Erna Aaltonen is a Finnish studio potter renowned worldwide for her hand-built sculptural vessels. Her simple elegant forms of coarse stoneware clay with rubbed oxides on their rough, pitted surfaces are for many collectors the very face of the contemporary Finnish aesthetic.
Her work is marked by a supremely elegant conceptual minimalism. “Round, abstract, sculptural forms fascinate me. They have always been central to my work. I always build my works by hand from thinly rolled, ribbon like strips of clay that I join edge to edge. The work progresses slowly, layer by layer. I use neither the potter’s wheel nor molds. I have always been drawn to a variety of colors and they figure prominently in my work, especially the colors and surfaces of the glazes and the transformation that takes place in the kiln. Ceramic art is for me the ideal opportunity to combine form, color and surface structure into one continuous whole.”