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For Kimia Sabooni, a khomreh is more than a vessel — it holds history and authenticity. A ceramicist trained in architecture, she builds large volumes entirely by hand.
Kimia Sabooni shapes earth into memory — slow, rooted, enduring.
Kimia Sabooni is a ceramicist based in Tehran, drawn to large, unrefined volumes and the making of khomreh — the traditional Iranian vessels that have kept a consistent form across the ages. For her, scale is intimate: the big work feels like a part of herself, and clay, once met with water, gives a fresh and living feeling that ties her to the earth, to roots, and to nature. Her path to clay ran through architecture. The idea of shaping space and letting a form belong to its environment has always intrigued her, and it survives in her work as a quiet, nature-inspired geometry — simple, minimal, never smoothed into anonymity. She builds entirely by hand, wanting no intermediary between her fingers and the clay, and uses the coil technique as a kind of meditation. Making three large khomreh becomes a months-long journey of repetition, solitude, and introspection, where the outside world shuts down. Sabooni's practice reaches beyond ceramics. She plays the didgeridoo, whose breath-driven, continuous rhythm shapes itself from the subconscious much as her vessels do, and she paints without ever trying to replicate what she sees. Across all of it runs a single conviction: in a fast, technological, westernized world, the khomreh is a reminder to preserve authenticity — and authenticity, today, matters as much as nature.