Brooklyn, New York (Brooklyn Navy Yard) · Est. 2007 · Founded by Virginia Sin
Virginia Sin has loved clay since she was five years old, painting ceramic turtles in a childhood home that she describes as not always the brightest -- and decided early that she wanted to spend her life adding warmth to the homes of others. She studied graphic design at Art Center, built a career as an Art Director in advertising, and spent over a decade building SIN on nights and weekends in her Greenpoint studio. She went full-time in 2016. Today SIN designs and manufactures everything in the Brooklyn Navy Yard -- handmade ceramics with a bold graphic sensibility, built to make any home feel more alive.
Virginia Sin has a photograph of herself at five years old, sitting in front of a ceramic turtle she was painting and glazing. She has never really strayed far from that moment. Growing up in a home that wasn't always warm or bright, she developed a fierce conviction about what objects could do for a space -- and a drive to spend her life adding warmth and happiness to homes everywhere.
She studied graphic design at the Art Center College of Design, absorbing Bauhaus principles and the philosophy of form follows function. She moved to New York and built a career as an Art Director in advertising, learning how to build brands and infuse meaning into image and language. For over a decade she did that work during the day and made ceramics at night, mixing her own clay formulas in a Greenpoint studio, refining a visual language that was entirely her own. Her first collection -- the Gluttony Collection, a series of porcelain paper plates made from a sustainable paper clay she mixed herself -- earned "Most Sustainable" at the Modern+Design+Function competition and was acquired by the New-York Historical Society Museum. Design Within Reach came calling.
In 2016 Virginia took the leap and made SIN her full-time focus. Today the brand designs and manufactures everything locally in the Brooklyn Navy Yard -- handmade ceramics and home goods that blur the line between art object and everyday use, informed by everything from ancient Egyptian obelisks to paper folding to the organic curves of coil construction. AAPI woman-owned and majority female-operated. Featured in Elle Décor, Vogue, the New York Times, Food & Wine, and used at Eleven Madison Park. On a registry, a piece from SIN is the kind of thing a couple reaches for every day that also happens to be genuinely beautiful -- warmth made tangible, in clay, by hand, in Brooklyn.
