Blue Half 'n' Half Ceramic Vase by Tal Batit, 2018

Tel Aviv-based designer and artist Tal Batit was born in Ashdod, Israel in 1988. He studied Industrial Design at the Holon Institute of Technology (H.I.T.), graduating in 2017 with distinction, where he discovered his passion for the medium of ceramics. Batit’s eponymous studio, which specializes in innovative sculptures, vases, and tabletop accessories, is based in Tel-Aviv, Israel.

Batit’s aesthetic is refreshing, to say the least. The young designer mixes inspiration from ancient ceramic traditions and cultures with a contemporary palette and finish, giving a distinct post-modernist flair to his quirky creations while retaining the artisanal quality of the natural materials. Batit himself explains that his work “always deals with contradictions, dissonances, contrasts—both textural and visual” and says that color is always a central motif. The Hybrids (2017) collection, Batit’s graduation project from H.I.T., concisely illustrates his conceptual and aesthetic approach. The series consists of a range of ceramic vessels, vases, and sculptural tabletop accessories, each of which is made by combining three or more separate parts.

Cleverly, each of the component pieces in the series was created with exactly the same diameter, allowing the designer to experiment with different combinations to create unlikely and engaging forms. Every combined Hybrid assemblage consists of at least one piece made from red terracotta and another formed from white earthenware; the pieces are individually glazed, assembled, and fired in the kiln—during the final firing process, the glaze fuses the pieces together to create a new hybrid form. Batit is truly taking the traditional medium of ceramics into a new era: some of his more complex forms are created with the help of custom 3D-printed molds that he develops and produces. His unique approach has already gained the recent graduate some international attention. Hybrids was exhibited at Fresh Paint art fair in Israel and at Seoul Design Week in 2018; the project also awarded the Holon Design Museum Selection prize. Following his graduation from H.I.T., Batit was the recipient of the America-Israel Cultural Foundation scholarship.