Zsuzsa Ujj makes porcelain Judaica in her Budapest ceramic studio under the name Judaica Hungarica. She found clay early: at four she was playing with clay from the bottom of a puddle near Lake Balaton. By 14 she was at a specialized high school for ceramic arts, and she went on to the Hungarian Academy of Crafts and Design. She later taught geometry at an arts school, and that feel for curves and proportion runs through her work.
Each piece starts with hand carving and poured casts, then goes into a kiln that fires above 2,600°F. Some are hand-painted with cobalt florals and gold; others stay white and geometric. The pomegranate returns again and again, a Jewish symbol whose seeds are traditionally tied to the 613 mitzvot. Her designs draw on Eastern European Judaica and European Art Nouveau ceramics, in a country home to the Herend and Zsolnay workshops, and one mezuzah case borrows its motifs from Budapest's Rumbach Synagogue.
Ujj has said that people buying ceramic Judaica, fragile and hard to carry, is a sign they feel safe.
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