Daniel Dooreck's Happy Ceramics
By Drake's
Jun 14, 2024
Daniel Dooreck never planned on being a ceramicist. Living in Toronto as a sommelier and co-owner of a local restaurant, he started moulding clay as a hobby, something to take his mind off of things.
"It was really just for fun," he says, methodically turning and shaping in the shade of his Los Angeles studio, having left Canada for California in 2021. "I was working in wine, making a few things on the side and I guess I realised early on I had a small knack for it, but I said to myself that I'd never do it as a profession, which is ironic now. I quickly went back on that."
Starting out in the garage of his Echo Park home, Dooreck set up a small business: Danny D's Mud Shop, and began posting videos of him breezily chatting with curious neighbours as he worked. After a particularly successful sale of vases over Instagram, he decided to dedicate himself full-time to the craft, telling The LA Times, “I joke that I left my 40-hours-a-week job to work 90 hours a week doing something I love. I devoted my 20s to food and wine, but I wasn’t happy.”
Inspired by motifs of classic Americana: cacti, cowboy boots, desert flowers and bucking broncos, Dooreck's cheerfully wabi-sabi wares are now sent around the world. He recently returned from a month in Japan, where he sold out of ceramics during a pop-up and residency at Paddler's Coffee in Shibuya, Tokyo.
"I think my style is fairly quirky and playful," he says, his rescue dog Kaiya milling around the studio. "There’s a western influence and some from classic tattooing. A lot of it is Americana, which is why I think I do well in Japan. There's an appreciation for craft over there, and all things in that style."
Having outgrown his garage/home studio, he moved into a bigger space last year. Two days a week used to be entirely dedicated to sending out orders, but he recently hired someone to help with logistics. "I basically became a shipping company for a while," he jokes.
"From the surface it might look like everything is really smooth and I’ve been crushing," he adds, the grey clay now beginning to resemble the outline of a vase, "but there have been a lot of headaches along the way, too."
"I still don’t know much about ceramics, but I know how to do this."
