How We Eat What We Eat

Ceramics has constituted a large part of my life for the last ten years.  I have tried to understand my own fascination with ceramics, and what it comes down to is this:  When I see food, the first thing I see is what type of plate it should be presented upon.  It does not have to be pottery, and it clearly does not have to be mine.  It can be fine china, porcelain, metal, glass.  Wood.  I just see the surface the food should be on.  Das Auge isst mit.   Your eye eats just as much as your mouth does, and visuals are important.

But it goes deeper.  It is not just what we eat, or how it looks.  It is about how we eat.  It is about how we hold our cup of tea in the winter, the steam rolling off as we blow on it.  It is about how the foam from  frothed milk sits in the cup.  It is about feeling warm, and good, and lucky to have such good food.  A plate can deliver a lot of feelings.  

For me, the right plate can give a meal a sense of home.  

So making plates seems to be a natural for me.  I love looking at something beautiful, like a peach, and seeing what kind of plate it should sit on.  I like a little pattern, but the pattern should never compete with the food.   It should be subtle.  

I love hand craft, I love to see the hand in creations.  I love it when people turn my plates over, check the weight of them, wonder when I made them.  My ceramics are an extension of our life here on the hill, and I am fortunate to have the time and the place to work on them.

I will forever, as long as I am healthy, try to improve my craft.  It gives me such a sense of peace.