Set of 4 mugs #1, by Umami

Inès Angelini is a French ceramist born in Nice in 1990. After studying law, she specialized in intellectual property. Yet, behind this career path, a need for a more direct, more tangible relationship with the world gradually emerged. She discovered ceramics almost by chance, during evening classes taken as a way to slow down and refocus. Very quickly, contact with clay became essential. During the first lockdown, she set up a studio in her garden and dedicated herself to it daily. This intensive practice marked a decisive turning point: she chose to fully commit and founded Umami. The brand name, borrowed from the fifth basic taste, evokes a search for balance and depth. Today, she crafts stoneware pieces, straddling the line between everyday object and sculptural presence. Cups, candleholders, and utilitarian forms become sensitive volumes, where every irregularity is embraced as a quality. Influenced by a wabi-sabi aesthetic and her Mediterranean heritage, her work celebrates raw material, imperfections, and the connection between gestures, uses, and people.