Master surfer-ceramicist releases cult “I Hate Surfing” 70s-style ashtrays and truck-stop diner mugs

Show the world how much you hate surfing!

Several nights heretofore, the master surf-ceramicist Damion Fuller held court, surrounded by dozens of his elaborate creations, urns, plates and paintings, at the relaunch of a once down-at-heel beachside hotel now turned into the sort of lightly flamboyant joint a man would take his lover for meaningless and exhausting sexing deep under the influence of pills and liquor. 

Damion Fuller is a wildly regarded actor in the surf game.

He leveraged a degree in Industrial Design into a career that encompasses accumulating surfboards from the late seventies and early eighties (“They’re hydrodynamic, functional pieces of art”), building accessories for Mambo, back when it was the hub of the anti-surrealist art movement in the nineties, who then convinced his old boss at Mambo, Dare Jennings, to turn his next label Deus Ex Machina into a surf-moto brand in the spirit of Bruce Brown’s Endless Summer/On Any Sunday combo. 

After, he split for California, for a gig at Nixon, shifted back to Australia five years later for a job at Electric and, later, after he moved the fam to an off the grid farm on the north coast, created the label Aloha to Zen with his wife Fern. The pair make surf themed homewares, the pillows are wild, and spent three years learning the art of ceramics.

And it’s here Fuller has reached his zenith, I think, of beauty and creation. His calling. The urgent need to bring meaning to life and to resurrect a little gentility in surf culture. 

“There’s a lot that can go wrong in the pottery game,” says Fuller, his tongue darting in and out of his mouth, licking at his moustache like a pink lizard. “Which is why you love it, right, because it’s a completely uncontrollable medium. Once you apply heat to mud and chemicals anything can happen.

“And, as an industrial designer I love that. I love the fact it’s a combination of the chemicals and I love the three-dimensional form. It became the perfect vehicle for me to express my love of that golden era of surf culture. I’m just trying to really find a little voice in there that speaks to me.”

I tell Fuller that I was thrilled he was open to the idea of the I Hate Surfing capsule, which will also feature clothes from The Critical Slide Society. A follow-up to our I Don’t Need Life I’m High capsule.

An aside: TCSS owner Sam Coombes was drawn into the surf game after he heard Fuller speak at his university. Fuller told the class, please, no one ask for an internship at Mambo because the answer is NO! Coombes thought that was real cool, pestered Fuller for an internship and eventually got it.

Fuller has made an I Hate Surfing ashtray and an oversized mug.

I ask him to describe the process. 

“Well, the ashtray was easy. That’s called googling ‘Chunky Glass Seventies Ashtrays’. I knew very much as soon as you said I Hate Surfing but with a joyous edge, I knew what shape it was gonna look like. It had to belong in a sex den in a SoHo apartment in New York with carpeted walls. I immediately knew the size we wanted to do and it needed to have a big thick wall and it needed to really dominate your coffee table.

“So I played around with a few different shapes and methods of construction and in the end we’ve settled on a wheel-thrown piece. It’s about two kilos worth of clay to begin with. We throw that out and form it and fire it.” 

And the truck-stop diner mugs? 

“I knew I didn’t want a coffee cup. I knew we wanted a truck stop diner mug, something with a big handle that holds a proper 14 ounces of of percolated diner coffee or whiskey.” 

We ain’t taking a cut of these beautiful creations to keep ‘em down to an affordable price and this link will take you straight to Fuller’s site.

Eighty-five apiece, Australian shekels.

He’ll pack and send ’em anywhere in the world. Free to ship in Australia, thirty-five dollars, Australian, to Europe and the US.

A little wait too ‘cause he’s gotta make ‘em at his little off-the-grid studio. 

So bespoke!