Our ceramics workshops
Stepping into Karen Swami’s atelier-gallery is an experience that leaves no one untouched.
Behind the window, dotted with ceramics shimmering in shifting hues, there is already a promise of emotion.
Each piece speaks of Karen Swami herself:
Her radiant energy pulses through the fiery reds she lays onto her vessels like lava on earth; her quiet modesty is revealed in the delicate water-green tones she invents, immersing us in a reimagined aquatic world; her feminine and telluric strength rises from her ascending bowls; her acceptance of shadow is made visible as she gently points to her smoked clays — and through it all, something essential is revealed.
Entering this space is like stepping outside of time.
It is an invitation to listen to what remains unspoken, to feel beyond words — and sometimes, to leave a little transformed.
Open Tuesday to Saturday: 10:30 AM – 1:00 PM and 2:30 PM – 7:00 PM
+33 (0)6 86 30 99 25
Karen Swami also creates in a third space, in Locquirec, Brittany.
A peaceful place overlooking the sea, where nature gently accompanies the work of clay.
Here, everything invites stillness. The gaze drifts toward the horizon, but the essence remains in the hands: the material, the gesture, the fire.
As in her Parisian studios, each piece takes shape through a balance of technique and sensitivity, always in close connection with the surrounding elements.
By appointment only.
6 rue Victor Schoelcher,
Paris 14e
A space dedicated to ceramics enthusiasts
After ten years of creating in her studio on Rue Victor Schoelcher, in Paris’s 14th arrondissement, ceramicist Karen Swami opens a new chapter by transforming the space into a place entirely devoted to teaching and sharing her craft.
Monday to Friday: 10:30 AM – 1:00 PM and 2:30 PM – 7:00 PM
+33 (0)6 66 55 86 31
ateliers@swami.fr
At the Heart of the Earth: Karen Swami’s Ceramics Studio
Crossing the threshold of the Karen Swami gallery is not something you walk away from unchanged.
You might already sense it when your curious eye wanders beyond the window, where ceramics shimmer in hues borrowed from time itself.
And you know it for certain once you find yourself—almost without realizing it—standing among her vessels, which seem to exist only to offer us the idea of perfect form, the search for the absolute. By the time you become aware of it, it’s already too late: you no longer have a choice. Either you make one of these singular forms your own—so you may never be deprived of the touch of her gesture, the pull of her gaze—or you resign yourself to dreaming of them forever, like a silhouette glimpsed too quickly around a street corner, pressing on you the weight of its unfulfilled promise.
Then comes the instinct to delay the inevitable. To prolong the delight—which, like all delight, holds the shadow of torment—you feel an irresistible urge: to make Karen Swami speak.
Because she is the one who will speak best of these objects.
And with good reason: they are born from her hands, and they speak of her.
A Place, A Passion, A Creation
From her radiant energy that makes the fiery reds she lays upon her vessels vibrate like lava over earth,
to her quiet modesty, revealed in the subtle water-green she invents to immerse us in a reimagined aquatic world,
to her feminine, telluric strength rising from her ascending bowls,
to her embraced shadow, which she gently points to in her smoked clays—
and to so many other essential things…
Things better expressed without being said,
when one knows how to listen beyond words,
beyond the lively sparkle in the eye of the gallerist-ceramicist,
beyond the blues lining her shelves,
beyond the delicious stretch of time we’ve just lost track of.
And there it is—we’re late for our next appointment.
Yet we were just passing through…