Pottery Speaks

By Tammy Ruggles

The pottery in your cupboard, in your garage, on your mantle, in the museum, at the auction.Is it utilitarian, or artistic? Does it exist alone or is it a piece of the artist's soul? From the smallest cup to the largest vessel, pottery has been spoken about in many words and in many different ways: I have always had a non-stop flow of ideas, millions of them, and maybe it is not an advantage. But it is beyond me to understand someone not knowing what to do! The disadvantage of having so many ideas is that they get in one another's way, and they get far ahead of what can be done. - Mollie Winterburn.

All this of Pot and Potter--Tell me then, Who is the Potter, pray, and who the Pot? -Omar Khayyam, The Tent-Maker, The Rubaiyat (st. 87),

As in most things in life, simplicity seems to be the recipe for success. -Ruthanne Tudball. Bottles had been my first love and I expect somehow they will always be there, that love of contrast of fat rounded shape to elegant neck is something I don't think I can get rid of however hard I try. -Mollie Winterburn.

This is the new type of pottery that I'm doing now... done while the clay is still wet. I carve every little line in and every little detail that goes in. -Grace Medicine Flower, on basket weaving.

Turn, turn, my wheel! Turn round and round Without a pause, without a sound: So spins the flying world away! This clay, well mixed with marl and sand, Follows the motion of my hand; For some must follow, and some command, Though all are made of clay! -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Keramos.

I am content to be a bric-a-bracker and a Ceramiker. -Mark Twain.

I had become intrigued with the idea of directly using the firing process for my work; that is, I wanted the actual flames to become an integral part of the final product. -Gerhild Tschachler-Nagy.

The excellence of Pueblo Indian craftsmanship, evidenced in the sculptural form and the decoration of their pottery, rivals that of any European or Oriental neolithic culture…It is regrettable that the few surviving example of early Historic pottery were so consistently ignored before collectors came on the scene. -Larry Frank.

It is important to have an idea of what is going on during the firing and to try and visualize the situation inside the kiln. Only by becoming extremely sensitive toward the fire can one interact with it or respond to it in the proper way. -Gerhild Tschachler-Nagy

Women potters are used to being dismissed, people assume they do it as a hobby in the garden shed. It's a bit better now but still, being a potter is perceived as an amateur kind of occupation, its almost a joke- especially in the world of serious money. I have to support a family and I think one has a right to expect to make a living from one's trade. -Janice Tchalenko.

A pot must have spring and balance of form. But I am not an artist, because I believe that every pot should have a purpose. It is the difference, if you like, between representational and abstract painting. -Katharine Pleydell-Bouverie, letter to Bernard Leach , 5 October 1929.

The meditative and calming influence of yoga made me want to make simpler forms using slower more direct techniques. -Jane Perryman

.....an intimacy exists between me and the pots, which is different from the closeness someone who buys one might feel. When they are given as presents they seem to remain in the same emotional environment as the one in the workshop. Once they are being bought and, even when re-sold part of me feels very vulnerable. Perhaps I want to ensure that they will be handled and looked at only in a way that I myself would like to be treated. -Elspeth Owen.

There's a prayer that goes into digging the clay, there's a prayer that goes into refining it. There's a prayer for making the pots, and maybe two prayers for bringing them to the dealer. -Emma Lewis

It is the clay body which is a major inspiration for my pots. -Janet Leach.

I began to think more about the potential meaning of the 'vessel' as such and decided to explore my ideas more thoroughly. -Gabriele Koch.

What happens for me is that this process of creating is such a special thing . . . that I guard it,. It represents the people that I come from, the way they looked at the world, the very elemental thing about walking on the earth, which I hold sacred. -Nora Naranjo-Morse.

The money I got from selling my first pots gave me an enormous thrill- income earned from my own creative efforts. -Jane Hamlyn

The creation of each bird springs from the meeting point of a ceramic statement with a fascinating creature. That is, when I see that particular clay shapes and fired colours can be used in an authentic potters way that will at the same time link with a vital characteristic of the bird subject. I use glazes to evoke either the naturalistic colouring of a bird or to express an emotive response. -Janet Hamer.

I do not consider the pots ‘finished' when they emerge from the kiln, but only when they have been christened with their first delicious mouthful. -Morgen Hall.

My concern is with extracting essence rather than with experiment and exploration... The wheel imposes its economy, dictates limits, provides momentum and continuity. Concentrating on continuous variations of simple themes I become part of the process: I am learning to operate a sensitive instrument which may be resonant to my experience of existence now - in this fantastic century. Practising a craft with ambiguous reference to purpose and function one has occasion to face absurdity. More than anything, somewhat like a demented piano-tuner, one is trying to approximate to a phantom pitch. -Hans Coper.

Simple forms could come from the tradition of Scandinavian design or from the influence of two dimensional fine art which needs only a flat canvas or paper. -Tulla Elieson

That process of being lost within myself, exploring darkest inner space, is tremendously exciting. -Sandy Brown.

I have compared my slab-building process to tailoring, and this metaphor brings a connection to the body, and the enclosing of the body, that is relevant. -Alison Britton.

(My work in clay)....is also concerned with concepts universal- the continuum of life itself, the complexity and fragility of the human condition, and the utter simplicity of the life/death equation. -Christine Boswijk.

The very "marks" on the bottom of a piece of rare crockery are able to throw me into a gibbering ecstasy. -Mark Twain.

Figures that almost move and speak. -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Keramos.

I want each piece to trigger memories and ideas, to initiate some inner voyage of thought through the emotional response to the work. The world is cluttered with things which eliminate the magic and poignancy in human life. Magic and poignancy are necessary to keep human beings alive. Art can sometimes restore these. -Christine Boswijk.

First I feel something that I want to show. I feel how this feeling or thought would best be shown in a human body. This may happen very suddenly in the middle of something I am doing or when I am drifting off to sleep. Usually it has something to do with where I am in my life. -Roxanne Switzell, from How I Make My Sculptures.

I see the plastic nature of clay as one of its most attractive assets and I want to exploit it. -Ruthanne Tudball.

Although I intended fire as an element of decoration, I still wanted to take my ceramics beyond an aesthetic of primitive pottery relying mostly on random traces affected by fuming. -Gerhild Tschachler-Nagy.

I find myself almost hating shiny surfaces. And I want my pots to make people think, not of the Chinese, but of things like pebbles and shells and birds' eggs and the stones over which moss grows. Flowers stand out of them more pleasantly, so it seems to me. And that seems to matter most. -Katharine Pleydell-Bouverie.

The result of smoke movement on the surface of the pot gives a sense of mystery. -Jane Perryman.

As I have been making pots I have been inventing a language. Through their shapes and textures and shadows I say out into a common place things I often cannot express in any other way even to people close to me; things about the strength and frailty of our longings to be good to each other. -Elspeth Owen.

In my search for form and content I abandoned the wheel, started coiling - one of the most ancient and intimate ceramic techniques. -Gabriele Koch.

I am a woman, a mother and a potter, I am interested in feminism and though I do not feel oppressed by men, I am aware of difference. Our bodies for a start are not the same. If pots are about our bodies and women make pots, then I think there is something about that which communicates itself. -Jane Hamlyn

Rocks in the colours from off-white to black, the same palette offered in vitrified clay. Rocks rounded by water and set alive by the changing light of sea and weather. -Tulla Elieson.

The whole process involved in using pots is a living one. They need to be fed, bathed and dried. Stroked and handled and displayed. -Sandy Brown.

I am aiming for a sort of poise or resolution, but after a bit of a struggle.--Alison Britton.. My work is experimental, working as if in a void, yet at the same time toward my objective, which is to perceive the materials as a medium for expression in preference to the pursuit of technique. -Christine Boswijk.

My Mom and Dad told me to keep doing the traditional design. It has been going on in the family . . . and each symbol means something...each one has a different meaning. -Lu Ann Tafoya.

They might start by being left something by granny. Because it seems old, they believe it to be valuable. They might take it to Sotheby's or Christie's, only to discover, in 99.9% of cases, that it is worth tuppence. Then they ask themselves, so what is worth something? So they buy a few pieces and probably they get it wrong the first couple of times, before acquiring something really good. By now they are hooked. It's like if they play golf - the bug bites. -Martin Pulver, from article “All Fired Up."

The function of Art is to disturb. Science reassures. -George Braque.

Thou spring'st a leak already in thy crown, A flaw is in thy ill-bak'd vessel found; 'Tis hollow, and returns a jarring sound, Yet thy moist clay is pliant to command, Unwrought, and easy to the potter's hand: Now take the mould; now bend thy mind to feel The first sharp motions of the forming wheel. -John Dryden, Third Satire of Persius (l. 35)

In summer of 1932 the Griffith Pottery in Nashville called on me to help with faulty glaze formulas. I returned to I.U. in the fall to complete my B.A. in degree Chemistry. In spring of 1933, I returned to Griffith Pottery for the summer. I was the gofor, plus working on glazes. I mixed slip with a hoe in a wood box, helped fire the kiln and threw pots on an electric potter's wheel that a local man had made out of a cream separator. I lived in a room in the old house, part of which was the pottery workshop. I ate in the old Nashville House dining room across the street. The Griffiths went on vacation and left me in charge of the pottery. I made scores of different sized serving bowls for the Nashville House in exchange for my meals. These were clunky with sharp chippable lips -- the best I could throw then. I felt quite important eating at the Nashville House and supporting myself in this fashion. I was 21. -Karl Martz.