to capture this fascination by creating magnified, oversized, and otherworldly versions of seashells. My sculptural language is formed by my attraction to examine living forms’ characteristics, engage with themes of fantasy, and create a sense of movement in a still-life object, using abstract curves and tilts.”
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