It’s not often that pottery aficionados get to gorge on what they love most: attending kiln openings and throwing demonstrations, seeing new works, touring studios, and meeting and buying directly from the potter. But all 18 members of the Maine Peninsula Potters, will hold a studio tour and sale from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Oct. 6-9, the Columbus Day weekend. For lovers of hand made pottery and porcelain, it is an unusual opportunity.
Maine’s East Penobscot Bay peninsula is known for the quality of its potters primarily because many of them studied or taught at Deer Isle’s Haystack Mountain School of Crafts.
About six years ago, potter and Blue Heron Gallery owner Mary Nyberg gathered a group of area potters for a pre-Christmas show. They developed into the Peninsula Potters. They’d get together once a year for potluck supper and share information. Then four years ago they decided to hold an annual studio and gallery tour.
The potters enjoy having people come to their studios. Barbro Chapman, who makes fine wheel-thrown functional stoneware, said, “People who buy pots are usually awfully nice people.” Chapman’s studio is at 34 Chamberlin Drive, off the Sunshine Road in Deer Isle just before the causeway.
Describing the work of Marcia Kola, Chapman said, “Marcia does a lot with moulds: she makes square plates that you can’t make on a wheel.” Kola shows her high-fired functional stoneware and porcelain work at the Pitcher-Masters Studio Gallery on French Camp Road, off the road to Haystack.
Frank Pitcher makes functional ware, which he fires in his wood-fired kiln. “The wood ash lands on the pots and affects or creates a glaze,” he said. He also adds salt, which makes a glaze.
Sue Wilmot, who makes wheel-thrown and hand-built wood and salt fired cooking pots and vases, and Kenneth Bovee, who makes wood or gas-fired objects with an Asian influence, will also show at Pitcher-Masters Studio.
Mark Bell, a potter for 31 years, works exclusively in porcelain clay and makes one-of-a-kind decorative pots. His studio is two miles south of Blue Hill on Route 15. “One of the thrills of this weekend for me, he said, “is that people can come and see the pots as they come out of the kiln.”
Melissa Greene, who makes decorative earthenware vessels painted with terra sigillata, or liquid clay slip that she burnishes, has been working in her current style for 22 years. Her gallery is on Reach Road, in Deer Isle.
Carole Ann Fer, who has been making softly glazed porcelain for 20 years, shows at Dowstudio on the Dow Road.
The potters have found that people who come to the Columbus Day weekend tour are different than those who come in summer. Greene said, “A lot of local people come, people who work all summer. It’s really delightful. Everybody’s happy.” Rather than the summer crowds, she said, “It’s a slow, steady stream, very easygoing and pleasant.”