Gemma Mercader (Tossuda Studio)
The art of everyday life
Gemma Mercader is a ceramicist and designer based in Barcelona. Founder of Tossuda Studio, she combines artistic work and functional production in stoneware and porcelain, exploring the expressive potential of contemporary ceramics. She comes from a family of artisans and is the fourth generation working with their hands. As a child, she spent afternoons in the family workshop, surrounded by wool and fabrics: a sensory experience that shaped her understanding of materials. Although she started in photography, she found in ceramics a way to create in direct contact with the material. At Tossuda Studio, artisanal gestures, sought-after imperfection, and precise attention to the plastic possibilities of each form coexist.
Artistic Manifesto
The art of everyday life
Gemma Mercader is a ceramicist and designer based in Barcelona. Founder of Tossuda Studio, she combines artistic work and functional production in stoneware and porcelain, exploring the expressive potential of contemporary ceramics. She comes from a family of artisans and is the fourth generation working with their hands. As a child, she spent afternoons in the family workshop, surrounded by wool and fabrics: a sensory experience that shaped her understanding of materials. Although she started in photography, she found in ceramics a way to create in direct contact with the material. At Tossuda Studio, artisanal gestures, sought-after imperfection, and precise attention to the plastic possibilities of each form coexist.
For Gemma Mercader, ceramics is a form of exploration that unites function, expression, and material sensitivity. She starts from the familiar, but avoids literal narrative to investigate textures, rhythms, and structures that dialogue with manual gestures and object memory. She is interested in imperfection, repetition, and the physical relationship with clay in its most essential state, aspects that turn each piece into a subtle variation of the common. Instead of elevating art to a distant or untouchable sphere, Gemma prefers to literally put it in the hands of others and think that, through her pieces, she establishes a connection with those who use them. Her practice combines the utilitarian with the conceptual from a sincere, experimental, and poetic approach.
The Project at BYPILLOW House (Barcelona)
The intervention turns an everyday moment into an artistic gesture that welcomes the visitor and makes them feel at home. In a way, with this ceramic mural, Mercader comes full circle: from childhood memories among mattresses to creating a central piece in a hotel called House, where rest —and mattresses— are once again at the center of the experience.
