About Me
I love working with micaceous clay to make pots and I also love cooking; with micaceous pottery I am able to combine two loves of mine. I don't believe pottery should sit around and collect dust. I want people to be able to use and touch pottery on a daily basis. It truly hurts my ears to hear someone say a piece of micaceous cookware is too "beautiful" to cook in. Does it get much better than making wholesome food for loved ones in "beautiful" cookware, I don't believe so. Micaceous cookware allows people that opportunity.
My love for pottery actually started in 1996 at DePauw University under the tutelage of David Herrold. I fell in love with wheel thrown porcelain, raku's, and earthenware's. The vivid colors, the symmetry off the wheel and the gracefulness of a porcelain teapot. But then, in the summer of 1999, I met Jicarilla Apache master potter Felipe Ortega who introduced me to his wild micaceous clay and the freedom of hand built micaceous pottery. Once my hands felt this clay I could never look at the world of pottery the same. Everything I had learned about pottery was thrown out the window and I started down a new path of clay. I felt free from the boundaries of wheel thrown pottery. Using a coil and scrape method has taken many years of hard work and diligence to achieve the results you see today.
The tradition of micaceous pottery that dates back hundreds of years is for the most part still the same today. Some of the tools have been upgraded with flexible steel and plastic but otherwise little has changed. All I need to make cookware is micaceous clay, a bowl, water, and a plastic scraper. Within this simplicity I feel a connection to mother earth and to a much respected ancient tradition. Today, after five years of hard work and labor I have expanded my line of micaceous cookware to include bean pots, woks, casseroles, teapots and tea ceremony settings, coffee/tea mugs, bowls, comals, and platters. With proper care micaceous pottery can last for generations.