Some collaborative projects are unintended.
I stepped out of the winter's cold on Sunday morning and
into the warmth of the Clay Studio (see link below) in the downstairs of the Craft Council of
Newfoundland and Labrador. It was
warmth made not just of heat produced by radiators but also of a collective of
women potters who had gathered to decorate a harvest of pots– and warm each
other's souls at the hearth of friendship.
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| Wendy Shirran is the co-ordinator of the Clay Studio. Boundless enthusiasm! |
Executive director of the Craft Council, Anne Manuel, was
telling a story drawn from her years of friendship with Margo Meyer. Meyer was the matriarch of functional
ceramics in this province. It was
a legacy she passed on to many through teaching– like Isabella St. John–and to
her own daughter and grand daughters. Two of whom,
Sarah Anne and Jesse were in attendance. When Margo's daughter Sophia passed she left several boxes full of undecorated
pots: mugs, lamp bases, vessels with soft curves and generous lips. There was also a flock of tiny darling
ducks. Ducks and duck decorated
earthenware had captured the hearts of many customers. And stories were told by a few of the
potters gathered around the work tables, like Maaike Charron who today works in
the shop upstairs, of customers who came over decades looking for one more duck
decorated mug. Very
pregnant, Sarah Anne, announced that her daughter would have such a mug to
use. She also said that her baby
would be a girl, another in the tradition of Meyer women.
Anne's stories, of early days at the Salt Box craft store
and memories of Christmas past, had the quality of family reminiscence. Some of the women, who were all potters
affiliated with the Studio, had never met Margo or daughter Sophia Meyer. (Margo died in 2010 and Sophia in 2012.) I knew them mostly through the
ceramics. So to me, the hushed
room had the quality almost of listening to a children's story of way back
when.
Anita Singh stroked an urn getting to know its shape before
she started to decorate. She asked
for a story to help prime the creative pump, to spark some appropriate
image. Sarah Anne told us about
the time her mother had made a batch of urns for funerary ashes. And that her mother had made one for
her own ashes. The conclusion was
that when Sophia passed away her ashes could not all be contained in a single urn. "Mom didn't fit…we couldn't fit
all of Mom in it".
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| One of Isabella St. John's lovely serving pieces. Isabella studied with the late Margo Meyer. |
The finished pots will be on show for the exhibition, One
in a Line, which opens February 28th at the
Craft Council Annex Gallery and will be on view until March 8th. The invitation will be designed by
daughter, Jesse, who is a graphic designer.
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