Company portrait Swisskeramik: Pottery Passion by GOERG & SCHNEIDER

Leo Pichler and Mario Sofia are the managing directors of the Swiss manufactory Swisskeramik in Sarnen.

Both actively manage the traditional company, which has its origins in tiled stove construction and has expanded in the course of time into the large and no less demanding field of architectural ceramics.

This includes interesting restorations of old floors or wall designs for public buildings, as well as projects realised in collaboration with artists, designers and architects. Incredibly beautiful ideas meet down-to-earth ceramic craftsmanship and find a joint implementation that is known and appreciated far beyond the borders of Switzerland.

One of these exciting projects in the past year 2022 are the "memorial plaques" at the Nordheim cemetery in Zurich, which were created by the artist Patrick Hari. It concerns texts in which each individual, lead-set letter was set by hand into the ceramic slab. It was especially important for the artist to set the letters in a regular irregularity in order to emphasise the human character of the plaques

The plaques have a size of 450 x 1220 x 40 mm. A challenge to the ceramic body and to the craftsmanship of the Swisskeramik workshop, which solved this demanding task with bravura in a high-firing process.

This project was the beginning of a body development based on Goerg & Schneider's milled clay 1100. A very light milled clay that has a "porcelain-like", light colour in the high temperature range and at the same time shows a very low water absorption. In order to reduce the shrinkage values and to avoid distortion of the pieces as far as possible, the chamotte K 26 was added in coarse grain sizes. The body was produced in the required strength in the Swisskeramik workshop. This was the basis for further projects with this ceramic body.

Especially interesting in this context are the relief tiles for the Federal Palace to mark the anniversary of "175 years of the Federal Constitution" of Switzerland. TM 1100 and the chamotte K 26 from Goerg & Schneider were also used for this project.

For all interested people, we recommend the very informative film of the Swiss television "SRF - Kulturplatz", which you can find under this link Kulturplatz - Play SRF.

Further information on Swisskeramik can be found at the following addresses:

www.swisskeramik.ch

info(at)swisskeramik.ch

www.facebook.com/Swisskeramik

We look forward to the anniversary celebration in September 2023, "175 years of the Federal Constitution" of Switzerland and wish our customer Swisskeramik continued success!

Chr. Röhl

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