Devin Wilde, a Brooklyn native, has been experimenting with ceramics since he can remember, or at least since his musician parents can remember. At just 2 years old, they introduced him to sculpture clay, and he began messing around with it, pinching little figurines. “My parents were like, ‘Oh shit, those are actually kind of good,’” he tells Business of Home. “I developed this kind of tactile relationship with the material in that kind of nonverbal, unconscious way, similar to learning a language when you’re super young.”
The craft remained a side passion for Wilde until age 30, when he decided to swerve from his digital design career and make a go of ceramics full-time. He pressed Ctrl+Alt+Delete on his previous path, then applied and got accepted to a number of artists residencies, including at the Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Colorado and Penland School of Craft in North Carolina, before returning to New York to begin working on his first ceramics collection.
When designing the line, which was released last year, he employed his architectural training and took inspiration from the local cityscape. “I go around Brooklyn or [Manhattan] and take hundreds and hundreds of photographs of the close-up architectural details of various building facades,” says Wilde. “When you start to look at it, that’s when you start to realize, ‘Oh my God, there’s just so much here.’ You could spend a lifetime drawing from a couple of city blocks. I’ll take those photographs, and then they get distilled into the work that I’m making.” From there, he sketches various interpretations of those details, whether it’s a vase or side table. “I distill those hyperdetailed vignettes to their core in a postmodernist sort of way,” he says. He’ll sit on the sketches for a while, letting the ideas percolate until he’s ready to prototype in ceramic.
Wilde’s favorite piece in his inaugural collection is Vessel No. III, a vertical vase with dainty looped feet and a ring of bubbles on the rim. “I think it’s my favorite instance of detail as a functional structure,” he says. “For me, it was the best resolution of the various different architectural styles that I really love. It simultaneously feels rather ancient but also distinctly modern.” This piece, along with the rest of the collection, can be purchased through the artist’s website as well as at Lawson-Fenning and Spartan Shop.
In December, Wilde will be participating in a group show at Alcova Miami (alongside other artists who received the Wallpaper USA 400 Award this year), where he’ll display his debut collection in metallic glazes. He has also begun working on a new installment of side tables, which will reimagine his popular pieces on a larger scale while pulling more heavily from New York facades.
He’s particularly excited to be living out his childhood passion and being a part of the large artistic community in his neighborhood. “I think that at this point in my life, I am not trying to build anything too massive. I am looking to get to a place where I’ve got a handful of nice people and myself in a decently sized studio in Red Hook just working on making handmade, low-volume, really high-quality objects and furniture, and hopefully lighting as well down the road,” says Wilde. “I want to keep it relatively small, and just really focus on artistic and craft quality.”
For more information on Devin Wilde, check out his website or Instagram.
