Meet the Berlin Artist Making a Million Porcelain Dishes Before She Dies

Number 520 holds sugar; 375 and 2,213 are upturned on the dish-rack, drying; and 2,831 is half-filled with coffee and rimmed in lipstick. Gesturing from the kitchen table with a cherry is Uli Aigner, the artist attempting to make a million porcelain dishes before she dies. She deposits the cherry pit into 485 and explains: “Making cups is not spectacular, but making one million is. The thing itself is so simple. Doing it, that’s the amazing thing.”

Though she is attempting to make an amount of pieces often associated with mass production, each cup, bowl, or plate is handmade by Aigner herself, its chronological number engraved in the drying clay. Porcelain tableware is usually cast in a mold, but Aigner doesn’t use them. Instead, she shapes each piece individually on her pottery wheel. Work, play, and parenting all take place in the family’s sprawling Berlin apartment. Aigner’s ceramics studio is tucked into a small room off the kitchen; the children, on summer holiday, wander in and out. Aigner’s count is nearing 3,000.

The project—“Eine Million”—started as the Austrian artist and curator approached her 50th birthday in 2014. “I was trying to figure out what I really, really, really wanted to do and I always liked the act of throwing [on a pottery wheel] very much,” she says. “As a teenager, I’d done a ceramic apprenticeship and so I chose to return to that. But this time, I decided to make one million, because I want to do something until the end of my life.” The endlessness of the project felt freeing and the wheel seemed like a method of creating that would accommodate her aging. “The art world loves the young because they look better. But I like getting older and I expose my aging through my work.”

Aigner shaping a porcelain cup on her pottery wheel.
Aigner shaping a porcelain cup on her pottery wheel.
Photographed by Hudson Hayden

In addition to her husband, a filmmaker who handles the documentation of each piece, three of her four children contribute to the project. One preps porcelain, another helps with the photography. The youngest, six, has made porcelain dishes for her dolls and the only one who hasn’t participated, age 17, says she’ll definitely do something, but not right now. As Aigner points out, she has plenty of time to get involved. “I like to set an example for them about how to exist on the planet,” she says. “I wanted to show them that if you do something, something happens. If you do nothing, nothing happens.”

A lot has happened since she began “Eine Million” in 2014. There have been exhibits and installations; commissions from around the world and trips across oceans. An order for the Whitney Museum shop was being packed up during my visit. What excites Aigner most isn’t the art world’s stamp of approval, but the myriad of people she’s met along the way.

Aigner makes all sorts of plates, cups, goblets, and bowls, designed so that anyone, anywhere can use them. Sometimes she’ll tailor the shape to the tableware design or history of the region the piece is going to; occasionally, she collaborates with other artists who add their own decorative flourishes. Aigner sells, swaps, or gifts the pieces. Anyone interested in buying something can visit her at home to learn more about the process. Shops that carry her work are required to write down the address of the purchaser so that she can add it to her Google Map database.

Porcelain cups, bowls, and plates, handmade by Aigner.
Porcelain cups, bowls, and plates, handmade by Aigner.
Photographed by Hudson Hayden

Friends traveling to far-flung locations are often asked to leave a piece from “Eine Million” behind. In Burkina Faso, the woman who was given number 1,558 by Aigner’s friend also happens to be a ceramicist and a mother of twins. Aigner was delighted by the surprising connection. “I take globalization very personally,” she says. “I'm sick of having a meaning about the world just from watching CNN. I'd rather connect with people. When you have a piece of ‘Eine Million,’ we become linked; it was made with my hands and now it’s in yours.”

Last fall, she visited an end of life care facility for alcoholics in Berlin. “It’s not clear what you possess and what you don’t when you live in a group home,” she says, of her decision to bestow each man with a porcelain cup. (At the facility the men can drink alcohol in their rooms, but not in the common spaces.) Each cup is engraved with its chronological number, the man’s name, and his drink of choice, which Aigner learned through her conversations with them. Since the cups were gifted last September, four of the men have died, and their cups have been moved to the common kitchen, becoming a sort of memorial. “Eine Million” has given her a way to step out of the art world and into all sorts of places she might otherwise never visit, like a domestic violence organization in Florida, and a number of porcelain factories in China.

A porcelain cup on the pottery wheel.
A porcelain cup on the pottery wheel.
Photographed by Hudson Hayden

Each piece is a work of art, but also a working contribution to the household. Aigner herself is interested in the meaning of work in the 21st century. “Everything has gone digital, but we are physical,” she says. She laughs when I admit that, upon learning about “Eine Million,” I imagined she must be terrified of death. Far from it, she says. “When I looked at my first child, all of the sudden, I realized I would become his memories and his past. It gives you such an amazing sense of time. I’m not afraid to die. I’d be sorry for my family, but not for myself, because, hey, what’s coming next?”

Though Aigner loves working with porcelain, she makes pieces only when she has an order. She requests that any item that subsequently breaks be returned to her. In exchange, Aigner sends the owner a replacement—with a new number, of course. Each piece comes with a 500-year warranty. How will she honor that? Beyond daydreaming that she might live for another 447 years, she’s not sure. Perhaps the children will take up the project after her death. She doesn’t seem too concerned. Instead, she explains how archeologists date porcelain, and the ramifications for her own project. “The electromagnetic field in Berlin in 2018 is recorded in the porcelain. In the future, scientists will be able to tell an ‘Eine Million’ piece was made here, no matter where it ends up.” Considering the possibility, she smiles, then says, “I don’t think I can ever move out of this apartment.”

Uli Aigner’s work will be on display in September 2019 at the Austrian Cultural Forum in New York.

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