Similarly, in my early twenties, I went all the way to Japan searching for a traditional pottery style, only to return home and find it in my own backyard. The intricately hand-sponged classic American ware for which I would eventually become known, is a strong example of “Mingei”, which simply translated means folkcraft. The beauty inherent in each piece is the result of work deeply integrated wi
th life and the seasons on our second generation Vermont homestead. My pottery is very distinctive in design, making it instantly recognizable from the outside. But I want to share some about my workshop, where and how I hand make each dish. What makes my ware what it is on the inside. I was raised at the bottom of Terrible Mountain in Andover, Vermont where, following endless youthful peregrinations, I still live today. One of my forays was to Japan for a year and a half, where I served as an apprentice in two different pottery villages. The words of Soetsu Yanagi, the father of the modern Japanese folk crafts movement, inspired me “…to discover the beautiful truthfulness of domestic handmade crafts so ordinary as to be unobserved by people at large.” Bernard Leach continues in his adaptation of Yanagi’s book THE UNKNOWN CRAFTSMAN, “Before the age of science and modern industry, crafts used to spring out of the hearts and hands of man.” I took as mine, the ideal of handwork that was “Born, not Made”. One morning in Tachikui, Japan, the ancient kiln site of Tamba-yaki, where I worked for almost a year, I visited with a farmer who was bent over in his field. He explained to me that some folks in his village make pots and some grow sweet potatoes, that it all adds up to about the same thing, but that he personally preferred the latter. That just about summed it up for me, too, except that I chose the pots. My studio for the last thirty years has been a former logging shack my father dragged down off Markham Mountain in the early 1950’s with his tractor. Over the years it was added onto by a parade of colorful hermits who rented it from us to help pay the mortgage- only twenty five dollars a month, but still difficult to manifest. My two siblings and I each took turns using it to play house during the hippie years. In the early 1980’s my future husband John Specker and I ground one last hopperful of whole wheat berries in the venerable old shack, then fled across the meadow to our newly rebuilt, bigger cabin. Once vacated, the old space seemed like it might make a good pottery studio. It has seen service as such ever since. From late March to early November, I do all my throwing of clay outside, in a two sided pony run-in attached to the east side of the building. As I work each spring, I am serenaded royally by the frogs, while simultaneously being attacked by hordes of black flies. Soon the songbirds return, and add their lovely music to the mix. There is one kind that always fools me into jumping up and making a dash for the telephone, which is strung on a long cord out on the grass. I call it the “telephone bird”. Come by sometime and tell me its real name, please! Summer is capped off by a magnificent display of tumbling blossoms on the four hydrangea trees which are practically growing into my open shed. [Absolutely. They benefit from the pruning.] Their pure white shades slowly turn to pink and then to silver, as I continue to enjoy my plein-air workshop. Faithfully throughout the Fall, my husband John Specker brings out kettles of hot water from the wood cook stove to keep my hands warm, as I pot the now numbingly chilled clay, often under sprinkles of early snow. In between, he generally keeps up a steady stream of fiddling off the front porch. My freshly thrown pots, still wet from the wheel, soak up mighty concerts of live music as they dry in the sun and wind, propped up on boards atop the shed roof. The end of my current clay supply marks the cessation of John’s fiddling for a spell, as he coats the bisqued pots in glaze indoors, in our former kitchen area. Then I am up to bat decorating them, sometimes with a new animal sponge he has designed for me. Otherwise I keep at it with the flowers and hearts ‘n checks. Then the cycle starts all over once again. The frogs, birds, crickets-whichever it may be, yield to a new wave of fiddling. Our two daughters, having grown up through all this, still come and go. In all honesty, they’ve gone more for the fiddling than the potting, but that’s OK. Eventually the winter closes in again for real, and I time my kiln firings to keep the old cabin from freezing. John piles rocks on the roof to keep it from flying away -we suspect it’s the woodbine that holds up the sagging walls. It’s Russian roulette, but only about once a winter do I miscalculate and wake up to find my pots from the day before frozen solid, covered in white cracklings. Even then, I sometimes can save them with a smoothing over of warm water. Visit us sometime and see and hear it all for yourself. But give a call first at 802-875-2321...If you want a preview of John’s fiddling, go to www.talk-pix.com/johnspecker……to see John and the Girls fiddling, go to [email protected]" rel="ugc" target="_blank">www.thespeckers.com…[email protected] is a new way to get in touch with me…….. Of course, we may be hibernating. But, if the season’s right, maybe I’ll be out and about, peddling our newest wares at one of the local farmers markets. Likely to run into you there!
