Photo: Michał Patycki.

Where are you from?
From Pezinok.

Where did you study?
I studied fashion design at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. After five years I tried the jewellery studio at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava, but my studies didn’t fit into my busy life, so I left after a semester. I’m still studying, but outside the institution. I never studied ceramics in an academic context.

Who was your best teacher?
Mistakes I made. And also my class teacher in elementary school, Katarína Galášová, who taught me what metaphor is.

Who were/are your parents?
My father is a polygrapher, he worked with screen printing and other graphic techniques. He had a workshop at home, it smelled like acetone, and I loved to hang out there as a kid. My mom was a full-time mom. They are both active athletes and garden alchemists.

What don’t you enjoy in design?
I’m bothered by the overproduction, the pressure to constantly move forward, innovate and progress (which I think has got us into the mess we’re in and therefore I think will have a hard time getting us out of it). And I still don’t like it when things are more in my head than in my hands.

And on the contrary, what do you?
A harmonious combination of craftsmanship, function, beauty and affordability.
I love the return to the forgotten (but still relevant), the revivals, the ordinary things, the analogue technologies, the arches, the dirty hands, the ceramic blocks, the traces of time and use…

What do you listen to?
Folk, blues and country. Erik Darling might be the intersection of what I like. I listen to Radio Devin. I’m a bit like wine with music – the older the better. And not too loud.

Your favourite film, cartoon, series?
Gadjo dilo by Tony Gattlif and Hanák’s Pictures of the Old World.

Who do you respect as an authority in and out of your field?
I have respect for many smart and clever people, but I have a problem with authority figures.

What thing did you last buy?
wo packs of canary candles. Blue and green.

Do you buy professional literature? What was the latest book?
Occasionally. I think the last one was a slim book called The Dragonfly Will Be the Messiah by Masanobu Fukuoka.

Do you vote?
Yeah, I do.

Who throws the best parties?
I remember Deschool in Amsterdam.
I don’t party much nowadays.

Your favourite dome?
I don’t have a favorite dome.

Party dress. Made by…?
Secondhand.

Your hero from the past?
A heroine! Beatrice Wood.

Best/nicest house?
We have a cottage in the woods above Limbach, with no nets, in which we live modestly in the summer months when we don’t need to heat. I think she is the answer to the question of the best/prettiest house. I like that place best of all places. I have a framed picture of strangers’ house in my kitchen. It stands by the R2 road just outside Rimavská Sobota in the direction to Košice, on the left near the village of Figa. We stopped there once because we liked it. It is an old house, in front of which was a small, ploughed field. The house is more of a symbol, but I also put it in the category of the best/most beautiful house.

Do you have any stereotypes when you work? How do they show?
I have rituals that I start my day with in the workshop. I have a slow start, I need a lot of coffee, and quite specific conditions: quiet, music and solitude. I like intuition and estimation, I don’t like to measure, I use a ruler as a spatula.

What’s on your desktop?
Pantone 12-0910 tcx.

Best exhibition, work of art?
Erna Masarovičová’s exhibitions at Bratislava City Gallery and Kingdom of Hex at Meetfactory hit me last time.

What do you respect both from the local and foreign design scene? And why?
I respect the courage to be only and only a creator/artist and not to have side jobs that pay the bills. And it’s because I think it’s so good and I’d like to have it that way too (even though I love my job that pays the bills), but I’m still scared.

Ethics or money?
Ideally ethical money.

Extraordinary book?
Tri gaštanové kone [The Three Chestnut Horses] by Margita Figuli, Impresie [Impressions] by Vladimir Kompánek, The Book by Alan Watts, Andersen’s Fairy Tales, Tao Te Ching, The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm, and the children’s book Ja a môj brat [Me and My Brother] by Viktor Kubal. There are many exceptional books.

Optimist, pessimist, nihilist?
Depends on the weather…

Do you have any hobby?
Horses, dogs, lakes, flowers, forests and life.

Solo or in a collective?
Solo.

Slovakia as the Promised Land?
It is.