I grew up in an old house with five tiled stoves, whose tiles our mother – who is also a ceramicist – created following traditional patterns. In 2014 I began to delve deeper into this very familiar subject from my childhood. I collected images and examples of tiled stoves, including folk tales and proverbs about them. The stove as an object of animistic thought particularly interested me, where it is endowed with the traits of a living creature and woven into superstitions and mysterious customs. After making a careful study of these Central European traditions while working with Ulla Dreyfuß-Best’s Wunderkammer collection at the Peggy Guggenheim Museum in Venice, the idea for the Tuchofen was born. This project was honored with a scholarship for Design and Architecture from the Federal Chancellery of Austria.