Slow Living: A Home Pottery Studio Tour

Slow living isn't only about living locally, sustainably, with handmade things you love, in a way that supports and celebrates your community's traditions and skills. In an ideal world, slow living includes setting aside space and time for creative pursuits. Learning and practicing an art or craft can enrich your life and be incredibly fulfilling.

While there are lots of professional studio tours on ceramics blogs like (Mud)Bucket, I thought you might be interested in seeing the home pottery studio of a passionate hobbyist, my talented mother Sharon Merriam.

Sharon Merriam at work in her home studio. Photo credit: Peter Merriam.

Mom has moved between media for most of my life. When I was a child, she did sewing, macrame, crochet, and embroidery; when I was in my teens she began life drawing and watercolour, and went on to printmaking. She immersed herself in workshops and extension courses from the local fine arts college. About a decade ago, she began taking pottery classes and workshops, and she was instantly hooked. Ceramics is now her primary medium, and we rarely have a phone conversation where she doesn't report on her latest pieces or the glaze combinations she is trying. The walls of her work have become thinner, her designs more adventurous, her range of techniques more comprehensive, and she has joined a potters' guild and shown her work alongside that of professional potters. At this time, she is enjoying expanding her skills, and has artistic freedom to spend time and effort that she could never afford to give a single piece as a production potter.

Here are some photos I snapped around the house of her work:

A collection of yunomi and glaze test chips on a table in the living room bay window.

A series of sculptural works based on the female figure line the stairs.

 

 

 

  

This is the first in a sculptural series using thrown rings. To the right is a raku vase.

The wave-shaped tray is her most recent experimental piece. The large vase was wood fired.

The creation of this version of Mom's home ceramics studio has taken years. Before she took up pottery, she had a portable easel, and a corner of a spare bedroom that was used to store supplies and reference books and her works on paper, and most of the artwork on the walls was gradually supplanted with her best work. When she began her love affair with ceramics, she did all her work at Atlantic Pottery Supplies, during classes and studio time. She found that arrangement limiting as she became more skilled and more serious about her craft. After renovating to install a new laundry room in an upstairs storage room a few years ago, the laundry room was converted into a home studio so she could practice throwing (that is, using a pottery wheel) at home. When she purchased an electric kiln last fall, that room became the kiln room (with some electrical work and the addition of a kiln vent fan), and a storage room in the basement was cleaned out and converted into the new throwing-drying-and-glazing studio with the addition of a ventilation fan and a sink. A table for hand-building lives in the basement rec room, and the storage for the pieces she has made has happily spilled over into many rooms of the house.

The electric kiln in its own room, a former laundry room. That thick black cord is the electrical cord for the kiln, which was professionally wired to a lockable box with the sort of on/off switch you see in factories in the movies. The white cord in the background is for a vent fan in the window.

Bisqued wares await glaze on a shelf in the hallway near the kiln room. Photo credit: Sharon Merriam

My kids making pinch pots with my mom at the hand-building table in the basement rec room.

The long, narrow storage room was converted into a ceramics studio with two sections. This shot was taken from mid-room, of the glazing area and the sink (there is a washroom on the other side of that wall that made plumbing in a new sink possible).

Shelves of tools and projects at various stages of completion line the walls.
These are trimming and carving tools.

Handmade brushes for glazing.

Glaze ingredients and premixed underglazes. 

Ready to start throwing. The day I took these photos, Mom threw a cylinder for a project we are collaborating on.

 

Using ribs to throw and compress the cylinder's walls. 

Checking the height - not tall enough. That's a sketch of my sister on the wall.

  

Compressing the lip of the cylinder before she cut and stretched it.
Notice the sculptures on the shelf above her head.

Compressing the edge of the cut-and-stretched cylinder. The reason we did this instead of using a traditional slab approach was that the throwing process gives the clay a more organic feeling.

Ready for the next phase!

This is after the next phase: once the clay was leather-hard, we cut the thrown-and-stretched slab into tiles, and I transferred my design onto them and carved out the outlines. It's a Craftsman-inspired ceramic address plaque, showing a heavy Glasgow school influence. 

Here it is with the underglazes painted on. It's hard to tell from the photo, but variation in how many coats of underglaze were used will affect how dark it will be after firing - and the colours after firing will dark purple and dark green. After it has been bisque-fired, the remaining glazes will be added, then it will be fired again.

Viewing photos of the studios of professional artists and writers can be inspiring, but seeing how a passionate amateur integrates their craft study and practice into their home and life can have different lessons. Sometimes, our creative pursuits and passions are not easily contained in a single display case or dedicated room, and that's okay. As the witticism goes, creative minds are rarely tidy.

If (unlike my mom) you're striving for a minimalist version of slow living, there are ways you can manage the chaos that creativity brings. You can have a live/work arrangement like hers, with extra systems in place that help you contain the mess while you are working - professionals with live/work studios would be good models to follow for this. You can choose to work in a separate studio to manage the chaos that creating large works can bring. Alternately, you can be very deliberate in choosing a medium where completed works and works in progress can be stored compactly, or even digitally.

If your personal style is more maximalist, having a live/work space and surrounding yourself with your influences and your own creations is an inspirational way to have a slow home!

{21 Aug 12 Update: edited slightly to reflect feedback from my mother.}

Dream Decorating: Kitchen - Dining - Family Room

It's about two weeks before we take possession of our new home, and I'm procrastinating about the much-dreaded packing-and-purging by planning the decor. (Is it normal to want to set fire to all your stuff instead of packing it at this stage? Please say yes.) Let me tease you with some product shots of what I'm planning to use in the kitchen, dining room, and living room, which are open to each other.

Here are a couple of before shots I took during the home inspection.

via Benjamin Moore Colors on Flikr

Eternity in eggshell on the wall in a blog post by Urban Domesticity

The first thing that will happen is that the builder beige will be painted out. We will also play with adding moldings to the existing trim to make the house feel vintage-Craftsman instead of faux-Craftsman. Much as we'd love to paint while the house is still empty, the seller is still in another country and not responding to our request for permission to take painters in so they can give us quotes. Sigh.

So, we'll have to paint after the move, and meanwhile I've been pre-testing samples of grey paint, using the similar light in my current home. I think pulling out the grey and playing down the yellow-beige in the stone fireplace surround, granite counters, and ceramic tile backsplash with a grey wall is the way to go. However, greys are tricky - they look perfect as a colour chip, and then you get it onto your wall and the undertones emerge, or the character switches from cool to warm because it's a bit too brown. After looking at the range of greys from multiple manufacturers, I've decided to try Benjamin Moore's Natura 0-VOC paint in Eternity for the walls, and Steam (an off-white) for the ceiling and trim - I'll know for sure once I get to test it in the space. Eternity is a true grey with the smallest hint of blue. A paler true grey for spaces that don't get as much natural light might be Horizon.

(I had really wanted to use uber-eco Mythic Paint, but our local dealer here in the wilderness of Canada doesn't have the ability to accurately create smaller testers with equipment calibrated for full-size cans, so that will have to wait for another room where we won't need to test the colours. Dear Mythic: please make your tester pots available through your Canadian vendors. One cannot specify colour using only a tiny chip on a fan deck. Ever. Seriously, get on it.)

Our dining table is pine with a walnut stain in a shape very much inspired by French farmhouse tables like this one, the genuine c1860 article from Uniquities Architectural Antiques in Calgary (via Houzz). It came with Parsons chairs and a matching bench upholstered in sensible espresso faux-leather. When the kids are a little older, I'll have them reupholstered in something fabulous.

Here's an old photo (of my daughter's third birthday party) from our current home's dining room. The vintage English walnut china cabinet will also make the move to the new house, and I'm hoping we'll be able to bring our pendant lamp with us as well, since it would suit the neo-Craftsman architecture much better than the current one does.

We have a hard-wearing, kid-friendly roll-arm brown leather sofa from Lane (the Wakefield) that my kids are doing their best to patinate for me. Fabulous cushions and a great throw will help to make it less of a yawn.

Since the kids will have another space that acts as their playroom, I want a tempered-glass coffee table, and originally I was thinking of a waterfall table or this 'Osaka' coffee table from Urban Barn - it's very similar to one available from US retailer West Elm. I've since scored a round one with a chromed base off Kijiji for a song, which will do nicely as a placeholder, and will be perfect for staging our old house. Unfortunately I don't have a photo of it yet. Inside my head, I'm rounding this out with Brent Comber's alder drum table and one of Jasper Morrison's cork stools, but I have a feeling our budget won't stretch that far, so I'm on the hunt for some sweet vintage end tables to add to the mix. There's an Aalto-esque tripod stool and a Mission-style octagonal table at the antique mall that might make the cut.

With all that stone, wood, and leather, the space will need an injection of femininity and softness. I've ordered FLOR's Reoriented recycled-nylon carpet tiles in Lavender; there are also touches of cream, grey, beige, sky blue, and indigo blue in the pattern, as you can see in the detail shot. With the glass coffee table you'll be able to really see the rug so it needed to be fantastic, and this pattern is a great riff on the overdyed-oriental trend. I already have faux-silk curtains similar to these, in aubergine, which I'll hang over the existing wooden blinds.

mid-1920s Poole Pottery Traditional majolicaware, via Rob's Poole Pottery Collection

1940s Poole Pottery's Traditional majolicaware, via Poole Pottery Replacements

I have a small collection of Poole Pottery that I'll be displaying in the room (It reminds me of my paternal grandmother, who used to have a huge collection of it.). Notice that the lavender is picked up in Poole's glaze palette. I might also pull out this vintage hooked mat from storage to hang as part of the art wall. (The long wall that's continuous with the stairwells is begging to be used as a gallery.)

Let's see, what's missing? Stools for the breakfast bar - I just scored a perfect match to the old farm stool I already had, so I'll be using those, at least until I can work some Emeco Navy bar chairs into the budget. A big leafy plant or two. Books, naturally. Our antique mirror and the mantle clock handed down from my husband's family for over the fireplace. A great floor lamp or two, and improvements to the ceiling fixtures (all of which I dislike). And a way to deal with the television my darling husband is insisting we put in there... any suggestions?

Slow Home: Do You Know Your Home's History?

One of the central goals of the slow movement is to foster a sense of community and connection, and researching the history of your home is a great way do that. Here's a case study on how to go about it, using the house my husband and I just bought. I thought it would be fun to show that even a relatively new home can have a history worth looking into!

If you live in an older house, you may find the tips and resources in the "Be your own House Detective" articles in the October 2010 and November 2010 issues of UK genealogy magazine Family History Monthly very useful. There are also great resources at the UK's National Archives and Bricks and Brass, and at Active History (for Canada) and the cities of Edmonton and Calgary - try adding your municipality to the search terms 'researching history of house' to find relevant resources for your area.

{Step 1: Write down what you know about your home's previous owners, builder, architect (if any), location, and prior land uses.}

Our new house was built in neo-Craftsman style in 2008 by Alberta-based builder Homes By Avi, as a  spec home using their "McCullough A2" plans (according to the builder's records; the MLS listing had it as a former showhome). The subdivision in which it was built is new enough that when we moved to our current home in an adjacent subdivision in 2001, the land was farmland used for growing canola and wheat, and deer and the occasional moose were routinely seen grazing along the road. It is still an active construction zone with only about a third to a half of the lots completed. The land is adjacent to a ravine that has been designated a wildlife refuge, called MacTaggart Sanctuary. A lovely unpaved walking path winds through the Sanctuary along Whitemud Creek's wooded banks past an active beaver colony, and the path connects to paths through our city's river valley and comprises part of a huge hiking trail network called the Waskahegan Trail. 

I snapped this photo from the edge of a beaver dam in MacTaggart Sanctuary last October.
Nearby there was a trail of flattened grass on the bank, where the beavers like to slide into the creek.

{Step 2: Look for documentation and clues to the house's former life outside and inside the home.}

We don't yet have possession of the home, but I took lots of photos and measurements during the house inspection, and we will take another look once we are in. We don't expect to find much, since the property was built so recently - but in an older home, the architectural style and changes to the layout as the home has grown additions or suffered renovations can give important information about its date and past. So, taking measurements and drawing up your house's floorplan can yield clues. When we compare our home to the current version of the floorplan linked above, we see a number of changes: the entire second floor is different (with 3 larger bedrooms and a media room, instead of the four bedrooms shown in the PDF), and a hallway was closed off and space stolen from the front room to add a shower stall to the powder room and a closet to a home office suitable for seeing clients. Those changes and the slightly worn builder-beige paint throughout this house are consistent with the information from the MLS listing that it was a showhome before it was lived in.

A quick, rough sketch of the house's actual floor plan, not-to-scale.
Modified from the current version of the McCullough marketing materials on the Homes By Avi website.

{Step 3: Look for further information that is part of the public record. Start with online searches, then check with the local archives for your city, county, and province (or state). Don't forget to look at the websites of community organizations and local newspapers, as well as local histories, maps, surveys, and census records for heritage homes.}

Here is what I found out:

- By searching on the street address, I found the website of a business that was run from the home office of the house, and the name of a previous owner.

- By searching on the name of the subdivision, I found the marketing materials for this subdivision and the one next-door, information about adjacent model-green-community subdivisions, the city's neighborhood profile and Neighborhood Area Structure Plan (PDFs), and an article for the local community league's newsletter about the history of the subdivision (on page 18 of the PDF). The city's plans call for this to become a highly walkable mixed-density neighborhood.

- From the Neighborhood Area Structure Plan, I learnt that there once were coal mines on the north bank of the creek, and as a result a larger buffer zone than would usually be needed is required around the ravine. This makes for nicer park areas on the upper edge of the ravine. Googling told me that the development on the other side of the ravine (Twin Brooks) is on the site of a former mining village, traces of which can still be found in the subdivision. So I'm guessing that the miners who dug the mine shafts in the ravine lived there.

- From the newsletter article, I learnt that the farm and ravine had belonged to Walter Street, who had retired to a one-room cabin overlooking the ravine, and that Maclab Enterprise's Sandy Mactaggart bought the land from him (after years of conversation) with the promise that he could continue to live there, and that the ravine would become a nature reserve. Mr. MacTaggart made good his promise and arranged for the land, along with adjoining land owned by the Province, to be donated to the University of Alberta as a nature reserve.

- I also learnt a fair bit about the colourful, community-spirited Mr. MacTaggart who bought Mr. Street's farm and ravine from him. Anyone who lives in Edmonton is likely familiar with the development corporation that Mr. MacTaggart was a partner in, but the many new residents of our rapidly-growing city might not be aware of the large role he and his wife played in both building Edmonton's inner-ring suburbs and cultural community (I've lived here going on eighteen years and had not been aware of his work and legacy). I do think it's fitting that the nature reserve and the new neighborhood on its edge are named for MacTaggart.

- A sign (in the photos above) at one of the entrances to the MacTaggart Sanctuary from the new neighborhood of MacTaggart confirmed the newsletter story, and added a few crucial clues to Walter Street's identity: that he lived 1878 - 1969, that he fought in World War One, and that before his retirement to farm the land beside Whitemud Creek Ravine, he had managed the stable at the Edmonton Ice Company.

- I found Walter Street listed in the 1950 Henderson Directory for Edmonton, occupation "stableman Arctic Ice Company" (who bought out Edmonton Ice Company), living at a Rossdale address near (or perhaps in) the Arctic Ice building at 100 Street and 97 Avenue; by 1952 he had moved and is no longer listed (although a carpenter of the same name is).

- A search on Walter Street, Edmonton, Alberta on Ancestry.ca led me to census records of two possible individuals, one of whom was married (and seems to be the carpenter I just mentioned) - and the other of whom is too young to be the correct individual, if the signage placed in the community is correct, but who otherwise seems to fit the facts. I'm now corresponding with one of the people researching that Walter Street's family tree, and have promised him I'll make enquiries at the local archives to see what else we can learn. Using the dates from the signage instead of a location in Edmonton has suggested a few other possible individuals, so I will need to find more information in order to narrow down the origins of the Walter Street who farmed the land my house now sits on, regardless. My next step will be to visit the archives, in person.

Walter Street's name ought to be more widely known, since his foresight and generosity ensured that his land on Whitemud Creek was preserved in as unspoiled a state as possible for us all to enjoy. I hope he would approve of the beautiful wildlife sanctuary and the neighborhood being built on its banks.

Introducing our new Slow Home

So, we bought a house!

exterior - yes, we just had a snowstorm

living room natural-gas fireplace with stone facing

detail of rail at top of stairs in bonus room

kitchen granite counter and backsplash

one of the small square windows, to show the neo-Craftsman millwork

ensuite tub, showing the maple cabinets and tile used throughout the house

oak floors with a nice dark stain

I took a few photos during the home inspection today. I've tried not to show the current furnishings, out of respect for the prior owner. (I'll share more photos once our stuff has been moved in. Promise.) The house has a bad case of builder beige, but good bones, don't you think?

As you can see, the exterior and interior trim is suggestive of Arts-and-Crafts style, as is the case in several of the new subdivisions being built around Edmonton - and in many other cities, based on what I am seeing online. As a Prairie city that had its first real growth between the World Wars, Edmonton's most coveted central neighborhoods are streetcar suburbs filled with Craftsman bungalows and Four-Squares - many of which were mail-order houses. I once read a reprint of a 1930s Sears kit home catalogue, and it was amazing just how many of the illustrated exteriors were instantly recognizable as homes in Glenora and Strathcona. It makes sense that they'd be mimicked by builders looking to trade on the style's cachet, for buyers who want the look in a larger, newer, less expensive home in the outer-ring suburbs.

So, we'll work with that style, and add Craftsman-style interior trim, built-ins, and hardware (and fix the existing trim, which is a bit too simple and looks clumsy as a result). That will help to add architectural interest and a sense of history to the interior. At the same time as we do that, we'll try to slow down the design of the house, which we score (generously) at 14/20 on the Slow Home Test. Making the home more environmentally friendly, adding better lighting and more built-in storage, creating a proper garden, and giving the neighborhood time to mature and develop more nearby amenities (which are still under construction) will all help to improve that score. It'll never be a 20/20, given its suburban location and total lack of attention to the sun's path and the prevailing winds, but it's "somewhat slow" and it meets all the criteria that I laid out in a recent post.

I'm pleased that the home is faux-Craftsman instead of one of the other styles that are currently en vogue. The Craftsman aesthetic is very in tune with modern Slow Design sensibilities, with an emphasis on honest use of natural materials, connection to nature, artisan workmanship, and human scale that was originally borne of protest against industrialization and mass manufacture. In practice, the kit houses and the furniture and wallpapers and tiles used to decorate them were mass-produced in one of the first examples of democratization of design, and they were marketed by the kit-sellers as modern, luxurious, efficient, hygienic, and convenient. Craftsman bungalows borrowed from traditional Shaker, Japanese, and Bengalese architecture, and featured rooms that were open to one another, an abundance of natural light and natural wood, and the use of art tiles and art glass as durable decorative flourishes. Thoughtfully-designed built-in furniture was used to increase the apparent size of the rooms and to keep the rooms easy to clean. An emphasis on long horizontal lines, square motifs, and simplicity of form makes the architecture read as fairly masculine, which is usually balanced by adding rounded forms in the furniture and lighting, and adding decor showing Art Deco and Art Nouveau influences. (Here's a detailed article discussing Arts-and-Crafts architecture and interior decoration in Nebraska - most of what the author says is also true in Edmonton.)

There are lots of great resources out there for families who are restoring their Craftsman homes, and if I really wanted I could pull out all the stops and make this house as authentic as I wished using those resources. I will not be going with a slavish reproduction of Craftsman style in our new home, but I will let its aesthetic inform the architectural millwork and hardware choices we make. I've started by creating a pinboard of Craftsman reference images (naturally). We take possession at the end of April, so I have about two months to pack and plan things before the move. This should be fun!