Last November I started making a video for my daughter’s middle school English class. Monica is teaching 7th and 8th graders in Phoenix, AZ and they are reading Linda Sue Park’s Newbery award winning book, “A Single Shard.” It’s a beautiful story about a 12-year-old orphan boy in 12th century Korea who becomes an apprentice to a master potter. The book does a great job describing pottery making in the 12th century and this gave Monica and I the idea that I should somehow be a resource for this book. A lot of her students haven’t been exposed to pottery in any way, so a video seemed like a good idea. I shot the first section of my video at the end of last year, and now that they are reading the book, I got the inspiration to finish the project.
The basic concept of the video is to walk the viewer through my studio and production methods and compare and contrast pottery making as I do it with how it was done in the 12th century. The real revelation for me was that the clay aspect of the process really isn’t that much different now from how they did it 900 years ago. But the ease with which I’m able to procure my raw materials, fire my kiln and ship my pots is where our two eras are light years apart. This video is in three parts, with an “Extras & Bloopers” feature, of course! I’m really glad I took on this project, not just to help out Monica and her students, but to get my studio processes documented for posterity. I hope my customers and fans enjoy this peek at our small pottery factory in Colorado!
Part 1:
Part 2:
Part 3:
Extras & Bloopers: