After about a year of work, on an off, working on form and glaze, I finally delivered 8 grain bowls and 16 soup bowls to Seylou & Mill, in DC’s Shaw neighborhood.

I approached Seylou co-owner Jessica Azeez about 11 months ago, to see if she were interested in engaging in the kind of relationship I have with Gainesville, Fl’s Vine Sourdough Bakery: I supply Vine co-owner Teresa Zokovitch with mugs for customer use in their cafe, and Teresa allows me to periodically sell my mugs at Vine.

Although Jessica did not need mugs, she did want small bowls for soup and largish ones for grain bowls, both of which she intended to introduce on her menu in spring of this year.

Of course, the Coronavirus had other ideas about spring menus and much else, but I kept working away on the bowls. After two prototype phases — with Leach White glaze over Laguna Dark Brown clay — and a couple of test firings in the District Clay Center kiln, I finally got two sets that I am very pleased with.

Jessica, a very new mother, was also pleased with the bowls, which arrived at a major juncture for both of us: the birth of her first child and the cusp of my move from the DMV back to Florida. Ultimately, though, we agreed that we will adopt a relationship that mirrors what I’ve had with Vine for the last 5 years: I’ll continue to provide Jessica and Seylou with pots, and I’ll do mugs sales at Seylou during periodic visits to my old stomping ground. Baby Nia seems very content with that arrangement!

Every once in a while, nice pots — like the two below — get lost in the shuffle and only very belatedly make it to celluloid.

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This small — 15″ X 15″ — platter with Gold Shino glaze and black slip designs, dates to June 2015 at Alfred, New York, during the month-long workshop I attended at Alfred University. It was one of several of my pots that were chosen for a student show at the end of the workshop.

I only recently shot the platter, because I gave it to friends and only recently borrowed it back to photograph.

Given the foreign working environment, completely new glazes, and kilns fired by Alfred student volunteers, it’s a little amazing that I got the nice stuff out of the workshop that I did. Yet, the fact that several of the workshop pieces ended up being serendipitously wonderful, may speak to the advantages of minimal planning, minimal control and minimal expectations :-)

This teapot dates even further back, to somewhere around 2006 or 2007, a period when I was firing about bi-annually at Baltimore Clayworks, in its wood-fueled kiln. I was also throwing almost exclusively white stoneware and experimenting extensively with Oribe glaze, both of which are featured here.

Somehow, this set got forgotten inside a large, oribe-glazed covered jar. I only recently pulled it out, added a cane handle, shot it, and placed it in a prominent spot in my living room.