LiaoCao Design

LiaoCao (了草) is a ceramic studio founded in 2017 by Xue Leiqi, a Chinese artist and calligrapher who treats Chinese characters as his primary material. Leiqi studied at the School of Design of Jiangnan University between 2009 and 2013 and describes himself as an independent designer as well as a writer.

The studio applies calligraphic and typographic thinking to tableware and small objects: the Thousand Character tea cup and a set of bronze-pattern coasters, Xuan Niao and Taotie, both from 2017, take their motifs from classical characters and archaic bronzes. Leiqi has also published two books of his work, Zou Guo Jiang Nan in 2015 and Han Zi Wei Yang in 2016, and the studio’s name, LiaoCao, is written with the characters for a cursive, unfinished hand.