His father was an academic painter, and his grandmother wished for him to pursue art just like him. And so, his steps in deciding on his further educational path led him to the Secondary Vocational School for Ceramics in Ľubietová. At that time, a great master of folk art production, Emil Majnhold, was teaching there, representing the sixth generation of Ľubietová potters’ masters, and he owes everything he learned about the craft to him. He learned from him the freedom to sculpt his relationship with the craft according to his own feelings, because, as Master Majnhold used to say to him, every potter has their own signature and techniques. He has been actively engaged in pottery since 1970.

Despite seeing working with clay shortly after his training as merely a job and not feeling much connection to his products, he worked as a master in a ceramics workshop in Ľubietová, later becoming independent and supplying products to the Dobšiná Souvenirs company as a domestic employee. At the same time, he began collaborating with the ÚĽUV (Centre for Folk Art Production), a collaboration that continues to this day.

Working with clay is everything to him today. He finds certainty behind the potter’s wheel, and his mastery in throwing even surprises many excellent ceramic artists. His master’s influence is also evident here, as the spontaneity allowed him to delve deep into the essence of things.

In the mid-90s, he began researching Ľubietová ceramics, based mainly on a detailed study of pots that he collected as a young boy from the inhabitants of Slovenská Ľupča and Ľubietová. “Little interest in this ceramics made me study it better and include it in my range. Today, it’s already a dead ceramic, nobody produces it, but I try to promote it and always have it on display for people to see,” he says regarding ceramics, through which he entered the world of pottery as a young man.

In his artistic work, alongside utilitarian ceramics, figurative sculpture and oil painting also hold a significant place. In utility items, he preserves traditional shapes. Geometric and botanical patterns applied to raw shard by brushes, stamps, or fingers on clay, he cleverly varies on milk jugs, cups, pitchers, bowls, larger dishes or miniatures, highlighting them under a transparent colorless or green glaze. In addition to Ľubietová patterns, he also includes ornaments from ancient Slavic ceramics on his products. He had the opportunity to study this ceramics up close thanks to his friendship with the custodian of Ľupčiansky Castle, who was an archaeologist and excavated old Slavic pots. From this ceramics, he adopted the Slavic wave pattern into his artistic expression, which he varies in many forms and has become characteristic for his pottery.

As a true master potter, he regularly participates in showcasing production and sales at fairs. He presents his work exhibitually more through figurative art (primarily a series of ceramic masks symbolizing human vices, paradoxically pointing out the good in people and the world through them) and oil paintings at more than two dozen solo exhibitions to date (Brezno, Slovenská Ľupča, Banská Bystrica, Ružomberk, Moscow).

Source: Mikolaj, Tomáš: Masters of the New Millennium [online]. Bratislava: Centre for Folk Art Production, 2020 [accessed May 29, 2024]. Available at: https://uluv.sk/library/digital-library/

For preserving traditional pottery production from the Ľubietová region, for masterful handmade throwing on the potter’s wheel, and thorough knowledge of pottery production technology, he was awarded the title of Master of Folk Art Production in 2016.