Looking at the beautiful bouquets of Ukrainian artist Olesya Galushcenko, it’s hard to believe that all the flowers aren’t actually real but made of hard porcelain.

Olesya Galushcenko is a hydraulics engineer who got into porcelain flower making as a personal challenge. Seven years ago, during maternity leave, she decided to take on an artistic project that involved using her hands, and a decorative flower bouquet caught her eye. The artist was self-taught, so she refused to pay for classes and decided to learn the craft herself using free internet tutorials. But they only served to get her started, because she soon realized that polymer clay wasn’t the right material for the degree of realism she wanted, so she decided to experiment herself and soon discovered that cold porcelain met her requirements.

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A Vietnamese man obsessed with traditional porcelain dishes and antiques has spent the last 25 years of his life decorating his house with almost 10,000 porcelain bowls, plates and urns.

Nguien Van Truong first fell in love with porcelain antiques in 1986, a year after being discharged from the army and returning to his home village of Kieu Son, in Vietnam’s Vinh Phuc province. He was making a living as a carpenter at a time and got the chance to paint the table and chairs of a local antique collector who first introduced him to the beauty of traditional porcelain dishes. Truong was so impressed that he decided to become a collector himself, and scoured all of Vietnam’s northern provinces in search of traditional porcelain objects, and spent all of his money trying to acquire as much of it as possible.

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Shayna Leib’s French desserts may look delicious, but they are only meant to be savoured with the eyes. While these exquisite treats may appear to be the work of a talented confectioner, Leib is actually a porcelain and glass artist.

If, like me, you have an insatiable sweet tooth, you’re probably wondering how anyone could be so cruel as to tempt us with these positively mouth-watering desserts that we’ll never get to try. Well, in Shayna Leib’s case, the idea for her “Patisserie” porcelain and glass series was inspired by her own inability to indulge in decadent desserts. Apparently, her body reacts to food with high histamine, salicylate, and copper content, like puff pastry and chocolate mouse, which results in many dietary restriction. So by salivating over photos of her porcelain and glass desserts, you get a taste of how she feels every time she walks by a dessert shop.

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Japanese artist Katsuyo Aoki uses ceramics to create the most intricate skulls you’ve ever seen. Decorated in rococo style, her amazing works of art incorporate various lacy, swooping patterns and tendrils that make these symbols of death look beautiful.

You’ll probably never look at a skull the same way after seeing the amazing artworks of Katsuyo Aoki. The Tokyo artist specializing in detailed porcelain sculpture has chosen the ghoulish symbol for her Predictive Dream series to prove even death can be beautiful. ”The decorative styles, patterns and symbolic forms I allude to and incorporate in my works each contain a story based on historical backgrounds and ideas, myths, and allegories. Their existence in the present age makes us feel many things,; adoration, some sort of romantic emotions, a sense of unfruitfulness and languor from their excessiveness and vulgarity,” Aoki says in her artist statement. We’ve featured decorated human skulls on OC before, like the painted skulls of Hallstatt ossuary, or the elaborately carved Kapala ritual cups, but nothing quite as detailed and beautiful as these fragile porcelain masterpieces.

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Ukrainian-born artist Vladimir Kanevsky creates exquisitely handcrafted porcelain flowers that look perfectly natural, but never die.

From hyacinths and chrysanthemums to clematis and hollyhocks, Vladimir Kanevsky makes botanically-perfect flowers from porcelain. Inspired mostly by 17th- and 18th-century European botanical prints, but also by the glass flower collection at Harvard University’s Museum of Natural History, the talented artisan has managed to take this old craft to new heights. He not only models the delicate porcelain himself, but also does all the painstaking painting himself, often adding tiny imperfections like bent stems,spots or insect bites to make his creations look even more realistic. “He’s one of the few people I know who can almost compete with Mother Nature,” longtime collector Caroline Roehm says about Kanevsky.

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Zhang Lianzhi, a 50-year-old porcelain collector from Tianjin, China, has spent four years decorating an old house with hundreds of millions of ancient porcelain fragments and tons of natural crystals. It’s now known as the Porcelain House or Yuebao House.

The Porcelain House of Tianjin opened its gates to the public on September 2nd, 2007, onChifeng Street in Heping District. The old French-style building has a history of over 100 years. It was originally the home of a central finance minister in the late Qing dynasty, and was later converted into a bank, after the founding of New China, in 1949. But after the bank changed its location, the beautiful building was left deserted for several years, until porcelain collector Zhang Lianzhi bought it for 1 million yuan ($160,000). He then spent the following four years turning it into a unique edifice, decorated with porcelain dating from the Tang (AD 618-907) to the Qing (1644-1911) dynasties. Now the Porcelain House is the most eye-catching building in Tianjin, and one of the city’s most popular tourist attractions.

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The Songjiangcheng scenic spot, in Yangzhou, China, has become an even more popular tourist attraction, thanks to a unique dragon statue made of over 2,800 porcelain dishes and cups. The 30-meter-long installation is made up of a metal frame, upon which porcelain dishes and Chinese tea cups were masterfully placed to form a realistic-looking dragon. It’s amazing what some people can do with porcelain…

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I’ve featured some bizarre dolls before, but Jessica Harrison’s creations are damn right twisted. I luv’em!

These ghastly ceramic figures look like something you’d expect to find on the dinning room table of a serial killer, but they’re actually the work of a talented artist with a taste for the bizarre. Sure, a young lady holding her own guts probably isn’t everyone’s idea of the perfect porcelain doll, but I definitely appreciate this kind of art. Be sure to check out Jessica’s website, for more of her work over the years. Read More »

Li Xiaofeng is one of China’s most original artists, using broken porcelain shards to create unique wearable costumes.

Li Xiaofeng began his artistic career as a muralist, but quickly turned his attention to sculpture, in order to explore the concept of Chinese landscapes. Instead of the materials usually used in this art form (marble, wood or glass), Li decided to use something completely new, but ancient at the same time – porcelain shards from archeological sites. He cleans them shapes them, drills small holes into them and then binds them together with silver wire to create unique costumes he calls “rearranged landscapes”. Theoretically, his porcelain clothes are wearable, although they are just as heavy as a suit of armor (not so durable, though).

Recently, Lacoste asked Li Xiaofeng to create a porcelain polo shirt, for the company’s 2010 Holiday Collector’s Series. Because China forbids the export of ancient artifacts, including old porcelain shards. This posed a new challenge for the Chinese artist who decided to create his own porcelain bowls, drew custom motifs on them (including the Lacoste crocodile logo), broke them into pieces and tied them into the shape of a polo shirt.

Li Xiaofeng’s one-of-a-kind porcelain shirt will be the most expensive and most exclusive Lacoste polo ever created.

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