Plays of Difference

Jiayao Peng cycles to her ceramics studio in Leyton every morning, down quiet lanes and over the canal. By now, the environment has taken on a familiarity, and passing the trees and rippling water everyday feeds her imagination, a visual journey through the irregular geometry of organic materials. 

Under the moniker PPP Lab, Jiayao creates sculptural pieces honed with supreme technical skill, delicately molding each piece by hand, before painstakingly carving her signature shapes. Her morning journey is realised in her work through undulating textures, variated glazes, and rippled slip decoration. No two of her hand-built objects are the same - from drinking vessels and butter dishes to incense sticks and candle holders - each inviting a subtly nuanced way of holding the piece in your hand. 

When Jiayao was a student at the Jingdezhen Ceramic University, China, her wheel-throwing tutor did not demonstrate the process. Instead, he lectured, teaching his students that making ceramics is about feeling. “I close my eyes while pinching the clay,” Jiayao says. “In repetition, you understand the feeling of the material.” 

Ceramics is uniquely positioned in Jingdezhen, a city celebrated for its centuries-old porcelain-making traditions. Known as the ‘porcelain capital,’ the city has produced fine ceramics for over a thousand years. At Jingdezhen University, students immerse themselves in traditional craft techniques with innovative approaches to ceramic design and engineering. “There’s so much new technology, but people still use the old, traditional ways of making,” Jiayao tells me. 

After completing her BA, Jiayao spent a year building her portfolio before making plans to leave China. The library at the university was full of magazines from the 1950s, where Jiayao was able to delve into modernism, lighting often on the Bauhaus style, which drew her to Europe.

Porcelain heritage has made Jingdezhen a tourist capital for both national and international travellers, so the Chinese government has invested in the city’s infrastructure, making an ideal creative environment for potters. Jiayao draws parallels between the city and Stoke-on-Trent, but says it's clear that the UK has not invested in its own ceramics capital in the same way. When Jiayao moved to the UK, she made a pilgrimage to Stoke-on-Trent, to discover more about English ceramics. “I couldn’t even get a taxi at 9:30pm at night. This would never happen in China.” 

Now, Jiayao works at Studio H in Leyton, a female-founded ceramics collective with three other emerging potters, including SZ Ceramics. The energy that communal working brings is important to Jiayao’s practice. While she makes, she listens to hip hop and rap music. “It drives me to a fantasy world, where I can make in rhythm.”

For Jiayao, making art comes from a place of joy. “Artists can be extreme people,” she says. “They say if you are in the depths of despair, you make amazing artwork. It’s not true. All my pieces come from happy hours - times of joy.”

Henry Moore's exploration of space and form, designed to be viewed from different angles, is a major influence on Jiayao’s work, evident in her sculptural forms which invite a new interpretation with every view. Jiayao is interested in how others might use her pieces, and how functionality can shift across cultures. Despite the meticulous skill that goes into each piece, she is not overly particular about the final product or its end use. “I want my pieces to encourage role playing,” she says. When I ask her what she means by this, she points to a small vessel. “I meant this to be for soju, but people in England wants to put eggs in it,” she laughs. She gestures to a wine glass where the stem flows around a large hole. “This was actually a mistake,” she says. “But accidents bring good outcomes.” 

This interest in experiential difference speaks to Jiayao’s own background. Navigating the cultural differences between China and the UK has been key to her product development. She tells me that the incense and candle holders included in her collection for TOAST would have never been made in China, because people don’t burn open flames in the home, as, historically, residences were not fireproofed. Incense, too, is only burned at temple, covered by a perforated lid.

Cultural differences continue to provide new opportunities for the maker. Ceramic cups and mugs are necessarily larger in the UK as we require space for adding milk to tea, a practice unheard of in China, while her butter dish, a rounded form with pinched side, would be rendered obsolete in China due to the absence of it in typical cuisine. For Jiayao, intuition, not rules, is key to the making process. “It’s about natural flow,” she says. “I don’t strategise how to create my designs, it just comes naturally. Then I keep going until it feels right.”

Jiayao wears the TOAST Seersucker Check Round Collar Jacket, and Suki Wool Cotton Seersucker Check Trousers.

Discover our collection of PPP Lab ceramics. 

Words by Lauren Sneade.

Photography by Aloha Shaw.