Fernando Durao. Argentine Ceramicist.
My name is Fernando Durao and I am an Argentine ceramicist living in Buenos Aires Province. A potter by trade for more than 30 years. I invite you to read a bit of my story in ceramic art.
Pure Forms and Studio Ceramics in Buenos Aires
Behind every piece I make on the wheel lives a quiet commitment to craft and quality. For 35 years I have been making studio ceramics with a standard that has not changed: that handmade work means not leaving details to chance. That craft and the search for form must have the rigor of the trade and the experience behind quality craftsmanship.
1990 — The beginning
From the day I saw, at a ceramic art exhibition, a demonstration by a master potter, and saw what could be done on a potter’s wheel, I knew I wanted to dedicate myself to the potter’s craft.
Time showed me it was not as simple as knowing I liked pottery: I would have to learn many other things besides technique. But that is very long to explain, and I prefer to leave it for long conversations with those who are interested in my outlook.
1996 – 2012 — The groundwork
For more than fifteen years I designed and produced handmade tableware for some of the most important decor houses in the country: Laura O., Casa Chic and an extensive network of decor stores across the country that chose my work for their collections.
It was a time of intense production and deep learning. It was also a time when my name did not appear on the pieces — it was a condition of working with those brands. The tableware circulated under their names. The craft was mine, the signature was not.
That period taught me everything about technical excellence in handmade ceramics. And it also taught me the value of authorship.
2015 – 2022 — Passing on the craft
Intermittently during those years, I taught pottery classes. Teaching the wheel is one of the most demanding ways to understand what you know — it forces you to break down every gesture, every pressure, every decision that becomes automatic over the years.
Those classes sharpened my view of the process. And they confirmed something I already knew: that the potter's wheel is a craft that cannot be learned quickly or faked.
2022 — My own collections
Starting in 2022 I made a decision that changed the course of my work: to dedicate myself exclusively to small, slow-paced productions, with my name on every piece.
That is how the collections of Black, Quartz y Moradores — decorative vases and sculptures in handmade stoneware ceramics fired at 1200°C (2192°F) were born, with my own glazes developed from years of experimenting with metal oxides and specific fluxes.
Every piece comes off the wheel by hand. Every glaze is a formula of my own applied with a brush. Every firing produces results that never repeat exactly the same way. And every piece bears my signature.
Today Fontenla — one of the most important references in interior design in Argentina — sells my work. And Hugo Di Marco, a leading figure in Argentine interior design, has exhibited my pieces at Casa FOA. Two relationships built on respect for craft and authorship, where my name has always been present.
Present — Ongoing research
The work doesn't stop at the collections. I keep researching clays and glazes continuously — new formulas, new temperatures, new reactions inside the kiln. Research is a constituent part of the process, not an add-on.
Slow production is not a limitation. It is a choice. It lets every piece that leaves the workshop be exactly what it has to be — without hurry, without compromising for quantity, without giving up judgment.
That is what it means to make studio ceramics in Buenos Aires today.
You can follow the daily pulse of the workshop on Instagram @alfareriadurao.
And see the available collections in the shop.