In a 200 square foot studio with a tiny secondhand kiln and one wheel Jaimie and I started making ceramics fueled by many cups of Turkish tea. We felt a sense of freedom and playfulness, in a place that felt new and full of possibilities. The very first pieces I made were tiny round plates with faces drawn on them. One of Jaimie's first pieces was a fluted oval white dish. Both pieces are still in our collection today, the tiny round plates had many lives in different patterns, textures, and glazes over the years. But from the beginning we were amused by how well these two things fit together, and for our first little sale on the one table in our tiny studio we made sets of the different objects we had each created individually. During one chatty afternoon, I told Jaimie about an event I had seen the previous winter something called the Souk@SAT. How I thought it was filled with talented people, making beautiful objects of all kinds, we looked it up and decided to come up with a name for our studio and put together a small collection of functional ceramics that we would choose from the various pieces we were each making. The rest as they say is history...

Limited Edition

There is so much playfulness and experimentation that happens behind the scenes at Atelier Make! Only a fraction of what we do it is shared with the public. Here is the second in a series of limited-edition pieces from our personal studios. Throughout the year we’ll share small-batch gems and tell you about the ideas behind them.

Feature 3: Maple Syrup Bottles 650ml  
Porcelain.

Maple syrup is so iconic to Quebec. And what better time to enjoy it than than sugar shack season! I am one of those people who did the classic pandemic move, relocating just far enough from the city to be able live just adjacent to a lovely maple grove. Each March, as winter turns to spring, we walk over to the neighbours to sample this season’s syrup fresh from the boiler. My daughter loves to scoop a cup of maple water directly from the sap buckets and sip it while we walk. After 14 winters in Montreal this is the first for which maple syrup season is not accompanied by snow… It is visually disorienting, walking into the woods to enjoy the charm of “sugaring off” and not being surrounded by fluffy spring snow. We are relieved to see the sap run all the same, and will savor it on our pancakes all year long! How very adaptable nature can be.