About the studioI'm Špela Hvala, the hands behind SPHV Studio.
By day I work as a software developer, and I also hold a degree in art history, an odd pairing that somehow makes complete sense to me. Tile making is my practice outside of that, where I get to combine my passion for mathematics, patterns, glaze exploration, and a continued interest in the arts. I create ceramics in small batches, preferring thoughtful experimentation over volume.
I'm drawn to surfaces that feel aged, weathered, and naturally unearthed, pieces that look as though they've lived a hundred years before reaching your hands. I draw inspiration from nature's small details and glimpses into past arts, where I find a certain playfulness, a strange humor buried in the margins of old manuscripts, and in the little creatures medieval illuminators tucked into the corners of sacred pages.
I like to think some of that mischief survives in my own work. My studio, in its own small way, keeps faith with that spirit. Nothing here is meant to look new, or clean, or entirely of this century. I want each piece to carry a little fog around its edges, a little uncertainty about where or when it came from, so that holding it feels less like owning an object and more like stumbling across something that was always meant to be found.
