Sarah Hussaini, Not Work Related, Brooklyn, New York

Sarah in her studio in Brooklyn

I LOVE the work of Sarah Hussaini AKA Not Work Related. It’s bold and colourful and there is serious attention to detail paid to every piece. Follow Sarah on Instagram and you will be treated to regular reels on her processes and they will make you love her work even more. She is also very entertaining with it. So read on to find out about her and visit her website to see more of her amazing work.

Who are you?

Hi! My name is Sarah Hussaini, I live in Brooklyn, New York where I have a ceramics studio. I was an architect working on ceramics in the background for years. I worked freelance for 3 years, tapering out of architecture (this was an accident!) until I had built myself a ceramics studio that could take care of itself and was self-sufficient. Not Work Related has been my full time (and a half) job for 5 years now.

Why do you also have a thing with ceramics?

I love the technical restrictions of a medium like ceramics, it requires you to be good at so many disparate things. When I first became an architect I thought that I would be sitting on a line between art and science, and that was not the case. But with ceramics, it truly feels like each day I am thinking about not just the what, but the how. The most interesting moments in ceramics are when someone comes up to you and asks 'how??'. I live for those moments where I am so impressed by how this thing was made and what someone figured out so it could exist.

Sarah’s fabulous ceramics - I have the lilac and mint cup right in the middle

When did ceramics come into your life? 

As long as I can remember, I always made things with my hands, my hands were always busy as a kid. In school that was put to use making models, prototypes and building installations. Once I started working in an office, I felt this restlessness build up in my hands. I had never before been required to sit at the same desk for 9 to 10 to 12 hours a day. I went back to so many forms of making and craft in my nights and weekends, one of the things I chose to do was ceramics. Ceramics had been familiar to me, I took classes through high school and it was easy to fall back into a pattern with it. 

Where can we find you on a typical day?

I have a studio that is a 10 minute walk from my apartment in a neighborhood called Greenpoint and I am probably there 6 days a week trying to keep on top of deadlines and work.

Ready for the drop…

What are your plans for the future?

I've started to put a toe into the world of textiles, that is a big goal for this studio, to be more than a ceramics studio and to move towards being a design studio. The amount of work I put into the ceramics studio is not sustainable long term without other products. In that vein, there is also a big push to produce some home decor objects that can be sold at higher prices. Ultimately, the issue that I am coming up against is that the work is so detailed and because it is a functional object, it has a price ceiling that I am scraping against. In order for me to continue to be challenged and interested in the work that I am making, it needs to shift to a slightly different model than just expensive cups.

Cup closeups