The Everyday Objects
UTKU's newest pieces aren't knit, and they didn't come out of Ibarra. They're stoneware, thrown and soda-fired one at a time, and they come from the person who's been shaping this whole thing since day one.
A Lodo Bowl, fresh out of the kiln
A Second Material
Allison Carrasco Saurette is UTKU's co-founder and creative director. Born in Ibarra, now based in Winnipeg, she's the one who's touched every collection this brand has put out. What a lot of people don't know is that fibre isn't actually where she started.
She went to art school for ceramics and design, and that's where she first got her hands in clay, mixing glazes and testing firing techniques long before there was a business to apply any of it to. The knitwear came later. The clay never really stopped.
Not Just Pottery
Her practice moves around a lot: ceramics, slip casting, mould-making, textiles, light, installation. It's less "here's my medium" and more "here's what I'm trying to figure out," and the material changes depending on the question.
A lot of it comes back to the same handful of things: time, memory, the landscapes she grew up around in Ecuador, and what pre-Hispanic material culture might look like today if it had been allowed to keep evolving instead of getting frozen in a museum case. Same question the rest of UTKU is asking. Different material, this time.
Same Idea. Different Material.
UTKU's whole premise is asking what Andean design would look like if it got the same room to grow that European design always has. That question usually shows up here in wool and alpaca. Now it's showing up in clay too, just from the same person, working it out at the wheel instead of at the loom.
What's actually for sale, to start: one-of-a-kind stoneware bowls, soda-fired, each one glazed a little differently because that's how soda firing works. No two come out the same. More vessels are coming as the studio work continues. Everyday Objects is where they'll live.
— The UTKU TeamKeep reading: South American Design, the thinking behind UTKU's whole approach · Shop the pieces in Everyday Objects
