Process, Methods & Materials

Each of my botanical pieces begins with a walk in the mountains and woods of Central Virginia where I gather wild plant specimens. All of my pieces are wheel-thrown using a buff-colored stoneware clay body. I press plant specimens into the wet clay, and then pull the specimen off, leaving an accurate fossil impression which gives me a template for glazing.


Knobs, handles and feet are hand pulled from stoneware. People often mistake my handles for wrought iron, but they are clay.

My studio assistants are in charge of the glazing. they mix glazes from scratch using recipes I have collected and developed over time. The glazes we use include a green copper ash, an amber celadon, a blue celadon, a temmoku black, and an Albany gold. We use a variety of techniques to glaze each piece, including waxing, dipping, wiping and brushing.

I then fire the work in a reduction atmosphere (created by robbing the kiln of oxygen at a certain temperature) to cone 7/8, or about 2400 degrees Farenheit in a hand-built 60 cubic foot sprung-arch downdraft propane gas kiln. The firing takes seven to eight hours. The pieces are left to cool in the kiln for two days. My green botanical pieces are then fired one more time in an oxidation atmosphere to cone 6 in order to enhance the play of greens in the copper glaze and to achieve a light crackle pattern on the surface of the glaze, reminiscent of old Chinese celadons. This firing takes nine hours, and cooling takes another two days.

The whole process takes three to six weeks. I lose a number of pieces to cracking, warping, or breakage at various stages of making, and to glaze faults in the firing. The pieces that meet my standards after all the firings are completed are those that I present to you in my gallery, at shows, and on this web site.