Process & growth: an essay
When I first started my business in 2013, I threw each piece on the wheel by myself. I learned quickly how much this limited the number of pieces I could make. As I started to get burnt out on the repetition of production throwing, I explored how I might increase my production in a way that felt right to me...
When I first hired an assistant, I had to learn what steps of the ceramic process to delegate and what to do myself. The wheel was my first love, and I knew I wanted to keep it for myself; I still am the only one who throws in my studio. I learned slipcasting to expand my work with colored clay, and that process created tasks that my assistants could do without me: making the plaster molds, smoothing each piece by hand, sanding them after the first firing, and glazing them with only clear glaze, since the color is added during the casting process with tinted clay. This is how the Beach series is made.
As the years passed, my mind turned to dinnerware. I knew that throwing dinner plates on the wheel one by one felt unsustainable (ask any potter why!) I learned about a RAM press, which is a hydraulic press that uses many tons of pressure to press soft clay into a mold. I threw an original plate on my wheel in the studio, had an expert moldmaker make a master for the presser to use, and then sent it to the manufacturer. Each piece of clay is loaded by hand into the machine one by one, and each pressed piece has the edges smoothed with a sponge. Despite being relatively labor intensive for a mass production method, in a few days several hundred pieces can be pressed, and they are all the same in size and thickness - this was important to me so the plates would stack nicely in a cabinet. I decided to work with a RAM presser out of state in order to keep my studio the same size. My production partner presses and then bisques the plates, firing them to a low temperature so they are safe to ship to me on a pallet. Once I receive them, I glaze and fire them to order in my own studio.
Integrating this new RAM process challenged me to design in a new way. Part of what I love about the size of my production in-house is the freedom I have to change my mind if I’m not happy with how a piece is working. As such, my designs shift and flex all the time! Once I decided to work with the press, I had to design a piece that would remain in my collection for a long time: the setup to have my piece prepared for RAM by a master moldmaker is significant in both time and cost. It was a scary step to get the dinner plates made because it was the biggest financial investment I had ever made in my business (much bigger than a kiln or other equipment I had bought). But, I suddenly was able to say yes to orders I had previously had to decline; 80 plates in a few weeks for a dinner event would have been an impossibility if I was throwing them. The next year, I was ready to add another shape, my shallow bowl.
Above: My 'snack plate' mold at the moldmaker's workshop
In 2018, I took a road trip to visit several small ceramic factories in the US, or ‘potteries’ as they’re called. Seeing what parts of the clay process are the same and what are different at scale thrills me, and getting a peek into the rich tradition of American manufacturing made me proud to continue to support this process in my own work. There used to be hundreds of such factories across the US, and while most are dying out, it was a revelation to see some in action. Most of the people working at these potteries have been in this field for decades and are true masters of the craft. It was a challenge to find the right partner for my pieces since I'm a pretty small fry compared to the bigger orders they're used to. Visiting in person and leaving a cup behind at every stop, I learned so much about dinnerware design and came home inspired to expand my collection. This manufacturing allows me to incrementally grow my business and focus on sustaining my practice long term.
My interest in visiting factories and seeing how things are made is a long love affair: when I was a recent college graduate living in Ridgewood (the same neighborhood where the studio is now), I lived next door to a defunct knitting factory where my 75 year old next door neighbor still went to work every day to sweep up and putter around. We made friends, and I helped him sell all of his antique machines on eBay, and photographed the process of clearing them out when the buyer came with a 28 foot tractor trailer. I had no idea then that I would end up starting my own business making products here in NYC, eventually settling just a few blocks away. While so much of American manufacturing no longer exists, I like to think that tiny companies like mine are carrying the torch forward in our own way.
Above: My neighbor behind one of his knitting machines