From God’s own country to the vibrant state of Gujarat, Akshaya has always been nature’s child. Her connection to pottery seems to be fated as playing with mud and clay always appealed to her. Being an outdoorsy kid, her summer vacations in Kerala were spent in hills and beaches engaging with Mother Nature. Hence, when she sat at the wheel and touched the clay for the first time, she knew it was her true calling - “Clay feels like home to me!”
After graduating in Civil Engineering, she hopped on to Environmental Education as an intern. It was at a children’s pottery workshop in this internship that she noticed the art of pottery. Setting it up, she realized how interesting it looked and identified her artistic inclination. That’s when she applied for a postgraduate degree at IICD, Jaipur for two years. She learned product design in the material specialization of glass and mostly ceramic. After that, she moved to Bangalore for a year and a half to intern and work at Clay Station.
Gaining experience, exposure, and forging many connections, she finally opened her home studio 5 years back in 2019 - The Burrow Pottery! From her balcony to her backyard, this little studio now takes up an entire room at her parent’s home which is just 15 minutes away for her to indulge in the calm of her craft. This studio space is her ‘Burrow’ - A comforting safe space that is now on its way to expansion.
Each moment of the pottery process is different, where no two pieces and no two glazes are the same. Akshaya loves to indulge in this experimentation, where she uses a combination of wheel-throwing and hand-building (especially for plates) while having fun mixing oxides and creating colors. “Pottery keeps you on your toes” - She loves to play with forms and textures, and create pieces with a rustic minimal aesthetic, not using many vibrant hues or ornamentation. Inspired by Japanese and Scandinavian Pottery, she also tries techniques like Mishima and Nerikomi pottery styles to break the monotony and learn more. Her daily bouts of morning inspiration create simple pieces, that are easy to look at yet have a meaning and a deeper story.
Functionality is very important to her, be it a comfortable hold to a mug or slurping ramen from a deep wide bowl. Trying to create with the least waste consciously, she reuses defective pieces and also recycles clay. There is uniformity to all her pieces; hence, any of them clubbed together easily makes a set. From the mind to the kiln, hers is a collection that celebrates unpredictability, where each beautiful ware is a blend of simplicity and creative expression.
