Who is Queen of Cup ?

Elodie, the lady behind Queen of Cup, is a Parisian artist happily settled in the beautiful Pacific Northwest.

She’s retired from a 20 years career in fashion design and tailoring. One of her calling cards in the industry was her unique skills in miniature sewing. For example: creating all the costumes for the character “Coraline” in the film by Laika.

She now embraces her new passion: Ceramic.

Going from tiny minutious stitches to turning tiny little cups was very natural. Her passion for drinking tea led her to creating teaware, porcelain and stoneware her materials of choice for this delicate work...

...hours spent behind the wheel, centering lumps of clay, turning small vessels, firing, hand glazing delicate designs... a meditative practice bringing her a deep sense of peaceful delight that she hopes you will feel when using her creations.

Each cup is unique, each one a wish, a miniature blessing in disguise.

"I am fascinated by repetition and practice, doing the same thing over and over again. A feel for the perfect movement, the most natural hand gesture, like breathing or caressing, while slowly fine tuning my hand’s pressure, learning the clay’s rhythm on the wheel.

One cup after another, same design, each one a cup - but each one unique, like us, humans. Through hand glazing fine dotted designs, I find the rhythm of the dots, like drops of water from the tap, like notes of music in a melody. One little stitch after the other makes a whole garment. At what point does the repetition create the series? Where is the edge when repetition becomes boredom? When does boredom lead to creative break through? Pushing through repetition, practicing over and over to master an art. How many pieces? How many hours?

10,000 hours to become a Master. Many more to go! Many more cups and teapots, bottles and mistakes. Many more layers of boredom to peel off of my creative nature. “Practice makes perfect, but only God is perfect” is an integral part of ancient chinese art philosophy, where the artist would make the most stunning work, then add an imperfection out of respect to the Gods, creating contrast in the finished piece.

Being self taught, the smallest vessels made sense to my highly trained seamstress’s hands. I’ve allowed myself to explore mistakes made out of pushing the limits of my material and techniques. I discovered what happens when a tailor is given clay to work with: folds start appearing effortlessly, billowing shapes forming at the edges of my vessels.

So I resume my repetition, practicing to master, little human flawed by design, little cup imperfect by nature."

"After retiring from a 20 year career as a costume designer and tailor, I had to find another medium to explore my creativity. Being raised by a fine art sculptor (Beatrice Massa), clay felt like the most natural material to turn towards.

I had been introduced to traditional Chinese tea ceremony a few years prior and was fascinated by the fineness of traditional chinese tea ware. I felt drawn to turning similar tea cups and tea pots, so I built my own wheel and started turning clay.

5 years of my sewing career spent as a custom tailor for stop motion animation puppet costumes (“Coraline” and “Paranorman”) made it quite natural to turn small ceramic vessels. After a few months of practice, I was asked to sell my work, and took the opportunity to turn what I thought would be a hobby into paying job.

Over the years, I have developed my “voice” as a ceramic artist: black and white clay vessels (porcelain and black stoneware) covered in black and white raised designs, a rainbow of glaze, fine carvings, tea ware, sake ware, vases and other small vessels are now flowing off of my wheel daily."