In a Titirangi workroom, Liz Wycherley and Simon Oosterdijk make ceramics, and candles designed to drip, slump, resist and almost fall apart.
Partners in life and in the studio, Elizabeth Wycherley and Simon Oosterdijk are the driving force behind Post Objects (Simon) and the eponymous Liz Wycherley, two brands that fuse their zigzaggy careers in fashion, graphic design and publishing into passion projects that wrap around family life. Having worked alongside each other for many years, including time in London, they recently moved to operating quite separately — Liz on ceramics, raku forms, lamps, urns and a candle line that’s about wax as sculpture, Simon on objects and candles inspired and shaped by natural forces.
“We’re still completely across each other’s work, still absolutely insufferable to eat dinner with. But creatively we’ve split the atom, which has been good for both of us,” explains Liz.
We spoke to the couple to get the narrative on what drives their maker spirit.
You have traversed many disciplines. What led you here? Liz: We both had careers that never quite stayed in one lane. Me with running my fashion label Eugenie and its retail store in Ponsonby, Simon with his design studio The Wilderness and art journal Pie Paper.
Simon really got into 3D at the same time as I started with ceramics — he was doing work for Nike in London and running experiments from his Dalston studio. I joined a beautiful studio in Hackney where you could use their Japanese wheels and glazes, and they did all the firing. Covid hit and we doubled down on it, probably as a distraction from the lockdown energy. We started making candles, just giving them away to friends and posting our experiments on socials, until the fashion retailer Ssense spotted them and commissioned us to create a range.
Simon, your work bridges digital simulation and physical object. What excites you about that intersection? That combination has the ability to create objects that feel familiar and unfamiliar simultaneously, almost sitting in the uncanny valley. What interests me more now is the system behind that. The forms are generated through approximations of real physical behaviour — wax moving, matter expanding and contracting, liquid finding its path. Very simple forces. The simulation isn’t imitating an object, it’s imitating conditions. And what comes out of those conditions feels discovered rather than designed.
Liz, what drew you to clay? I’d always wanted to try it; I adored it as a kid. I took a class in London and never looked back. I used to cycle through dark sleet to get to the studio on weekends. Something about its truly analogue nature pushes my buttons. It’s so utterly physical, and yet there are endless possibilities. There’s a funny familiarity between clay and wax actually — both can be liquid and solid, and both have interesting lives in either state.
Right now I’m obsessed with raku, the reduction process, the way fire and smoke make decisions you don’t. I’m also working with glass with some incredible makers, which is a whole new material conversation.
When you’re making, where does the thinking happen? Intuitive or problem-solving? Liz: Both, in layers. The initial impulse is pure instinct — I start carving and something is happening before I’ve consciously decided anything. Then the problem-solving kicks in, usually right after I’ve done something I can’t undo. Some of my best results came from that second phase. The mistake becomes the work.
What’s feeding the work conceptually right now? Liz: Impermanence in a pretty literal sense — though there’s a contradiction I love in that. I make candles that are designed to disappear, and I’m increasingly interested in what it means to put real care into something temporary. And yet the ceramics could outlast my bones in the ground. I grew up fascinated by those National Geographic archaeological spreads — skeletons surrounded by ceramics, the pots still there long after everything else was gone. It made me
a fairly considered editor of what I put in the kiln. That’s partly why I love that the candles can just disappear. That contrast drives a lot. I’m also really drawn to working with materials in a way that lets their inherent properties come through — getting out of the way and allowing the material to do the talking. The way I carve and manipulate the clay lets it show its own tension, the cracking and twisting that happens when you push it. And then the raku process takes that further — fire and smoke make decisions you don’t. Simon: Ordinary physical actions I’d stopped noticing: water moving, material folding, expanding and contracting.
What has parenthood brought to your practice? Liz: Two kids under four and a rescue dog who barks constantly — what it brings is a complete obliteration of precious thinking. It made me faster, less self-indulgent, more willing to let things fail and move on. It also broke me creatively for a while, which I won’t pretend didn’t happen. I didn’t fire a thing for five years. Coming back felt like a reclamation — I was wrecked, but I think I’m genuinely more resilient for it. Simon: The need to be far more focused and time efficient!
What do you want someone to feel when they hold one of your pieces? Liz: That the thing is honest. That it’s not trying to be something it isn’t. These are sculptural candles, not commodities — I want people to feel slightly strange about burning one, in a good way. Like they’re aware they have something that won’t last, and that’s actually the point. I think that connection to the object means people are very intentional about it when they do. Simon: That they recognise something in themselves through the object, some aspect they hadn’t named or maybe weren’t even aware of.
Looking ahead, what’s driving you creatively? Liz: I can see the work I’m going to be making — the forms are clear in my head, I’m just clawing against time pressure to make them real. The glass collaboration has me genuinely excited. There’s something about the raw nature of the clay pressed against the sumptuous flow of blown glass. Simon: Seeing what the process produces that I couldn’t have imagined.
lizwycherley.com; postobjects.com
Interview Alice Lines
Photography Larnie Nicolson