Stoneware vessels thrown on a kick wheel in the Blue Ridge foothills, fired to cone 10 in reduction. Each one records the minute it was born.
Two hemispheres joined at the equator while leather-hard. The seam stays visible — the jar remembers being two things.
A narrow neck asks the thrower to give up control at the very last pull. The clay decides the final centimetre.
Wide enough for two hands. The foot is trimmed blind, by feel, the way you find a pulse.
The oldest silhouette we still throw. Grain carriers from three thousand years ago would recognise it instantly.
The kiln is fired on a schedule older than any of us. Candling overnight, body reduction at cone 012, then a slow climb while the atmosphere starves of oxygen and pulls iron to the surface of every pot.
White as the inside of a shell. Crackles if the cooling hurries.
SiO₂ · Al₂O₃ · KNaOOne percent iron, starved of oxygen, turns the glaze to sea glass.
Fe₂O₃ 1% · reductionEight percent iron. Black where it pools, rust where it breaks.
Fe₂O₃ 8% · saturationApple-wood ash from the orchard next door. No two kilns agree on it.
wood ash 40% · unwashed