At a sharp curve on the way to Schoodic Point, if you’re not careful, you’ll drive right into a long, nondescript building set almost on Route 186 called Maine Kiln Works and Water Stone Sink. But inside that building, if you don’t get lost going from room to room and from floor to floor, you’ll eventually find exquisitely beautiful hand-made porcelain and stoneware bathroom sinks, tableware and decorative pieces.
Potter Dan Weaver started his business 35 years ago. Born and raised in Texas, he got his B.A. in Fine Arts from the University of Dallas, taking a fifth year of studio arts courses to be eligible for graduate study at New York State University College of Ceramics at Alfred University, where he earned his M.F.A. in 1971. “It’s the oldest college of ceramics in the country,” he said. “It trained the root teachers all over the country.”
Most of the school’s graduates went into teaching, but Weaver wanted to make things. A trip to Maine the March before graduating (“I had never seen the ocean”) led him to move to what was then West Gouldsboro shortly after graduation. He found a dwelling of sorts: a dilapidated general store and post office lacking plumbing, heat and electricity. It had never been lived in. He bought it with the few thousand dollars he’d earned after graduation designing and producing working drawings for a dozen new kilns at the Ceramic College and, with his wife, moved in, bathing in the brook until November. When one of his teachers heard a local bank had denied him a loan for startup costs because he had no collateral, the teacher lent him what Weaver calls “a critical few thousand dollars.” He used that money for tools and for building his kiln.
Making different bodies of porcelain and stoneware requires considerable knowledge of chemistry. Weaver’s wares are far different from those flowerpot-clay handprint dishes children make for their mothers in kindergarten. Different forms in porcelain and stoneware require different formulas because of the various sizes and shapes of the bodies and the stresses on each. For instance, a 16-inch diameter sink has different stresses than a coffee mug and most ware shrinks about 12 percent when fired in the kiln. Besides making his own tools, a skill learned from his mechanical engineer father and others, he traded an outboard motor he’d earned while caretaking for a surplus Navy mortar mixer, which he used to mix his clay.
Weaver built his kiln based on the one he’d worked with at graduate school. It has an interior stacking area six feet long and high, two-and-one-half feet wide. It takes all day to load, and it can hold 50 16-inch diameter sinks with smaller objects stacked between. He built a cart with shelves that hold the objects to be fired and which rolls into and out of the kiln. When filled, the kiln can accommodate as many as 2,000 pieces.
He has now been in business for 35 years. “I’ve seen a lot of potters come and go,” he said. “It’s a hard way to make a living.” Weaver’s web site offers pictures and explanations of his entire operation and includes a particularly informative section under the heading “Process.” In his work area several sinks with big cracks or other damage hang from hooks overhead. On his website he has written: “I develop all of our own clay bodies and I test and adjust them continuously to avoid problems stemming from poorly processed materials and materials with changing chemical analysis.”
The Weavers’ mostly restored hundred-foot-long building is essentially a small, live-in factory. In the basement one room holds shelves filled with the different clays Dan uses: kaolin from Florida (an ingredient the Chinese discovered and used to make the first porcelain centuries ago) and Appalachian fire clays. The big Navy cement mixer mixes 300-lb. batches of whatever formula he’s making. He then takes the clay and “hand-throws” or forms the object. In the case of his bathroom sinks, he has built forms to press his sink blanks: a rough sink form, which he then puts on the wheel and, using traditional techniques, creates the different styles and sizes of his sinks.
He got into making sinks years ago when a customer came to him with a broken one and asked if he could make a replacement. He made it, liked it, and eventually began to specialize in sinks, though he continues to make many other objects such as tableware, vases, soap dishes and other decorative accessories.
Although everyone has his or her favorite kind and form of pottery, just as they prefer either two-dimensional paintings or three-dimensional sculpture, Weaver’s glaze colors glow on both porcelain and stoneware, and he has given his various wares graceful shapes and beautiful proportions. Some colors look jewel-like; others come right out of the earth. Prospective customers can order glaze samples in the form of small dishes for a minimal fee, refundable if returned or if it or they result in a sale. Dan’s wife, Elizabeth, makes most of the sink glaze samples, but because of his training, he does all the clay work. In addition to gathering and press-drying flowers, grasses, and seaweeds for her line of botanical lampshades, Elizabeth handles most of the shop sales and almost all shipping and telephone business.
From April to November, Dan and Elizabeth have their salesroom open Monday through Saturday from 10 to 5. Here you will find examples of his pottery, including a ceramic-tile-top table, a rowing scull, a dogsled, small lapstrake watercraft and pottery lamps, along with Elizabeth’s lampshades. During the winter the Weavers welcome customers by appointment. Not content with the hours of work they put in making and selling their crafts, the Weavers somehow find time to home-school their 13-year-old daughter Joanna. As part of her schoolwork, she writes and publishes a delightful and well-done publication called Novus Journal. On the back page of several issues she has written, “If you have any interest in writing please send me articles for the Novus, because I am tired of doing most of the articles myself.”
Weaver is now building living quarters for an apprentice. When finished, he and Elizabeth will offer room, board, and a stipend to a qualified apprentice in exchange for 30 to 40 hours per week of work and training in the shop. The Weavers have created a fascinating, informative place to visit whether shopping for fine hand-made tableware or bathroom sinks or as a tour of a working pottery factory on the way to Schoodic Point. Either way you’ll find it worth your while to stop at Maine Kiln Works and Water Stone Sink.
For more information, go to www.waterstonesink.com or phone 207-963-5819.