Studio Gazar

CREATIVE TALKS

When an aesthete from fashion embraces the subtle sensuality of clay

Coming from the world of fashion, Midheta Agic, founder of Studio Gazar, has always been attuned to form and material. She first approached the potter’s wheel and ceramics out of curiosity, yet the medium quickly proved to be a natural creative outlet. Honest and capricious, clay does not conceal. Through the medium of clay and the deep, nuanced glazes she develops, the Serbian designer creates statement pieces in her Belgrade atelier that evoke the essence of gazar. The stiff silk known for its sculptural body and impeccable drape lends her studio its name. For Midheta, gazar also recalls the “heavy, earth-bound, hand-crafted” quality of ceramics. Across her vases, lighting, and more recent works including furniture and door handles, another preoccupation emerges: her admiration for architecture. And not just any architecture, the French city of Nice. In the silhouettes of its buildings and monuments, Midheta observes the sweep of a cornice, the curve of a balustrade, an ornamental detail. These forms quietly find their way into her work. A conversation with an aesthete with deft hands and a keen eye.

Midheta, could you introduce yourself?

My name is Midheta, founder of Studio Gazar, a brand showcasing handcrafted ceramic creations. Few years ago, I came to ceramics through curiosity, not training. My background is in fashion, a world built around material, proportion, and the silent language of form. When I first sat down at a wheel and felt clay respond beneath my hands, something shifted, it was the same conversation I'd always been having, just in a different material. I've been self-taught from the beginning and that fact matters to me - it means every decision I make comes from observation and instinct, not received method.

Tell us about the origins of Studio Gazar.

Gazar began as a private practice. I wasn't trying to build a brand, I was trying to understand a material. There's a particular kind of learning that only happens with your hands in clay, alone, without an audience. The name came before any of that was settled. That's usually how it works for me: the feeling arrives before the structure. Gazar - the fabric, the tension between weight and form - said something true about what I was making before I could articulate it myself.

Why did you choose this name for your project?

Gazar is a silk, but not a soft one. It has architectural structure, it holds volume without support, stands on its own, drapes without collapsing and has a position. Clay does the same thing. Heavy, earthbound, shaped by hand - and yet, when it works, the form stands on its own terms, no explanation needed, no armature underneath. That tension between weight and lightness, between structure and material honesty - that's what I was trying to name. Gazar felt exact.

"Gazar is a silk, but not a soft one. It has architectural structure, it holds volume without support, stands on its own, drapes without collapsing and has a position. Clay does the same thing." - Midheta Agic

Your ceramic pieces reveal Art Deco influences as well as classical ones. Several objects also bear evocative names, such as the Vestal vase or the Vestige pendant light. Can you tell us about this sensitivity for this neoclassical aesthetic?

Three places that have made a particular impression on me along the French Riviera: the Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, for the way its gardens embrace the sea in every direction. The Villa Kerylos in Beaulieu-sur-Mer, a reconstruction of an ancient Greek house standing right by the water’s edge – its simplicity, the authenticity of the materials. And the Villa Santo Sospir in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, where Cocteau covered every surface with drawings – a total artistic gesture that is impossible to forget.

Furthermore, several of your pieces and their associated colour palettes are named in French. Why did you choose this language?

French is the language of Nice for me. When I name something Vestige or Brun Foncé, I'm not reaching for sophistication, I'm reaching for precision. French gives me a certain exactness when it comes to color, tone, and material description but it also carries the right weight: neither too heavy nor too decorative - it suits the objects.

Garnet, deep black, dark brown: the muted or neutral tones of your range of vases, lighting, furniture and handles reflect a genuine commitment to monochrome. How do you explain this aesthetic choice?

Color that calls attention to itself is a distraction from form. I work in tones that the earth already knows, tones that feel like they've always existed. The restraint isn't an aesthetic preference so much as a discipline: if the glaze is doing too much, the form isn't doing enough. I want the object to be readable in silence.

In your own home, how do you create a dialogue between your pieces and with the rest of your interior décor?

I live with the objects I create, that's deliberate, it's how I test them. An object that works in a controlled setting but fails in a real room hasn't earned its place yet. My home is where pieces get questioned, some stay, some go back. The ones that remain are the ones that hold their presence quietly, without asking for attention. Two vases from the Grenat Foncé series are sitting currently together in my place, the depth of that glaze changes depending on the light and time of day. The Nari floor lamp is in the corner of the living room, the Brun Foncé ceramic side table beside it. And the black pendant lamp with shell ornaments hangs in the living room as well. I don't style them, they simply live there.

A selection of your pieces is now available on Modern Metier. Why did you choose to partner with our platform?

What drew me to Modern Metier is their approach to curation - it's considered. The platform doesn't feel like a marketplace; it feels like a selection. That distinction matters for work like Gazar's. I'm not interested in volume, I'm interested in the right people finding the right objects.

Among the pieces featured on our platform are vases, lamps and lighting fixtures, as well as new offerings such as the Shell handles and the dark brown side table. Do you plan to explore new types of objects in the near future or to further develop certain lines, such as furniture or handles?

The handles and the side table came from the same question I always start with: what does this material want to become when it meets a functional constraint? I'm not planning collections in the traditional sense, I follow the material and the problem. Furniture is interesting because the constraints are harder and harder constraints tend to produce more honest forms. We'll see where that goes.