BZIPPY: For Humans, By Humans

Founded in 2008 by artist Bari Ziperstein, BZIPPY is a ceramic furniture and housewares company producing open edition wares. Inspired by architecture and industrial design, BZIPPY builds on a taxonomy of slab-based forms to deliver high-quality, hand-built functional ceramic objects.

After studying art and women’s studies as an undergraduate and then earning her Master of Fine Arts from the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California, in 2004, Ziperstein worked primarily in studio-based sculpture and experimental public art. At CalArts, she studied with revered conceptual artist Michael Asher, whose method of engaging directly with the physical environments and socioeconomic structures through which artworks circulate was a profound influence. As Ziperstein’s work grew more ambitious, she sought an alternative to the myth that the only viable career path for an artist is through teaching.

Enter BZIPPY. “BZIPPY was conceived as a way to circumvent prescribed notions of success for working artists and is built on innate creativity mixed with ideas inspired by conceptual art and intersectional feminist principles,” says Ziperstein, CEO and creative director of the studio. Everything is designed by Ziperstein and produced on-site in a 9,000-square-foot facility in Sun Valley, California, by a team of 13 full-time highly-skilled artists, administrators, and technicians.

The BZIPPY collection of Side Tables and Planters comprises three core designs. The Hex is based on the history of Brutalism and industrial design, creating the illusion of two hexes that slot into each other like gears in motion. The Cloud is inspired by Chicago’s iconic Marina City towers designed by Bertrand Goldberg. And the Castle is a playful combination of the Hex and the Cloud.

BZIPPY Tabletop comprises three families of intimately-scaled functional decor objects: the Tube Vase, Scallop Vase, and Circle Top collections. The Tabletop objects emerge from a vocabulary of shapes informed by Ziperstein’s interest in architecture, industrial design, and the many forms of urban infrastructure. When grouped together, the Tabletop vessels resemble cityscapes viewed from afar. Often collaged together, the shapes used in these vessels are stacked to create a precarious sense of balance, making a relatively lightweight object appear heavier than it is as a way to suggest the weight of something much larger, like an office tower.

“The handmade nature of our work is part of who we are and what we do and produces sought-after, considered objects that our fans collect as cherished heirloom objects of high design,” says Ziperstein. “In an era of labor exploitation, rapid-fire trends, planned obsolescence in design and manufacturing, and climate emergency due to wasteful and extractive processes, we believe that our handmade goods contribute to a progressive movement that prioritizes people over profits and quality over quantity.”

Everything the team does at the studio is approached through three equally important pillars:

1. Creativity. All day, every day.
2. Honoring the long, intersecting histories of art and design through material curiosity, intellectual rigor, innovation in engineering, and informed, intentional aesthetic choices.
3. Respecting and valuing labor of all kinds through teamwork, fair compensation, and recognition that everything we make is conceived of, designed, engineered, fabricated, and cared for by human beings.

That care for human beings is paramount for the studio’s ethos. “In 2020, the BZIPPY Fund was established to sponsor educational, mentorship, amplification, and funding opportunities for BIPOC ceramicists as a way to contribute to achieving equity for artists and designers of color in what has been a white-dominated field for far too long,” Ziperstein says.

BZIPPY has also created a trade program, which provides high-quality services to the interior design trade. “Our clients include some of the most prominent interior designers working today, and our work can be found in design-forward private homes and in public venues around the world as well as on the pages of taste-making trade publications,” Ziperstein adds.