PORT ALACATI, TURKEY — Leyla Borovali’s studio, a balcony literally over the Aegean Sea, seems suspended between sky and water. The huge table, the shelves of bowls, the clumps of clay: all of it is enveloped in the immense blue, broken only by an olive tree leaning into the view. The artist, in blue too, holds ripe figs whose roundness recalls the shape of her creations.

Around her are vessels whose bodies swell and curve, their rims dipping and rising rather than obeying a circle. Some carry the imprint of textiles, translating Aegean fabrics into the harder language of stoneware. Others seem almost geological, their surfaces marked by fire, oxides and the contingencies of the kiln.

At 28, the Izmir-born artist has already traveled a long way with clay. She studied illustration and printmaking at Parsons School of Design in New York before turning to ceramics, then completed a Master of Arts in ceramics and glass at London’s Royal College of Art. In July, Architectural Digest Middle East named her among “11 Artists From Turkey You Need To Know,” citing her translation of Turkish and Mediterranean textile traditions into clay.

Colors of the earth