at the potter's house

Seagrove, North Carolina is a sort of mecca for potters--apparently it started because of the local clay (though most of the potters there now get their clay from places like New Jersey!) Paul has a friend there, Tom Gray, who's a potter; we visited him over a long weekend, and enjoyed ourselves enormously. Not only do I love pottery, but Tom is also a wonderful cook and interesting to talk to, and has a big thing about table fellowship--or "putting your feet under the same table" as he calls it.

He made us some excellent pizza, with all fresh ingredients from the garden, and we ate on lovely glazed pottery plates, all different. The next night he made pot roast--also excellent--and the night after that he inspired Paul to try a new thing: French bread! True French bread is an extremely simple recipe--flour, yeast, salt and water--but the texture, that hard crusty outside and light fluffy inside, is hard to get. French bakers (and French people never make their own bread, by the way, they leave it to the experts) have ovens that blow steam over the bread at intervals. The way to approximate this at home is with a simple spray bottle and some water; spray into the oven and it turns into steam. Paul did it, and I was astonished at the result. It was genuine!



That same day Tom had let me do something that was a help to him and a privilege for me--I made pottery. I, Heather, who've never touched a wheel, actually made pottery to sell! It sounds impossible, but there are two kinds of pottery: the turned work made on the wheel, and "slab work." (Try to imagine making a square platter on a wheel, and you'll see why there's two kinds of pottery!) With slab work, you use a roller to create a slab of clay, then lay it over a plaster mold to give it its shape, smooth it down onto the mold, and leave it to dry. When it's dry you pop it off the mold and voila! (As the French say.) Ready for the first firing. After which you put on a mix of chemicals that will react in the heat of the second firing to produce the colors and effects you want. (I didn't do that part. Of course.) With slab work the important thing is not skill but carefulness, which makes it tedious for experienced potters and easy for beginners. So Tom and I both got the good end of the deal.


Here, Paul is putting scrap clay through a machine that compresses it into a long cylinder like the one in front of me; I'm flattening the cylinder by whapping it on the table. (The cooks kneading the dough!) Behind me is a sort of wringer where you put the clay through between two rollers, flattening it uniformly into the thickness you want; farther behind me is a shelf covered with the white plaster molds made by Tom for this kind of work.

Here I'm smoothing the clay down on the mold with a wet sponge; then after I trim off the edges there I am with the "finished" product, a deep squarish plate. I made fifteen different pieces, mostly this same shape, while chatting with Tom and Paul, listening to Third Day, and drinking Pepsi. What could be more fun?