Ceramics is costly, but culture isn’t cheap.

Clay, firing, and time are valuable investments that the artist makes in order to create something beautiful by hand. Each Solon Perfecto ceramic piece roughly undergoes the following process:

• Foraging, kneading, aging of clay

• Formulation of glaze

• Throwing, drying, trimming

• Bisque firing

• Glaze firing

Each step of the process requires hours of ideation, organization, and attention. Not to mention, it takes years of skill and technique development as well as the proper tools and equipment. Even with careful execution, kiln firings can be unpredictable.

However, creating art is essential to the human experience.

Pottery, in particular, has a place in the history of the Philippines. The islands stand among the world’s antiquated sites of pottery discoveries. It connects the people that inhabited the archipelago with the ancient civilizations of China, Japan, and Korea all the way to Greece, Middle East, and Africa.

3 Reasons Why You Should Be a Patron of Solon Perfecto

1. Jose Solon Perfecto is a prolific artist with an emerging career.

   Jose has been creating pottery since 1997, when he was just an 8-year-old student of Jon Pettyjohn. As a young adult, he left the city and his corporate job to commit to his art career in 2018.

   Since then, he has established Solon Perfecto Ceramics & Culture and exhibited a dozen collections.

   Jose creates pottery with local wild clay blends from different locations throughout the Philippines. His current collection uses clay from the foothills of his studio as well as the red clay in the river banks of San Juan, La Union. He uses the wild clay with ash glazes made from local trees, formed in stoneware he calls Terroir Ceramics. This is the clay body for his Self-Portrait sculptures and art exhibits, and Filipino Table Culture pieces made for restaurants and homes.

2. Your support champions Filipino art and culture.

   Jose investigates the material character of the Philippines through his wild clay, field work, and Terroir Ceramics. He and his wife Aussy document and chronicle ceramics as both art and artifact.

   While pottery has its place in Philippine History and local clay pots have been in use since precolonial times, its contemporary art narrative can only be traced back to the 1970s when Jon Pettyjohn began exhibiting his work and teaching in Manila.

   Today, the University of the Philippines has courses in ceramics and other teachers have established pottery schools around the country. Yet, there are still only a handful of Filipino ceramics artists that are upholding its techniques and traditions.

3. Each Solon Perfecto ceramic piece tells a story of terroir, process, and skills developed under the tutelage of some of the world’s finest pottery artists today.

   Jose’s teachers include Jon Pettyjohn, Tessy Pettyjohn, and Hadrian Mendoza. He attended workshops of Paul Davis, Shozo Michikawa, and Yasuo Terada — all of whom made an impact on his style and process.

   Jose’s education in classical music, competitive pistol shooting, and communication arts play a part in the process of his ceramics as well. His personal experiences in blending tobacco, drinking wine and spirits, and learning how to cook from a long proud line of Cebuana women are pillars of his refined taste and table culture.