Welcome to my Web site!

For the last 24 years, I’ve been trying to throw pots that are pleasing to the eye and hand, are at least theoretically functional, and represent personal variations on timeless forms.

I like to throw large pots, particularly large covered jars. Vessels, urns, pithoi, or amphorae — whatever you call them, I enjoy their sensuous form and sometimes powerful presence.

My more functional work centers on dinnerware and mugs. As a coffee connoisseur and home coffee roaster, I try to throw mugs that are worthy of my coffee, and vice versa.

I started throwing pots in 1999, a couple of years after a series of work trips to Eastern Europe ended. On those trips, I collected pots that I surrounded myself with at home. When the trips ended, and with them my source for nice pots, I decided to try to make some myself.

From 1999-2011, I worked in community studios in the Washington, DC area; from 2012 until late 2015  in several Florida studios; from 2015 to 2020 in a home studio in Silver Spring, Md; and, finally, in my recently renovated home studio in Gainesville, Fl.

For most of the 2000s, I fired my pots in wood, soda and salt kilns, enjoying their unique glaze and surface benefits. For the last decade, I’ve fired in gas kilns, exploring old and new glazes and surface decoration techniques. Along the way, I’ve also taught classes (Alexandria, Va and Gainesville), and conducted workshops (DC and Gainesville)

I hope you like my pots. If you have any questions or comments about them, please get in touch.

John Snyder Pottery, Silver Spring, MD

Satisfying wood fire, circa 2008