Dinnerware 2024

by Dani Krahe

“My ceramic works are centered around themes of mortality and peaceful earthly departure, often through expression with underglaze painting, sgraffito, and other surface decorations. Through my education at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and my career in pottery, I seek to identify what makes a good death. All living things share inevitable expiration in common, so how can the fear and anxiety that is so common in modern societies be assuaged? I believe that planning, creating a peaceful environment (whatever that means for the individual), and a person’s right to choose how they pass on from this world are all essential steps to relieving this very human tension. What better way to capture this expression than with a medium that will exist long beyond its creator? Knowing that pieces of nature and humans that have lived and died before me exist in the clay and glaze that I use instills a deep passion in me to be intentional with all that I create.”