Life is an inevitable change. We build routines, create relationships, and while trying to master life, seek meaning in the everyday. Yet, everything we construct can shift in an instant, shaped by forces within or beyond our control. For creatives, this often means letting go of expectations and allowing ourselves to move with life’s rhythm. It’s a process that can feel uncertain, even frightening, but also deeply alive.
Always being drawn to working with her hands takes us back to her first dream – becoming a patisserie chef. As a teenager, she spent her afternoons after school in a pastry school, where she learned to craft cakes, dream up new recipes, and let her creativity run free. It’s perhaps this deep, physical connection to making that still shapes the way she approaches clay today. Ceramics became a space where her varied passions, skills, and her academic background in interior architecture found a shared voice.
In 2018, Hanna Hänig began studying interior architecture and object design in Stuttgart before moving to Paris for her Master’s degree, a city she had already fallen in love with as a young girl. It was there, in 2023, that her former boss Julien Bateau first introduced her to ceramics at the studio Sousterre, where she is now a resident. What began as a moment of release from rigid structures — following the intuitive movement of her hands, much like kneading dough — soon revealed itself as her destiny. Her childhood dream had come full circle, only now the ingredients are clay and glaze instead of dough and icing.
A fitting example of her recent creations is the Butter Spike, a striking fusion of two seemingly distant worlds. This innovative piece reimagines the current butter trend with a bold, sculptural twist. It could easily grace a beautifully set table or form part of an artful culinary installation, while also offering a refreshingly original take on the ordinary butter dish. Beyond such unconventional works, her designs include vases, lamps, candle holders, selected pieces of jewelry, and more recently, handcrafted sinks and bentiers. A common thread through all her creations is the inspiration she draws from nature and the mystical — elements that subtly shape each piece with a distinct presence.
That personal touch is at the heart of her brand, by instant, a name that reflects not only her own but the immediacy she pours into each piece. The decision felt natural, born from the transparency with which she approaches both her practice and her life. There’s an undeniable connection between Hanna and the objects she creates. It echoes in how she dresses, how she cooks, how she relates to others. Everything she does carries the same quiet intuition, refined yet warm. Her aesthetic is tactile and minimal — with just enough edge to surprise.
Clay, she says, doesn’t lie. It mirrors your energy, your state of mind. If you rush, it might crack. If you’re uncentered, your wheel-thrown piece probably will be too. There’s only so much you can control, after that, it’s about staying open to the unknown. Each piece emerges differently: shaped by subtle shifts in shrinkage, by how the glaze runs and melts.
As organically — and at times unexpectedly — as Hanna Hänig and her brand have evolved, there’s a quiet momentum to what lies ahead. Intertwining her professional background as interior architect and object designer even more with her passion that by now without a doubt became her profession.
Hanna Hänig envisions broadening her ceramic practice to encompass interiors and food-focused experiences, crafting pieces that engage the senses and integrate seamlessly into their environments. Her work aspires to dissolve the boundaries between sculpture and utility. A long-held dream is to scale her practice — creating sculptural furniture and architectural ceramics that not only occupy space but shape how it is experienced. Each offers new possibilities for clay to assume unexpected forms — where material, meaning, and purpose quietly converge.
