have (unfired) pots, will travel

Three years ago, Nathan and I were beginning to realize that our lives were changing in a very special way . . . our individual stories were beginning to intertwine to become the story of two potters- a pair of potters.  It was a very sweet and memorable time in our lives, also a time of great change, involving a few freshly thrown bowls on boards in the back of a pickup. The story goes that there was a freeze that night, as the wet pots sat in the bed of the truck, and the next day they were nearly ruined.  My spirits, having been dampened by the loss of those bowls, were lifted dramatically when Nathan proposed later that day on sun drenched rocks at a river's edge.

The joy of those days overshadowed the fact that our working lives had officially been turned on their heads. For the next two years, we drove back and forth between our places in two states, making unfired pottery in Vermont, and packing it carefully for the three hour journey to New Hampshire, along with tools, a cooler of food, and bug spray or snow shovels, depending on the season. We would truck back in the other direction with finished work, and dream of one day having a studio with a kiln- in the same place.

In fact, we still dream of this luxury . . . we dismantled the NH kiln, and our new wood kiln is not yet finished, but with summer shows and wedding registry deadlines approaching, I finally had the good sense to take my good friend Tiffany Hilton up on her offer to fire her gas kiln. Driving to Massachusetts with a truck full of glazes and pottery and an air compressor (for spraying my glazes on site!) may sound crazy . . . but it's simply become what we do, how we keep on keeping on amidst all the change!

Tiffany and her husband Tim built this sweet little building as a kiln shed for her gas kiln. Her adjacent showroom is inspiring, and filled with her beautifully made pieces.

The firing at Tiffany's turned out to be beautiful, and almost better than that, I got to spend two lovely days enjoying the camraderie of a fellow potter and friend, both remembering fondly and looking forward to, the rhythm of the (settled) potter's life.