Jynsym Ong

Jynsym Ong is an Oxford-based studio potter interested in replicating patterns and surfaces found in nature in her handmade objects by using found materials such as wood ash, rocks and clays. Having initially trained at Clay College in Stoke-On-Trent, Staffordshire, she then undertook a two-year apprenticeship in Karatsu, Saga Prefecture, a region of Japan with an important role in the history of Japanese pottery and the ceramic craft.

Ong hand crafts and throws her unique pieces on a kick wheel, to impart a rhythm that is completely dictated by the body to her work. She uses a wood firing process, an art form that has been practiced for thousands of years across different cultures and in which pots are glazed by the ashes of the wood fed into the kiln. 

Using a range of glazes, including tenmoku, rhino and celadon, along with and design techniques like brush/ hand strokes and carving even Kintsugi (‘joining with gold’), Ong’s work is inspired by the way beautiful objects can enrich lives in small, everyday ways.