that kiln meant I would have to
get serious about pottery. I simply couldn’t justify that sort of
investment without putting it to
certain use.
Then one day during a trip into
town, I happened to drive past a
young woman unloading boxes
of clay from her pickup truck. I
circled back to her studio and
asked if that was real pottery clay!
She said she was a porcelain potter, who fired with wood. Before
long, Judy Edmunds was giving
me private pottery lessons and
inviting me to nearby firings of
her wood kiln. Judy helped me
learn about firing both wood and
electric kilns, and about working
with porcelain, too.
I began to do claywork every day,
and by the time my daughter Lindsay was born in 1992, I was selling
my work & demonstrating wheelthrowing at crafts fairs. Then in
1994, I “got online” with AOL, and
discovered a whole world of potters
via the Clayart listserv. I became a
“lurker” (someone who follows
the conversations of participating
newsgroup members, but doesn’t
post any messages). I also became
familiar with the names of the
most knowledgeable folks about
various subjects: Marc Ward for
kilns and firing; Steve Branfman
for pottery books; and Monona
Rossol for ceramics studio health
and safety.
And then dawned the morning
when I woke up with the idea
to publish the magazine. Rather
than take a gamble on the huge
I invited Grace to serve as technical editor, and she accepted.
I invited Marc Ward and Steve
Branfman and Monona Rossol to
write regular columns on kilns
and firing, pottery books, and
ceramics health & safety, and
they all accepted. The newsletter
was born!
I mailed the first copy of the
8-page newsletter to approximately 200 people (most of whom
were either Clayart members or
members of The Clay Connection,
a newly formed ceramics guild for
folks in the DC area).
Not long afterward, I read about
an upcoming raku workshop with
Fran Newquist of Tin Barn Pottery.
I signed up for Fran’s workshop
and met guest artist Rick Berman,
an accomplished raku potter from
Atlanta. Rick presented a slide
show of other potters’ works, and
I was spellbound! Like so many
other potters, the immediate
gratification of raku firing left me
yearning for more, more, more! I
brought my husband (and kids) to
the second day of the workshop so
Jim could figure out how to build
me a raku kiln. Needless to say,
I was raku-firing at home by the
following weekend.
I also gave Rick a copy of my
newsletter, which he read on the
plane during his flight back to
Atlanta. He called me afterward
with some very encouraging words:
CT Trivia: Did You Know ...
• Clay Times was the very first pottery
magazine with a Website
• Clay Times was the first pottery magazine
to be published online, in digital format
• Clay Times was the first pottery magazine
to regularly request and publish works by
its readers in “The Gallery” department
• Clay Times was the first pottery
magazine with an online store
• At NCECA 1997 in Las Vegas, exhibit hall
attendees stood in line at the Clay Times
exhibitor booth while clay artists Peter
Voulkos, Paul Soldner, and Don Reitz
simultaneously autographed the CT studio poster featuring images of their work
• When Clay Times sponsored fave local
Virginia blues band “Cactus Groove” to
perform at the Charlotte, North Carolina
NCECA conference, the band blew the
speakers twice and had to await local
equipment replacements before the festivities could begin (Thank you, Janet!)
• CT had to request alternative ads from
legendary potter Paul Soldner more than
once because a few of them were too
“racy” for some of our younger readers (!)
• Ever since the very first full-color
issue of CT was published in 1995, no fewer
than 10,000 print copies per issue have been
produced and distributed
• More than 60,000 potters worldwide
have subscribed to CT since its inception
• Your CT issue mailing label always
indicates your final paid issue, even if
your subscription has lapsed or issues
have been delayed or missed
• You can tell if you have the most recent
and previous CT issues by checking against
the current issue number at claytimes.com
• To date, more than 2.75 million clay
enthusiasts worldwide have logged on to
the CT Website at www.claytimes.com
CLAYTIMES·COM n 20TH ANNIVERSARY • AUTUMN / WINTER 2015
I also signed up for a glaze workshop with Grace Lewis, a woman
who had studied glaze chemistry
with Val Cushing at Alfred University. Grace taught me things
during that workshop that transformed me from a commercial
glaze user into a glaze formulator.
cost of 4-color printing, I refined
the idea to publish the newsletter
as a “test predecessor” to the magazine. So I sent out my first message to the Clayart newsgroup,
asking if anyone would want me
to “snail mail” them a free newsletter on claywork. Before I knew
it, I’d received enough encouraging replies to spawn the first issue
of the newsletter, entitled The
Claytime Companion.
15