September 18, 2026

While practicing pediatrics part-time for the past 35 years, Kansas City ceramist Eve Krahn has always nurtured her artistic side.

Words
Susan Cannon
@susancannon1

Photos
Samantha Levi
@samstownusa

Artist
Eve Krahn
@evekrahnstudio
evekrahn.com

The love of earth, nature, art, and design has been in Eve Krahn’s DNA since childhood.

“Growing up, I was immersed in nature and a rich tapestry of cultures,” Krahn says. “My father, an exploration mineral geologist, moved our family across various landscapes—from Papua New Guinea to New Zealand and Western Australia. Holidays were spent in the Philippines, my mother’s homeland. These diverse environments became the foundation of my creative inspiration.”

Although not her first artist studio, Krahn built her first ceramics studio in this 1989 home in Leawood that she and her husband, Mike, bought in 2013. The house had languished on and off the market for three years and was being rented by a Royals relief pitcher when they discovered it.

“We had several contractors decline to work on the house because it was so weird,” Krahn says. “They didn’t think they could achieve what I was looking for. I finally found a handyman who worked hourly, and I did all the design.”

The changes were extensive.

The couple opened the wall between the completely renovated kitchen and the living room and closed off the opening between the living room and the study. They also removed a wet bar attached to the fireplace.

“We did a lot of painting throughout the house, including the fireplace, which was red, and the ceilings pink,” she notes. “All the wood was golden oak, and we painted that as well.”

That was all Phase 1. Krahn redesigned the first-floor primary bathroom several years later.

The result of her modern vision is a crisp, open airiness with maximum natural light—a perfect backdrop for Krahn’s collections of modern art, antique artifacts, textiles, her earlier paintings, and, naturally, her ceramics.

Iron-rich stoneware vessels are treated with handcrafted glaze of foraged minerals and other natural elements from her travels. Krahn’s father designed the gold ring with an opal from Australia, and offered gold, presented to him in a basket filled with nuggets by a friend in Papua New Guinea who owned a gold mine.

The dining room represents a mix of provenances. African baskets and an antique Chinese case piece set an authentic mood alongside a contemporary dining table by Danielle Siggerud for Audo Copenhagen, from Kanso. It holds Krahn’s nesting vessels, available at Blackbird Collection and Mergers in the Crossroads Art District. The dining chairs are Mies van der Rohe and Hans Wegner. On the left wall are three oil paintings by Krahn of her daughters from 2000. SVB Wood Floors installed the herringbone hardwoods.

In the kitchen that Krahn gutted and redesigned are various ceramics she made over time. Above the island hang two Artemide pendant lights from Museo. The painting by Kelly Porter of Porter Teleo is a collaboration with textiles added by artist Joscelyn Himes.

An array of Krahn’s ceramics are displayed on shelves with a Grand Canyon geologic map, originally published in an 1882 Atlas, and a still-life painting by Earl Boley. The floor sculpture is a mounted antique Chinese wagon wheel purchased from the erstwhile shop Black Bamboo.

In the living room, with an open view to the second floor, Krahn had the once red painted fireplace solely treated in a dark grout, creating a grounding backdrop for an Elizabeth Huey painting she procured through art advisor Toma Wolff. A Cassina Pilotta chair from Museo sits next to one of Krahn’s large stoneware vessels with handmade glaze.

Eve and her English Cocker Spaniel, Salvy, wearing Krahn’s ceramic bead necklace, sit on a hand-carved bench she purchased in the Philippines. The Kuba cloth handmade panels were purchased on a trip to Zambia, though created by the Kuba people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The landscape painting is by Robert Sudlow.

Krahn in the area of her studio where she makes glazes entirely from scratch using a combination of foraged and upcycled materials—rocks, wood ash, wild clays, and recycled glass tile, then processed and tested to create unique glaze recipes. The table holds large glazed stoneware vessels, and on the floor are the artist’s sculptural pedestal tables.

Krahn’s necklace beads are porcelain ceramic with foraged rock from a black sand beach, strung with Japanese silk shibori kimono fabric from Asiatica.

A sacred, hand-carved Sepik River totem shield from Papua New Guinea hangs above a large Eve Krahn stoneware vessel with handcrafted glaze of various foraged elements, including copper slag and ground upcycled glass, resulting in beautiful greens and aquas. It sits on a Moroccan table found in Paris.

The 20-foot soaring living room walls, painted in Benjamin Moore’s White Dove (with the yellow taken out), are the perfect backdrop for Krahn’s ceramics, contemporary art, and collected objects. The large artwork by Moffat Takadiwa is made of post-consumer waste, creating this intricate wall-based sculpture, procured through Toma Wolff. The planter holding the massive fig tree is coiled hand-built stoneware with a handcrafted glaze by Krahn.

“I’ve always kept an art studio in my homes, doing mixed media and painting,” Krahn says. “My journey into ceramics began on an impulsive whim—buying a wheel without quite knowing where it would lead. Over time, my practice has evolved as I’ve explored the limitless possibilities of materials. I especially love experimenting with foraged minerals and wild clays, layering textures and creating unexpected colors and surfaces that bring each piece to life.”

Those explorations extend well beyond the studio. Years of road trips through dramatic landscapes have become part of Krahn’s artistic process, yielding the raw materials that fuel her work. A friend recently dubbed her a “mad scientist,” and the description feels surprisingly apt, given her passion, research, and knowledge of how to create her works with little to no commercially bought clay or glaze.

One wall of her studio is lined with buckets of foraged clay alongside jars filled with copper, limestone, granite slurry, and crushed oyster shells, and bins of vintage glass tile salvaged from a former architectural salvage shop in the Crossroads Arts District.

Mike even commissioned an oversized steel mortar and pestle so she could grind minerals while standing before transferring them to a hand-operated crusher, reducing rocks and minerals into fine powders for her custom glazes.

Krahn prefers the unexpected results she gets from her freeform method of hand-forming ceramics—she never liked the pottery wheel and no longer uses it. She’s fascinated by the colors the glazes make when heated.

With her constant experimentation, and a second, larger kiln that Mike surprised her with, Krahn has begun making unique taboret tables in addition to her large and small vessels, bowls, plates, cups, and even ceramic beads she strings with vintage kimono cloth scraps sourced from Asiatica.

“I want those who engage with my ceramics to feel the essence of the materials, to sense the histories embedded within them, and to connect with humanity in their raw, imperfect forms,” Krahn says. “Each piece is a tangible link to the earth’s beauty and the story it holds.’’