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About Studio Potter
The string starts to cut the clay. One hand holds the end
as the wheel turns slowly. Half a revolution,
then a strong pull out. The pot is lifted off. Twin
patterns of ridge and groove with telltale swirl appear:
one remains behind on clay to be thrown again,
the other to be fired as the mark of the potter.
When Studio Potter began its life in 1972, we took that
potter's mark as our symbol. It was a secret mark (only a
potter recognizes it) as well as a universal one (every
potter in the world recognizes it), and it
appealed to our iconoclastic approach to pottery. In 1972
two publications were pre-eminent in
their fields: Ceramics Monthly and Craft Horizons. Our
perception was that they covered schools
and galleries but not working potters. Our conceit was
that a new publication by and for potters could fill that
need.
Discussion on publishing a magazine commenced among members of the
New Hampshire Potter's Guild in the fall of 1971, leading
to the formation of a non-profit organization called the
Daniel Clark Foundation, named after an obscure colonial
potter in New Hampshire whose fame came principally from
a diary he left upon his death in 1828. We were financed by
$200 from a dozen New Hampshire potters and a $500 grant
from the Northeast Region of the ACC, and - innocent and
foolhardy - we launched our first issue - without
advertising (we learned to like its absence). The cover
was hand-silk screened and the modest twenty pages
contained an eclectic mix of photographs and articles on
apprenticeship, photo-resist, homemade pugmills, and
an excerpt from Paulus Berensohn's unpublished manuscript,
Finding One's Way With Clay.
It was an unpretentious beginning, and one that might
easily have foundered for lack of journalistic experience
and financial stability. Even then, however,
it would not have been possible without the help
of courageous friends. Original "investors" were Peter
and Lissi Sabin, Vivika and Otto Heino,
Michael Cohen and Harriet Goodwin (Cohen), Ruth Tobey,
Dan and Mary Ann Gehan and Julie and
Gerry Williams. Armand Szainer designed the magazine;
Bill Finney took the pictures; and attorney
Neil Castaldo drew up non-profit papers. Two hundred
pre-subscribers took a chance on us.
Twenty-five years later, older and a little wiser,
Studio Potter inevitably has changed - but so has the
field. Through the years the magazine staff was restructured.
The organization's original name was tossed out
("Daniel Clark, wealthy financier?") in favor of plain
but honest Studio Potter. Subscriptions blossomed,
and we biogenisized into a network with its own
newsletter. Perhaps most significantly (and controversially),
Studio Potter changed the editorial focus from technology to
aesthetic philosophy, because we sensed the field had
grown toward wider and deeper interests.
Yet some
things have not changed: an essential belief in functional
pottery; a reverence for new talent and old masters,
the encouragement of first-person writing, education
as discovery of the self, service to the field and
an overriding commitment to humanitarian values.
Volume One, Number One began with words that still
define our mark: "Studio Potter is a magazine for the
community of potters everywhere. It is written by potters
and directed toward fellow-potters who earn their living
by making pots...".
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