View Larger Image Teaset, to 7 in. (18 cm) in height, thrown stoneware, with carbon-trapping Shino glaze, fired to Cone 10 in reduction, 2004.

April 10, 2007

Footsteps to Follow: Eric Strader’s Branch on the Pottery Family Tree

by Marshall King | Read Comments (2)

Every so often, when Eric Strader gets a whiff of aging clay or an electric kiln firing, he’s transported from his own ceramics studio to that of his grandfather Stanley Kellogg. He remembers visiting the popular studio in Petoskey, Michigan, where his grandfather worked and met with customers, but he also remembers eating and drinking from his grandfather’s works. “All we used in the house were Grandpa’s pots. Every mug, bowl and plate in the cabinet was Kellogg pottery,” said Strader. Strader was five when his grandfather died and seven when the Kellogg Studio closed, but Kellogg’s legacy continues through his grandson.

Last year, the Little Traverse History Museum in Petoskey had a joint exhibition of the two potters’ works, eliciting stories from those who remember Kellogg’s studio. Even almost thirty years after it closed, a number of local residents recalled to Strader how they visited the studio each year. “My grandfather’s studio was a destination in northern Michigan,” he said.

Strader, a clarinet major at Western Michigan University, didn’t focus on ceramics until his wife, Laura, an elementary-school art teacher with ceramics experience, enrolled him in a pottery class as a gift. In that first class, he wasn’t satisfied with building pieces using coils, slabs and molds. “I really wanted to get into the throwing part,” he said. Laura showed him how to throw and he learned quickly.

He took two more classes and, after moving to Goshen, Indiana, in the fall of 1994, took a job with well-known potter Dick Lehman. Strader started out doing what many apprenticing potters do—mixing clay, mixing glazes and pugging. After a few months, he started throwing items for Lehman. By the middle of 1995, he was throwing three or four hours a day making some of the more than sixty items for Lehman’s shop.

As an apprentice under Lehman, Strader’s experience grew as did his sense for his own style. He started finding his own shapes for mugs, pitchers and bowls, even as he made Lehman’s forms for the shop. As his forms developed, so did his own business. “One of the wonderful things about [working for] Dick, [was that] I was able to start and run my own business while I was working there,” he said, noting that he also learned how to run a business by observing Lehman’s wonderful interaction with customers and being involved in making decisions.

In 2000, after five years of working for Lehman, Strader struck out on his own. His wholesale and gallery business grew to complement income from art fair sales. Now, approximately half of his business is retail, and half wholesale and commission.

“For my one-of-a-kind pieces, I did wood firing,” he said. But accessing a nearby wood kiln was difficult, so he switched to a firing method easier to do close to home. “Now almost everything is Malcolm Davis’s recipe for carbon-trap Shino,” he said.

He plays with the variables that change the color and texture available from that single, rich glaze. He places two pots so that they touch while the glaze is drying to create orange spots. He brushes on wax to change the migration of salts as the water evaporates from the pot.

Strader enjoys making functional pottery for use in the home, the way his grandfather did. “I want to be the neighborhood potter making pots people use, eating and drinking the same things I do,” he said.

He’s more comfortable making gracious beer mugs or stately whiskey cups; functional pieces rather than sculpture. He works in a small studio in his basement because he also works as a stay-at-home dad for daughter Josie. “I’m down here working before Josie gets up in the morning,” he said.

He recently moved into a new studio in downtown Goshen and will do glazing and firing there, but continue to throw in his basement studio. Someday he hopes to share a studio with his wife, with room for Laura to weave, and for him to throw and fire. “That really is a dream of mine,” he said.

For now, he’ll produce pots in his two studios and put them out for people to peruse at an annual show in his backyard. It gives locals a chance to buy from him, the way he enjoys buying locally from others. A friend prepares food. Other friends play music. Strader provides good beer from a local brewery, and friends and neighbors come to enjoy his work, the way people did at his grandfather’s studio decades ago.

For further information about the work of Eric Strader, see www.ericstraderpottery.com.