Ana iIlueca has set out to make sustainability her creative engine. Hence, everything that enters her workshop is likely to become a ceramic piece.

With Circular Surprise, the Valencian artist has taken the use to its maximum expression. The dishes that make up this collection are created with the mud that is produced when cleaning the brushes and the rest of your work tools, and when washing your hands.

“Remains that I recover and decant to reuse in a wheel that seeks to generate zero waste,” he explains.

«The clay is the sum of the remains of stoneware and porcelain used in the workshop. The enamel, the union of pigment residues and oxides that I have used for months.

The “ceramic rubbish”, he says, gives the end result an uncontrollable look. “I never know the final aspect of the pieces. This changes according to the residues. It is really exciting to open the oven and see the result. Quite a surprise.”

The pieces, created with remains of stoneware and porcelain, do not contain materials that are harmful to health, warns the artist, who is specialized in creating ceramics full of concepts and steeped in the traditions of Mediterranean cultures, which she investigates and interprets.

Like the rest of the collections, the circular Surprise pieces are made on a lathe, a tool that, he says, provides a direct connection with the material. In his opinion, the hands are “a powerful tool for generating new ideas.”

His commitment to his land and the Mediterranean is also expressed through ADN Ceramico, a project he directs and with which he vindicates the ceramics of the Valencian community. Hence, the project is part of World Design Capital Valencia 2022 and has been nominated as a finalist in the National Crafts Awards presented by the Government of Spain.