Saturday, February 6, 2010

In The Service Of Others




Now for a few words about working for other potters...


I have spent a large amount of my time at the wheel, making thousands of pots for other potters...some days painful, most of the time, a pure joy. I started throwing professionally, in Wilmington, NC, at a pig bank factory that evolved into a dinnerware production studio. I got to work out a design for a casserole form there, that I still make for myself. A couple years later, I made pots for Lanney Pelletier, a potter in Emerald Isle, NC...around the same time I was also working for another potter in Bayboro, before heading to Seagrove, NC, to make pots for a few folks up there....Turn n' Burn, Holly Hill Pottery, Tom Gray Pottery, Wild Rose Pottery, and Dirtworks.

And...then there are the nine years that I was a full time potter at Salmon Falls Stoneware, a factory in Dover, NH, that makes utilitarian Salt Glazed Stoneware styled after 19th century New England Pottery. I have made pots for SFS off and on for the last 10 years. I think that I can make pots for other potters because the thing I like most about being a potter, is touching clay...and production pottery is all about that, over and over again...thousand of pounds of clay, touching hundreds of pots... watching them appear in front of me filling my ware boards, loading my ware racks....seeing them on shelves in the retail shop...And getting paid weekly(I really like that part).
Yes...I am getting myself all worked up...gotta go...the clay is calling. Porcelain today...yum...

3 comments:

  1. YUM!
    I don't like repetition much myself, and try to vary things as you know.
    That tureen and ladle KICKS AZZ btw.... :)

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  2. i have to force myself to make multiples of things... and i know it is what i should be doing - a wise master potter told me long ago that "practice makes perfect". perhaps my attention span needs working on! love your ladles..and the tureen is great too (of course).

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  3. Jeffy is definately a master with clay and can make amazing pots. Hope you 2 have a nice weekend :)

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