Simon Manoha

Simon Manoha was born in Ardèche in 1987. After studying improvised music, he moved to Paris to study contemporary philosophy at the Sorbonne. He then returns to one of his first passions: photography. His uncle being a potter, he ends up from his childhood memories, being recalled by the clay. Simon Manoha spends days looking for clays in nature. He collects them, experiments with them in his works and in fire. He set up his workshop in Ardèche, built his Anagama oven (wood kiln) around sources of clay and countless minerals used for his enamels.

All of its pieces are made in kurinuki, sometimes called tama-zukuri. It is a traditional Japanese technique, used in particular by raku potters. But also used in clay sculpture for a long time by artists. It is a question of working a solid mass that is then hollowed out in several passes, as the piece dries.

Simon Manoha cooks with wood and electric. Always in two firings, a biscuit and an enamel firing at 1280°C. His wood-fired oven is a phoenix, he generally cooks with local essences, dead wood that he collects in the surroundings: chestnut and softwood: pine, mainly spruce and alder, oak, acacia, ash, and sometimes beech. The cooking lasts 48 hours in general. He likes to work in oxidation as much as in reduction, in wood firing included.