Have you heard of companies that started in a garage, or on someone’s kitchen table? If you hadn’t heard of one before, you have now, because that’s exactly how AmaNORD began. The idea to make tiles was born in my own kitchen
In February 2024, while walking in the forest, I asked myself a simple question: what made me happy as a child? The answer came easily — nature, where I always spent a lot of time, and clay. I’d been drawn to shaping clay since I was three years old, but I gave up on it when I wasn’t accepted into the ceramics program at art school. Standing in the forest that day, I realized I’d never actually tried again. And I knew that if I didn’t, I’d spend the rest of my life wondering What if.
I turned my kitchen into a workshop, combining my love for nature and clay. I experimented with different ways to press live plants into clay. A lot of it didn’t work, but that never made me want to quit. I kept trying different plants and materials, making plates, cup coasters, candle holders, and brooches.
I didn’t have my own kiln yet, so I carefully packed my pieces and drove them to a studio that offered firing services. Some came back damaged, and that’s when I realized – I didn’t want to depend on someone else’s kiln. I needed my own workshop. But some pieces did survive: a round cup coaster with a fern imprint. I lifted it against the wall to photograph it, and that’s when the idea hit me – THIS COULD BE A TILE!
I searched for information about handmade tiles in Latvia and found nothing.
So I learned through other ceramicists’ videos, books, and a lot of trial and error at my kitchen “workshop”. I spent evenings and nights in my “office” — a small room, about 2×3 meters — looking for a brand name, researching equipment, searching for business development programs, and looking for a space for a new workshop.
Two months later, in April, I found it — the future AmaNORD workshop, in the former Latvia Ceramics factory. But that’s a story for the next blog.
AmaNORD wasn’t really born in a garage, or even fully in that kitchen. It was born in the forest — from thoughts that had always been with me, just never this loud. From the courage to stop listening to people who said I wasn’t enough. From an old love for nature and clay.