Meet Our Teachers

Chiara Zoppei

Chiara Zoppei (Milan, 1991) is an Italian ceramicist with an interdisciplinary background. She studied interior design and worked in photography for years before specialising in pottery wheel work. In 2019 she opened her first shared ceramic studio. Four years later she created Fuoco Blu, a cultural association founded together with Clara Holt, aimed at promoting the art of ceramics in Milano and beyond. Chiara seeks continuous expression and knowledge sharing, creating connections with people through the world of art and through manual work.

Rubén Mañas

Rubén Mañas is a ceramist from Badalona, Spain. He mainly teaches pottery wheel courses and his classes are designed to offer comprehensive and tailored instruction, teaching technique and the importance of proper body posture to optimise the process. His technical approach is based on years of experience and a deep understanding of the fundamental principles of pottery and ceramics. He began in 2018 at the Escola de Ceràmica de la Bisbal, located in Girona, Spain, where he had the opportunity to learn the basics of the pottery wheel. However, his quest for excellence did not stop in Spain. In 2023 he travelled to the Republic of Korea, where he had the chance of learning the basics of porcelain to the creation of traditional pieces, focusing on the Moonjar, a distinctive piece that has become his specialty.

Joy Elsa Hänggi

Joy is a ceramic artist based in Bern, Switzerland. A recent graduate currently establishing her own studio, she masters the wheel as well as expressing a unique artistic voice. Her work plays with the combination of materials and techniques and is firmly rooted in the history of ceramics, drawing inspiration from traditional techniques to create contemporary pieces that challenge conventional boundaries. Joy’s ceramics invite reflection on the interplay between utility and aesthetics. She explores the tension between everyday functionality and artistic expression, questioning when an object transcends its utilitarian purpose to become art—or whether it can embody both simultaneously. Through her work, Joy reimagines the possibilities of ceramics, pushing the limits of this timeless craft.

Clara Holt

Clara Holt is an Italian artist, born 1987 and raised in Pescara. She has a background in classical studies and graduated in neuroscience before discovering her interest for ceramics, specifically ceramics decoration, as well as print-making and etching. Clara has exhibited her work in Italy and abroad and is the co-founder of Fuoco Blu, a ceramics studio in Milan, a sharing space dedicated to ceramics where she teaches decoration techniques and complements commissioned work with personal pieces. In 2024 she opened a second small ceramics workshop in Genoa, by the sea, where she works and occasionally hosts art residencies. Clara's work focuses on storytelling, with the ongoing drive to convey stories, characters and experiences. These tales are inspired by mythology, folk traditions, legends, real or fantastic tales of the places she lives or explores. Stories handed down through tradition or emerged from the unconscious: full of symbols that speak of the most irrational and hidden sides of human nature. Autobiographical practice allows her to question her own identity, sowing symbolic clues without revealing transparent meaning. Her illustrations leave room for different interpretations, not limiting themselves to being purely decorative, but becoming the very essence of each piece. The search for harmony between form, technique, materials and illustration is an ongoing challenge for her.

Adele Williams

Adele is an experienced potter and teacher of wheel and hand building techniques, based in London where she has been a teacher for years at Clay Collective and Clay Time Pottery studios. Adele has a love for the fundamentals of ceramics, encouraging students to stretch their skills, and making work that is beautiful, functional, and part of the everyday. Whether she is digging clay to make clay forms and slips, creating ashes for glazing or experimenting with firing techniques, Adele’s work follows a desire to experiment and understand.

Anas Rifi-Zinati

Anas is a ceramic designer based in Barcelona. After studying interior and industrial design at Escola Massana, he opened his own studio, Espai Alfar, where he produces his own work as well as developing project for other designers. He is also a regular teacher at renowned Barcelona school El Torn. Anas’s work profile ranges from conceptual through to product design and his specialty is in large format throwing and slip mould production. Anas draws inspiration from his great grandmother who was a potter from the arid Mountains in Northern Africa. His work follow a philosophy based on responsible production, an enriching process and collaborations with other designers and artists.

Tatiana Melo

Tatiana is a ceramicist and trans-disciplinary artist from Barcelona. She uses clay as a medium to explore alternative practices around the current ecologic crisis and societal transformation, both through the creation of ceramic objects and through the use of clay as a sustainable construction material. She has also taught a variety of workshops around sustainable and collective construction, cooking, ceramics, and community. Tatiana has studied at Escola Massana in Barcelona, and mastered the ceramic craft at Escola de Ceràmica de la Bisbal with the teacher of teacher Dolors Ros. She has since worked on a variety of projects across related disciplines: ceramics, construction of ovens and kilns, bioconstruction for homes and collective spaces, as well as art education and transdisciplinary workshops for communities and youths. Since 2016 she has received a variety of awards and project grants from renowned institutions such as Hangar and La Sala d’Art Jove and the Barcelona Design Museum.

Leo Rousseau

Leonardo Rousseau is a ceramicist working in Brussels and raised in Paris. He makes all kind of tableware and decoration items, using different types of stoneware. All pieces are thrown on the wheel and each are unique due to this process. His recognizable style is both opulent and subtle. The surface of the ceramics are covered with unique glazes, resulting from personal research, giving them their refined and rich apparence. For the past four years, Leonardo worked as a teacher in several studios in Brussels. During this time, he mentored hundreds of students always with the same dedication to guide the students to the next steps.

Marta Vino

Marta Vino is an Italian ceramist. Born in the south, she currently lives in Turin where she set up her studio in 2020. She teaches wheel and glaze’s chemistry courses. As an artist, she works with an intimate approach to every piece she makes, constantly in dialogue with her childhood imaginary. She often travels around Europe to experiment with wood-firing techniques and likes to use wild materials.

Lisa Kosak

Lisa Kosak is a French-Belgian ceramic artist based in Berlin, Germany. In 2017, she founded Helka ceramics, a small label focused on dinnerware and utilitarian objects that highlight the thought, time and craftsmanship put into her practice. Besides her own production and commissions for restaurants and cafés, Lisa has taught hundreds of students over the past years and loves to see students take their first steps, experiment and play with clay.