When the kiln opens

pottery tumbler

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.

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