Balancing Uniformity and Liveliness
Ceramics Monthly, December 2016
An Interview with Jane Herold and chefs about her hand thrown restaurant pottery
- When did you start working with restaurants?
- How does the collaboration with chefs work?
- Has working with the chefs led to new insights?
- How do you design work for restaurant use?
- Has the restaurant ware influenced your other work?
- Plus views of 2 chefs
Read the full article "Balancing Uniformity and Liveliness" - (PDF).
The Path, by Jane Herold
Studio Potter, Winter/Spring 2016, Vol 44 No. 1
......Over the last three years, however, I've been making dishes for restaurants in collaboration with chefs, and my point of view has changed. And left me with a dilemma. Link to magazine »
On Stonewalls & Stoneware
By Jane Herold, The Valley Table, Number 41, June-July 2008.
I have a friend who loves the wilderness. Alaska is her favorite place. For Dorothy a stonewall spoils the landscape, it is a sign of man. I on the other hand love rural buildings and landscapes. I love the way New England barns nestle into the earth with their upper stories at ground level. A stonewall makes a field both more interesting and more beautiful to me. It helps me see the contours of the earth.
Local Potter Invited To Study in Japan
By Jane Herold and editors of the 10964 Palisades Newsletter, June 2006.
This past May, Palisades potter Jane Herold was invited to take part in the Mashiko International Ceramic Festival 2006 in Japan. She joined nineteen other potters from Europe, North America, Korea, Japan and Australia to spend three weeks living and working in the town of Mashiko, in Tochigi Prefecture, about two hours by train from Tokyo. Read more on Palisadesny.com »
A New Definition of "Useful"
By Jane Herold, The Studio Potter, vol. 33, no. 2, June 2005, p. p. 70-71
The pots I make are useful pots: dishes, things to serve and hold food. But holding food is not what makes them useful. The most important task of a useful pot is to generate caring. Most of modern life does not generate this emotion. Things many of us think of as useful or even essential - cell phones, automobiles, computers, fast food, microwaves – don't generate real caring at all. We could live very well without many of these things. But we can't live good lives at all if we are callous and uncaring. Being indifferent, unconscious, unawake is not something that you can turn on and off at will. We must either find ways of living that encourage awareness or face a loss of sensibility that is likely to seep into all areas of our lives.
Pots for Living
By Jane Herold, Ceramics: Art and Perception, No. 40, 2000, p. 99-100.
I wish I could say that I researched thoroughly before I decided to build my kiln (a round, down draught beehive with four Bourry boxes). However, the truth is, it was more like marrying the boy next door. It was what I was familiar with, it had worked for me while an apprentice to Michael Cardew at Wenford Bridge, and it produced the kind of pots I wanted to make. I guess that is the essence of traditional thinking, not searching too far and wide for all the options, but using what you are familiar with. When I first set up on my own I used an anagama kiln for the first year or two. It was what I had access to while I saved money to build my own. It did push me to make bigger and bigger pots, and to use less and less glaze. It was good for me to make these big pots, they gave me some recognition, which we all need, but they were not what really interested me, or what I really cared about.
Wood-Fire Apologia
By Jane Herold, Ceramics Monthly, Feb. 1999, p. 54-55
"Why," Jack Troy asked, "since you don't use the natural accumulation of ash as decoration or glaze, do you bother firing with wood?"
Cardew's Legacy
By Jane Herold, The Studio Potter, vol. 22, no. 2, June 1994, p. 21-+
Michael Cardew
There is a sort of family of potters who apprenticed to Michael Cardew, some at Winchcombe, many in Nigeria, and others at Wenford Bridge in Cornwall, England. Their pots seem related, too. Like any family, there are branches that grow close together, shoots that take off in other directions, and even relatives who don't talk to each other.
Potters' Show Mixes Serenity and Whimsy
"....Jane Herold uses the graceful brushwork of Japanese ink drawings. With three or four strokes, she paints a bird or fish that conforms to the contours of her platter or bowl. These are worked in blue on white with the direct simplicity of Oriental pattern and form. Her large four-handled urn, however, evokes the amphoras of ancient Greece. It is glazed in earth tones with an incised antelope leaping across the base…." ~~ by Betty Freudenheim, New York Times, Sunday, April 7, 1991.
Books and Reviews about Jane
Ceramics, Art and Perception, by Roger Lipsey, March 2003
Passionate Fire, Nov. 2002
Kazue Konno, Nov. 2002 (in Japanese)
Wood Firing Journeys and Techniques, A CM Handbook, 2001
Woodfired Stoneware and Porcelain, 1995, by Jack Troy
Gifts for the House, Baby It's Cold Outside, The New Yorker, Dec 14, 1992
