Anything but Plain White
For those who prefer studio-made to mass-produced,
today's dish pickings are good
Rosh Hashanah, Christmas, Hanukkah, New Year's. Chances are you'll have friends and family over in the next few months, and you'll need to serve them food. But perhaps you're bored by the china you picked out when you got married, or don't jibe with a set you inherited? Or maybe you're just plain tired of plain white plates.
While many large, famous tableware companies in England and the U.S. have faced major setbacks in the last few years—Lenox and Wedgwood are recovering from bankruptcy; Spode and Royal Worcester live on as mere brands within a larger company—studio-made pottery coming out of small shops across the States is flourishing.
The Wall Street Journal is a venerable newspaper. It usually focuses on a myriad of business stories, company and stock indexes. But, on saturdays it takes a long stroll on the avenue away from "the street" and heads uptown. It focuses on the importance of, let's say, handmade tableware. And that's where we come in.
Shax Riegler, the fabulous features editor at House Beautiful, just released a beautiful book called
Dish. And he authored a lovely article on Saturday in "the journal" about the importance and the increase in popularity of handmade tableware. He even quotes me and has some lovely images of fellow studio ceramicists holding true to the handmade.
You can read it
here.
Despite the pressure on production, it is nice to know that there are still those of us taking this craft on piece by piece...
