Ten years ago, Ajay John was knee-deep in the oil fields of Oman, sketching flowlines, marking weld paths, and mapping refinery layouts under the desert sun. The landscape was bare, the work precise. There were no trees in sight, let alone flowers.
Now, the 34-year-old spends his days moulding vases.
Some are tall and thin, others squat and wide. On the shelves of his modest home-turned-studio in Kochi, they sit quietly in various states of becoming. Half-dried, bisque-fired, or glazed and gleaming.
Ajay doesn’t speak of his shift from mechanical engineering to ceramics as a dramatic reinvention. There was no epiphany. “It just kept happening,” he tells TNIE. “Until one day, this became the only thing I wanted to do.”
The blueprint years
Born and raised in Kochi, Ajay followed the path expected of many middle-class boys who liked math and machines. Science stream in school, then the ordeal of engineering college. In his case, mechanical studies at LBS College in Kasaragod.
There were no wild dreams of art. If anything, only a quiet fascination with systems that fit together and made sense.
Elaborating on this, Ajay says, “I always liked mechanical things. How parts fit together, how movement happens. Aeronautics was my first goal, but that didn’t work out. So, I stayed with mechanical.”
After graduation, he spent half a year working with his father’s architectural firm before heading to Oman hunting for work. He landed one soon enough — at Galfar Al Misnad. That year shaped him more than Ajay realised at the time.
“The work was rigorous and included extensive planning, poring over blueprints, field visits, flowline drawings for oil and gas fields, welding charts, supervision and more. All this, in the middle of nowhere. All around us, there was just sand,” he recalls.
However, even amid this presumed nothingness, something materialised: a deep interest in Ajay for everything manufacturing. That led him to Cranfield University in the UK, renowned for its industry-aligned programmes and cutting-edge research.
“Our group project involved developing a scratch-resistant ceramic coating for car interiors. It was my first encounter with ceramics. Not as art, but as function. At the time, we were only solving a durability issue,” Ajay recalls.
Later, for his thesis, he worked on laser welding of aluminium and stainless steel. “Two metals notoriously hard to fuse. It was gritty, unforgiving work. I loved it,” he adds.
It was also at Cranfield that Ajay discovered additive manufacturing and 3D printing. “Machines that built objects out of thin air. It felt like science fiction.”
A fork in the road
After completing his degree, Ajay took a short stint with Royal Mail. But when the work visa expired, he found his path leading into the desert once again. This time, to Dubai.
“This time, though, I didn’t have a plan. So I did what I deemed was best,” he recalls. Ajay spent weeks walking industrial zones with CVs in hand.
One day, he landed at a design firm just after they’d posted a hiring notice. The woman who drafted the ad happened to be at the reception when Ajay walked in. They shook hands and soon, he had the job. It was only fitting. The same grit he once used to fuse stubborn metals had now welded his path forward.
Over the next few years, Ajay worked on complex architectural projects. “Twisting towers, intricate facades, buildings shaped like cocoons and apples. It was a complete departure from my earlier work, which was mostly lines and grids,” Ajay highlights.
His innate passion and expertise soon saw him pen designs for Dubai’s Museum of the Future and World Expo structures. “But after a point, I burned out,” he says. “I was drawing things that looked artistic, but I wasn’t connected to them. Not really.”
Machines and mud
This realisation brought Ajay home. To Kochi. Again, he had no clear plan and hence, slowed down. During this time, he experimented with clay. First by hand, then with machines. Slowly, his engineering instincts kicked in.
Today, Ajay’s studio, FabCeramics, is unlike most ceramic ateliers. There’s no potter’s wheel here. Only a bold fusion of design software, hardware hacks and traditional materials.
“I draw the designs in CAD,” he explains. “Then, I convert the files using a separate slicing software that translates them into machine-readable code.”
Ajay had done considerable jugaad to modify the machine, originally built for plastic 3D printing, to extrude clay. Now, the nozzle releases thin coils of stoneware clay, one layer at a time, slowly forming vessels that carry both digital precision and material unpredictability.
“In short, it’s code and clay,” he explains.
FabCeramics is still in its early days. Ajay makes small batches of flower vases, tea sets, table lamps and candle holders. Each piece is functional, but carries a sculptural sensibility. He’s also mulling prototypes for smart vases that track water or nutrient levels.
When asked if this was perhaps a quiet return or nod to his mechanical engineering roots, Ajay says, “I still carry the engineering mindset. That said, I now care more about what the object feels like.”
Ajay has no illusions about the challenges of selling handmade ceramics. “Photos on social media don’t do justice. People need to touch it, feel the weight, and see the glaze change in the light. That’s where the beauty of ceramics and stoneware lies,” he points out.
His pitch is simple: one-of-a-kind, made-in-Kochi ceramics that blur the line between code and clay, where the permanence of engineering meets the fluidity of art. Ajay has received favourable responses from boutique hotels and corporate offices already.
But Ajay is content even without. For a man who once traced oil lines across deserts, now, he is chasing form and shape in mud. “I didn’t abandon engineering. I just found a way to feel something through it."