Fernando Durao — ceramic artist in Buenos Aires
There is a difference between someone who works with ceramics and a ceramic artist with real craft. Fernando Durao is the latter. Since 1990 he has worked at the potter's wheel in his workshop in Buenos Aires, producing design objects and decorative vases in handmade stoneware ceramics that have no equivalent in the local market. Thirty-five years of one language, refined without hurry.
The wheel as a starting point
Everything starts at the wheel. Not in a sketch, not on a screen — in the hands on wet clay. Fernando Durao is above all a potter: someone who knows the material from the inside, who knows exactly how stoneware responds at each stage of the process, what happens in the kiln at 1200°C (2192°F), how a glaze reacts on a porous or vitrified surface.
That knowledge accumulated over decades is what makes his pieces different. It isn't aesthetics — it's craft. The form of an artist-made vase is born from technical decisions as precise as the aesthetic ones: the thickness of the wall, the angle of the mouth, the weight at the base. Everything has a reason that is only understood after years of work.
Studio ceramics: what it means in practice
In today's market, “handmade” appears on anything. Fernando Durao uses another category: studio ceramics. It means that each piece is a complete artistic decision — of form, surface, texture and finish — made by one person, with no assistants, no molds, no series.
His decorative vases and stoneware sculptures are unrepeatable not only because the handmade process introduces natural variations, but because Fernando does not intentionally repeat himself. Once a piece leaves the workshop, that combination of form and glaze never exists again.
Three collections, one language of their own
Unikas Black — modern vases in black stoneware. Brush-applied textures that create movement and depth on the surface. Black not as an absence but as a presence: pieces of character that anchor any interior.
Unikas Quartz — handmade ceramics in white with a quartz finish. Mineral feel, living surface. The collection most requested by architects and interior designers looking for design objects for minimalist decor projects.
Moradores — abstract figures with a human form. The most sculptural collection: one-of-a-kind stoneware pieces that inhabit spaces as presences, not as decoration. The name says it all.
35 years of craft in Buenos Aires
Fernando Durao started in ceramics in 1990. He didn't come from design or academic visual arts — he came from the wheel, from clay, from learning by repetition and error. That path shows in the pieces: there is no reference in them to passing decorative trends because Fernando never followed them.
His workshop is in Lanús, Buenos Aires. He works alone. He doesn't produce on commission or copy other ceramicists' models. Only his own designs, in the sizes and formats he decides.
Buying work from a ceramic artist in Buenos Aires
Fernando Durao's pieces can be seen and bought directly in the online shop. There is no intermediary gallery or sales representative. Communication is direct — by WhatsApp or Instagram — and so is the dealing.
Free shipping throughout Argentina, with reinforced packaging for handmade stoneware ceramics.