Little Forest Studio

Small ceramic studio that celebrates the beauty of nature through art. I make a lot of teapots and love experimenting with new stuff! Sometimes I like to see things explode >:3

[chamerionstudio]

🍄Welcome to the blog!🍄

- I am 21 yo British/Russian ceramicist based in St Petersburg

- This is a blog where I share insights into my work, tips and tricks that I learned along my journey and silly little experiments that I do sometimes.

- I love nature in all of its forms and I take inspiration from a lot of things I see in my daily life. Mushrooms, moths, cool rocks… you’ll see a lot of random stuff

- I experiment with mixing different clays and different glazes. I’m always up to see if something blows up in the kiln hehehe

- Please feel free to ask me anything and I will try my best to give the best answer I can

🍄 Important information 🍄

- I try avoiding conversations about politics. Please do not ask me political questions

- Please be respectful. This blog does not tolerate discrimination or hate speech of any kind

- I do not engage with any ai generated content. Please do not submit it/ tag me in it etc.

- Please feel free to share your work in the ask inbox as well. I love promoting the work of other creators and I’d love to see what my followers are up to :3

- Stay safe, stay healthy and stay creative!

[chamerionstudio]

Some of my paintings :3

The first two paintings are from my photos, the two boats are from my dad’s photos and the rest are from my head.

The last one is very dark so it’s hard to photograph but the idea is that it’s the sea at night. It’s easier to understand if you zoom out

[chamerionstudio]

your art is so cool

Thank you so much!!! I’m really glad you like it :3

[chamerionstudio]

Some new stuff coming soon 👀👀

[chamerionstudio]

Some of my less sucessful cups…

You might be wondering, well what went wrong? Lemme tell you….

- my main issue is that I didn’t do glaze tests in advance and never tested how these glazes would combine together. So while in some places they blended in just fine, the blue and pink glazes on that smaller cup just did not work together well. Also the lilac glaze on weird cup below doesn’t look lilac at all… it just became transparent. Perhaps I layered it too thin as well

- the black and white cup is a mix of black and white porcelain. I actually did do tests for that one, but in the end it just lookes muddy rather than marbly if that makes sense. I need to use a different mixing technique next time however, it means I will have to minimise any touch ups later so as to not mix up the pattern. Also the clear glaze on this one flopped

- The brown cup on the top was meant to be coal black (the clear glaze flopped once more)

- the vaguely green cup was supposed to be blue and consistent throughout

- the cup with the brown and blue gradient is my only sucessful cup from that batch and is actually the cup I use for my morning tea :3

[chamerionstudio]

Some little forest creatures in progress :3

[chamerionstudio]

Once upon a time I used to build structures / altars in the forest….

Icl it’s such a relaxing activity because there’s birds chirping all around you, random bugs and plants everywhere. Truly a great way to connect with nature. How I wish I had irl friends who would do weird forest shit with me huhu

I used to make tiny fires but this year I want to make a bigger structure where you can make an actual fire and cook something (using fire safety ofc)

[chamerionstudio]

So this is the counterpart to Vönésyötti albeit, a tiny version of it. Unfortunately I broke a bit of its tail off :(

But fear not! I’m planning to make a bigger and more detailed one soon hehehe

The Vönéräigner (Finnish phonetics) is a type of carnivorous deer that feeds on anything that moves. When you first see it, the deer might look harmless, but one wrong move and you’re dead in seconds. It has three jaws, each one has three rows of teeth. It also has two big claws on its legs and its tail/horns are covered in tiny razor sharp spikes. It can rearrange, break and even remove its own bones to fit into tiny spaces. Its limbs, despite being so weirdly shaped are extremely powerful, allowing it to run at insane speeds and jump higher than most living being. It allows certain mushrooms to grow on its body, eg. mushrooms that glow in the dark with a sickly blue light. The creature hunts primarily during the night and rarely attacks villages (although it very much can). Apart from being virtually unkillable it is thankfully, very rare.

[chamerionstudio]

BEHOLD MY SON

My favourite creature so far just because for once something turned out exactly how I intended it to. There is a lot of lore behind it but I’ll add a small summary at the bottom

In my mythological world, this creature is a type of herbivorous deer that lets mushrooms and moss grow on it as a defensive strategy. The reason for that is because its whole design is meant to mimic another type of deer, which just so happens to be an apex predator of the forest. The Vönésyötti (Finnish phonetics) is a harmless creature that slowly roams the forest in search of food during the night time. Its limbs aren’t as bendy and misshapen as that of its counterpart therefore, its movements are limited and at times painful. It forms a mutually beneficial relationship with the scarlet cup mushroom but can also host some other smaller species. These beings can live for hundreds of years however, they get slower with age and at some point their death comes simply because they are no longer able to move at all. There’s more lore ofc but that’s the short summary hehehe

[chamerionstudio]

Little forest spirits that wear mushroom coloured hats to blend in with their environment. They’re called Grishki and their job is to watch over moss and help insects. Sometimes they can bite :3

The clay that I ended up using ate all of the colour so they look much darker than they were supposed to. Gonna use a lighter coloured clay next time

[chamerionstudio]

Some experiments where I mixed several different clay types with different shrinkage rates, to get the marbling texture and see if anything cracks

Nothing cracked and actually I think they came out pretty neat. I fired everything at 1200c even tho one of the clays had a max firing temperature of 1050 (or smth like that). They did bend slightly but I suspect that is because of how I dried them… whoops

I made a few porcelain buttons too. Like a lot… like maybe 100… and also a bunch of pendants that I might show later

[chamerionstudio]

Some plates I did last year… I didn’t rly know how ceramic paints work so they came out much darker than they were supposed to

This was my first time making plates on the pottery wheel and I think I did pretty alright (in my very humble opinion)

[chamerionstudio]

👁️ The eye cup 👁️

I was listening to TMA while working on the pottery wheel and decided one simply needs to make an eye cup.

[chamerionstudio]

Some fungi and plants that I’ve encountered recently :3

The black mushroom is called Urnula hiemalis, it’s quite rare in my region so this was a fun find. The rest are your classic wood decay fungi

I find detached fruit bodies on the ground sometimes and I take them home. I have acquired quite a collection now hehe

[chamerionstudio]

Do you ever just make something and think “wow I could genuinely only do this for the rest of my life”….. well this is that thing for me. These were so fun to work on and I absolutely love how the came out (even though there’s still a lot of details to work on).

These will eventually be pins (for the bigger circles), necklaces and earrings. Below are some mock-ups of how it might look when they’re done (I will replace the metal hoop with a smaller silver one on the leaf). I really want to lean into the gremlincore/ goblincore aesthetic and make more nature themed jewellery and trinkets cuz this is genuinely bringing me so much joy

[chamerionstudio]

More mushroom jars MUHAHAHAH

The clear glaze that I used didn’t turn out exactly how I wanted it to but alas :3

The smaller mushroom jar had a problem where the top of the cap randomly detached after it dried. I used a low temperature clear glaze to stick it back on and after the utility fire it was all good, however it did create this uneven texture that you can still see, even below the glazes. Ngl I like how it turned out in the end

[chamerionstudio]

Shroomies!

My local ceramics shop started selling clay samples and so I may have made questionable financial decisions but here we are :3