Each pot takes six to seven hours to build, with coils that she flattens into thick bands. She starts a new series by drawing the forms she has in mind, though the actual shape always emerges in the act of building; the clay is alive, she says, and it resists its maker. When she moved to Denmark, she realized that the types of bowls she had made until then did not translate well into the language of high-fire stoneware. She had to find forms that were in conversation with the material. The disappearing base of her bowls, by contrast, was something she developed “all of a sudden, from the very beginning,” evoking shapes she could recall in “grandmothers’ casseroles” and Anatolian pots. Building a pot is a constant push and pull, trying to tame the material while remaining in service to it. The glazing phase that follows is “the worst part of the job—messy, terrible.” It can take up to two years to develop a single color, made up of minute variations of dozens of ingredients. “Color is a need,” she explained, but it is also a response to a bowl’s unique form. After sampling the colors on tiles and small bowls, she applies her glazes with a spraying technique, using a vacuum hose. Like clay, glazes seem to have a mind of their own, and can yield unexpected results: a pistachio-green glaze that she came up with years ago will now produce only a light blue. The Turkish word for glaze is sır, which also means “secret,” speaking to the mystery of the chemical process, and also to the fact that ceramicists don’t share their particular recipes, perfected over many years of trial and error.
The exhibitions of the past year took a physical toll on Siesbye: tendonitis in one shoulder, carpal tunnel and a trigger finger on one hand. Siesbye was “scared to death” she would not be able to build pots again; her greatest fear in life is not being able to work. Over the summer, she cautiously made three large bowls, to see what would happen. “So far, so good. But, of course, the body gives up after a certain point,” she said. “I find it very easy to accept my body’s physical changes. I’m aging—what can I do about it? But I’m not getting old.” And, indeed, she appears miraculously young, springing up constantly from the couch in high-heeled ankle boots—to find a catalogue, to adjust the shutters, to make tea. At the same time, she confessed, she lives with a consciousness of death, wondering how many years she has left. “I don’t want to die. When I’m falling asleep at night, I think that I might, and my body won’t be found for three days, if no one happens to stop by.” A little later, she added, “But maybe it’s a comfort to think of one’s death. It’s a comfort to know the truth.”
Throughout our conversations, I was intrigued by an aura of timelessness that Siesbye exudes. Her bowls have a similar effect, one of clashing time frames; they appear at once primordial and modern. Siesbye is tall, with sage-colored eyes and a mound of cropped cinnamon hair. She dresses with spectacular style: once, before we met, I had seen her walking down the street and turned around for a second look.
Despite her commanding elegance, she also seems, at any given moment, about to erupt into laughter. There is the same sense of surprise in her home, at first glance sparse and exceedingly aesthetic: two white couches on either side of a gray coffee table that appears to be floating off the ground, like her bowls; rugs in cool tones, designed by Siesbye. The studio at the back is visible from the seating area; its shelves are lined with her pots and glaze samples, but otherwise uncluttered. On the mezzanine floor is the bedroom, in earthy and sensual red tones. But, within the clean and controlled beauty, there is humor tucked away: the stuffed toys stored in a drawer, a photo of a license plate a friend sent her pinned in the hallway, reading “BO KU 7K.” When said aloud, it is Turkish for “We’re in deep shit.” At the end of our first interview, Siesbye brought out a pear tart from the neighborhood bakery, then asked if I’d like to hear a dirty joke that she’d recently been told. She was doubled over with laughter before she could get to the punch line.
