When the kiln opens in June, reuniting me with objects that began in February as moist and malleable lumps of clay, there are always surprises. Even when I’ve used a particular glaze combination many times before, this kiln firing may have produced a different effect. Though I’ve been following these now-finished pots through each stage in the process — wet clay, leather hard, dry-and-fragile, bisqued, glazed, and now fired — I’m always surprised. A piece I thought was inelegant has undergone its final transformation, the glaze smoothing over the least graceful spots to make a pleasing whole. Sometimes it’s a surprise in another direction: the form I loved in one piece now seems a bit marred by the glazes I chose and how they fired.
But the long process isn’t really finished the day the kiln opens, no matter how elated or deflated I am with certain pots. All these pots end up somewhere, part of someone’s daily life, holding flowers or fruit or coffee or pasta. That’s the abiding surprise: something I made and tended over months and seasons now graces someone’s table and holds the things that sustain life.
Here are the latest pieces, wonderfully photographed by my husband, Woody Sherman.