Marjorie Waks’ work is eminently graphic. Table lamps, wall lights, vases, bowls, and sculptural mirror frames. Pieces that reveal both discipline and poetry, derived from primary forms – cylinders, circles, domes – which the artist engraves with mesmerising lines, punctuates with geometric incisions, decorates with meticulously dimensioned ornamentation. Her architectural creations are cadenced by compositions of rectangles, lozenges, and beads in clay.
“I am by nature very organised, someone who feels the need to establish a framework to get things done,” admits the artist. “My repetition of patterns and orders contribute to a kind of reassurance. A desire to define a world over which I have some control, even though, however structured my work, I completely let go when I’m making the pieces. They impose their own logic on me.”
Despite being resolutely graphic and abstract, Marjorie Waks’ ceramics conjure up a variety of imaginary worlds. Her notched vases are reminiscent of medieval turrets, her staircase domes like Mayan pyramids, and saucers that seem to have flown straight out of a sci-fi movie. Some of her pieces elude function and are purely decorative, such as her hypnotic wheels. “The more I go on, the less I feel bound by parameters and the obligation to achieve conclusive results, I am freeing myself from the shackles of what I already know.”

Although she doesn’t claim any particular artistic lineage, Marjorie Waks is passionate about the history of ceramics, and admits to an unwavering admiration for the luminous work of Georges Pelletier (1938–2024). She also appreciates the delicacy of contemporary work such as that of Juliette Vivien, who specializes in crystalline glazes. Waks herself favours stoneware, her material of predilection, drawing out its texture by means of clear glazes. However, led by her taste for experimentation and desire to explore new ground, she also likes to punctuate her meticulous orders with little touches of color – sea green, emerald or acid green.