Meet Allison Shawn | Ceramist & Architect, owner of SOMBRA

We had the good fortune of connecting with Allison Shawn and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Allison, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
I grew up helping with my family’s small business, so it always felt natural for me to start a company of my own eventually. I just didn’t know that I would end up being in ceramics! I trained as an architect, and started SOMBRA even as I was deeply engaged in that career path. I was looking for a counterbalance to the exacting and technical nature of construction to explore my loves of form, space, and material in a more organic way. I found myself pulled deeper and deeper into ceramics as a creative outlet, until it only made sense to begin selling my work. And then I had a business! Ever since, growing SOMBRA has continued to be the most natural progression of my work as a designer.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
With SOMBRA, I make ceramic art & objects for the home and garden. I design and create all the work myself at my Mt. Washington home studio. My experience as an architect informs my understanding of human factors as well as my eye for form. Nothing satisfies me more than getting the details, proportions, and balance of my work just right. I desire to create work that invites presence, that counteracts the constant distraction of contemporary life. My style leans towards the thoughtful, elemental, and tranquil — but encourages the absolutely riotous.

As SOMBRA continues to evolve, I am always keeping an eye out for opportunities to intertwine my ceramic and architecture work in holistically designed spaces.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
I’m always telling my friends from afar to come to Los Angeles in February. The city is at its most magical right after it has soaked up the winter rains. Everything is exploding in fresh greens and blossoms; the air is cool and clear as crystal. When the rest of the country is still hibernating, LA is reborn.

It’s amazing how little time needs to be spent indoors when you live in LA, so I’d invite my friend to spend a week outdoors with me. We’d inspect the tide pools in Palos Verdes, scramble the alien Vasquez Rocks, and lounge under the oaks in Topanga. Art is outside too, especially at the Getty’s sprawling campus. Or movies, at Hollywood Forever.

I also love the strange and storied history of spirituality in Los Angeles, long a hotbed of new religions, cults, and alternative philosophies. Among these is Paramahansa Yogananda’s Self-Realization Fellowship. Both the Mt. Washington and Pacific Palisade’s campuses are open to the public and well worth a visit. There’s a lake shrine and house boat at the Pacific Palisades location, which is the perfect kind of surreal.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
Valentine Schlegel, craftswoman extraordinaire. Valentine was a French sculptor and ceramist born in 1925 and prolific for decades until her death last year. She’s an inspiration to me for the way she bridged scales and media, creating both tabletop sculptures as well as entire architectural interiors. Her works are so luxuriously formed and engrossing that they transform domestic space itself into sculpture, an intimate experience that engages the body as well as the eye. As you might imagine, Ceramist-Architect is not the most common career path, so I’m grateful to have such an icon to follow. Also, even today only 17% of architects are women. I’m always inspired by the women who tread this ground in an even more challenging era.

Website: https://sombra.la

Instagram: https://instagram.com/_sombra.la

Other: studio@sombra.la