Green Leap Emmanuelle Ceramics

Emmanuelle Ceramics

Since 2020, Monmade has featured Emmanuelle Wambach’s everyday collection of ceramic dinnerware featuring lace motifs. Inspired by her mother’s love of flowers and gardening, Emmanuelle combines different texturing, carving, glazing, and under-glazing techniques to create slab-built pieces. With Green Leap, Monmade launches Emmanuelle’s first lighting products featuring natural textures and shapes.

Green Leap Participant

New Products Coming Soon
Debuting with Monmade — April 2023

Through her latest lighting designs, Emmanuelle embraces biophilic design principles—that is, our inherent need to bring nature into the modern built environment. Speaking to sustainable interior design solutions, Emmanuelle’s stoneware shades feature a Lilypad-like shape coupled with natural textures pressed into the clay surface. The textures are made using foraged organic materials, including Magnolia leaves, which mimic the layers of a tree canopy or forest floor when pressed in multiples.

“When creating my lights, I thought about their overall appeal and impact on a person’s mental health and well-being. This celadon glaze is about 2000 years old and is supposed to mimic the color of pond water when hit by the sun. I think this calming natural color could be soothing. I’m also using finishes that can diffuse or reflect the light to give it a more natural tone. Harsh lights can be terrible for people, so having something that diffuses the light or makes it more natural is usually great for the occupant of a space.”

– Emmanuelle Wambach

Initially conceived as pendants (images above), Emmanuelle is now modifying her ceramic shades as sconces that can mount to the wall or ceiling. As single sconces, these newest versions will offer ambient accent lighting. Arranged in clusters on ceilings or walls, Emmanuelle’s sconces could not only create a classic decorative lighting canopy but one that recalls nature’s beauty and the feeling of an outdoor environment. The finalized sconces will debut in April at our premiere Green Leap design industry event.

Green Leap Event Details

Products in Our Catalog

Our current collection of Emmanuelle’s lace motif tableware offers beauty and artistry for residential and commercial use. These plates and platters are slab-built and impressed with assorted lace patterns. Available in six sizes and four standard glazes with white or brown clay bodies, the dinnerware offers a collected look when mixed and matched.

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sustainablyMonmade Insights 

Through our assessment of her studio and processes, Emmanuelle Ceramics achieves five of Monmade’s six dimensions of sustainability: environment, climate, human health, social equity, and eco-labeling.

  • Woman-owned creative business
  • Producer works from a studio in Pittsburgh; she is finishing, glazing, and firing at a proximate shared studio space in the Union Project
  • Sourcing ceramic materials from Standard Ceramics in Carnegie, PA, located within 11 miles of producer’s primary facilities
  • Union Project has an air filtration and dust collection system, windows, and weekly cleaning. In her home studio, producer has mops, sponges, an air purifier, and wet vac for dust; she uses protective eye, hand, body, and respiratory equipment
  • Producer recycles waste materials from her manufacturing process and re-using them in other products; extra clay that can be reworked is re-bagged, while any that is too hard is placed in a bucket for reclamation later
  • Reusing water and containers, which she uses for craft projects in her job in youth education. She is also conducting community workshops using reclaimed items
  • Producer’s dinnerware and homeware collections use reclaimed lace or family heirlooms to create textures
  • Her newest lighting products explore concepts of biophilic design by using upcycled and natural materials to create textures, while the overlapping shade shape mimics organic forms. For projects seeking to incorporate and/or certify in biophilic design, these lights could contribute toward the overall design scheme, helping create a more productive and healthier built environment for people
  • Lighting products are made in collaboration with a supporting lighting manufacturer located within a 35-mile radius of producer’s primary facilities; this EPA-compliant manufacturer provides hardware assembly and provides UL Listed Components
  • Lighting product hardware components feature a Low VOC powder-coated finish, and no adhesives are used for connections and/or during assembly. Producer recommends LED hardware components and/or bulbs

Learn more about Monmade’s holistic approach to sustainability.