Fired Earth

From the rich clay of Ukraine’s Donetsk region and a ceramics workshop in Kyiv - a young artist is making plates and tiles for a new Ukrainian restaurant in east London. Here’s her story.

In an old warehouse unit on the outskirts of Kyiv’s Podil district, past a big gate with a barking dog and a fruit and vegetable supplier with a permanent back and forth of delivery lorries, is a small ceramics studio. Inside it is warm, despite the power blackout, thanks to a large wood fired stove, and there is an overwhelming air of industry and calm.

Kyiv artist Svetlana Sholomitska has been running her own design firm for more than ten years, and makes ceramics for Alex Cooper’s restaurant group, which has sites in Kyiv and Odesa. And now London, with the opening of his latest Tatar Bunar restaurant, showcasing Bessarabian cuisine in Shoreditch. For several months, with his business partner Anna Andriienko overseeing the redevelopment of the old Brindisa site just off Old Street, trucks and vans have trundled their way from Ukraine, carrying wood for the floors and furniture, and beautiful tiles, plates, bowls and platters hand made by Svetlana and her small team in Podil.

I went to visit her in December ‘24, when Russian attacks on electricity infrastructure meant the power was often out for more than half the day. But there was still wood for the stove, fuel for the generator and it was usually enough to fire up the kiln and bake the clay and glaze. Svetlana met me at the door, denim dungarees over a thick sweater: a dog was dozing in a basket close to the stove. ‘Sometimes when it's blackouts and then they return electricity for two hours and then turn it off, pieces in the kiln can be spoiled, and all that you make is thrown away’ she said. But like every business she’s learned to adapt to the challenges of war. ‘I have a lot of ways to work, even when I don't have electricity. Here, some of this work you can do only with your hands. like filling the molds. We know that it will be like this’ she said ‘in winter when it’s a lower temperature, there’s a bigger risk, not only that, people also use heating, and the Russians will attack the power plants. So I'm ready for it, I'm emotionally prepared, and technically also, like, every month in our budget, we set aside money for fuel.”

I asked about her partnership with Alex Cooper, and how it had come about. ‘He came to my old studio, and he ordered some plates for his burger place in Odesa’. It grew from there. “When Cooper offered the partnership with him, so we could take our next steps together, I said, Yes, so fast, it was before he had finished speaking. Now the thing I enjoy most about working with Sasha Cooper that he gives me a lot of freedom, so I can just do what I do’.

Ceramics awaiting glaze

They have an almost symbiotic way of working together, the restaurant entrepreneur and the ceramicist. Cooper tells Svetlana about the concept he’s planning for each new opening, the kind of mood he’s trying to capture and they take it from there. Sometimes he wants a special piece, something with a wow factor. “One day we were having some borsch, and he said, I want people in London to enjoy borsch. Enjoy it like we do, so let's try to make the bowl really fancy”. She tried dozens of sketches, all sorts of different patterns and glazes until she realised she was overthinking it.

“In the end, he said, let's make it simpler, just red clay without anything extra, with a clear glaze inside and no glaze outside. It’s a creative process to create together, and if I want to, I can offer something crazy which he can just enjoy. I don't feel like I'm in some kind of slavery, and I'm very lucky to have this.” Not least - some long term security for her and her team. Svetlana herself trained at the decorative art academy in Kyiv, thanks to a scholarship. “You might have heard there was a missile attack last year, and one of the buildings was destroyed. When I was there it was kind of like Hogwarts. A magical place where you can do magical things.” And after so many years working in creative arts, she says, she has managed to learn how to let go a bit - “let it be not perfect, it’s okay.”

Recently Svetlana has begun laying on classes as a form of art therapy for people traumatised by what they’ve lived through during Russia’s full scale war. One class was set up for journalists who document war crimes. “There were about 20 people in the group. So we didn't make pottery on the wheel. We just hand built something. I had a really great time, and I believe the guys also did - so after that, one girl asked me if I want to make more of these sessions. But next time, for the people who have lost someone.”

She began showing me how the kilns worked - there was an expensive new one from Germany with a computer to control the internal temperature. And an old one from the Donetsk region.

Svetlana’s sketches

“It just does what you want to do. It's actually from an amazing woman, Viktoriia. She lived in Sloviansk and she had a team of workers who built these kilns.” She used to get clay from the region too, but nowadays it is so close to the frontline that supplies are erratic at best. “Today, you can get this clay, and maybe the day after, you won't. I was getting so nervous about the situation in Chasiv Yar (a frontline town in Donetsk region) - because it's a region from where we have a lot of great ceramics. Green and yellow clays - it’s been a well known site for 100 years. In all the old books about ceramics I read about its clay - and from the nearby city of Druzhkivka too.” Today Russia has bombarded Chasiv Yar into rubble - the rich reserves of clay are now buried under debris and dust. But once Svetlana began searching for other supplies, she found that people went out of their way to be helpful. A firm which would normally only transport large quantities offered to bring her 5kg samples to try out first.

“I asked about the temperatures. Can I make casting from this, or can I make this or that? Or can I mix it with other components? They gave me all the answers, all the information, and refused to take any money from me for these samples - maybe I understand that this type of kindness is because everyone realizes that someday we'll all need help.”

Svetlana’s unique designs

The shelves of unglazed platters, all rounded edges in their nearly stacked towers of geometry, were almost mesmeric. I asked about a plate made in an unusual oval shape. “First it was round, and then we decided to make it a longer shape to fit the Asian dishes. Then, Cooper saw it and said: we can put a fish on that. While he was looking for the right designs for the London restaurant, he fixed on these because he liked them - so, he said - let’s make oval plates for Tatar Bunar.

As for the borsch bowls, he wanted to keep the prints which her fingers made on the clay, “because he wanted it to be, obviously handmade. That's why he also was so interested in making it in red clay, because he said, somehow, I don't know why, but red clay just looks more handmade”.

There were hand drawn sketches on the wall, pinned anyhow, like an open window into her design process. “It’s easier for me to think by drawing lines. And I stick them all over the place.” She admitted she was nervous about seeing her designs in use in London: “ I want to make it really good, for people to enjoy, because there's a lot of cool guys in Britain that make pottery. Some of them I follow on Instagram, and I see how they work, what level of quality they have.”

Tatar Bunar London in the works

A few weeks later, back in London, Anna Andriienko shows me around the Tatar Bunar site: Svetlana’s tiles are already up on one of the walls, the wooden floors and worktops are being fitted and although the design is unique, it is already possible to feel the soul of the original restaurant in Odesa. There are black and white photos on the wall of Cooper’s family, in the Bessarabian village of Tatarbunary, where they came from. This corner of the Odesa region is a land rich in produce, fruits and vegetables and wine and grains. From that Ukrainian soil has come the clay in these tiles, the knotted wood on the floors, the long and diverse history behind the dishes on the menu. A restaurant built from fire and struggle - bringing incredible southern Ukrainian food all the way to east London.

Tatar Bunar London will open in March 2025