Artist Gallery
Local Pottery Studio & Gallery is the working studio, teaching space and fine craft gallery of owner and potter Lisa Howard.
View a selection of pieces by a few of the 60+ artists represented in our Norwell gallery. Click through to view these artists’ work in our online shop.
Lisa Howard is the founder and lead artistic director of Local Pottery Studio + Gallery. She grew up locally in Norwell, MA and currently resides in Duxbury in a cottage near the beach where she can be found when not in the studio. She opened the studio and gallery in Pembroke at just 24. As a potter, her primary focus is tableware, on which she explores her love of color and pattern, which she describes as visual music. She spends a lot of time in design thinking about the way her pieces will be used when they leave the studio, often hiding something in the pattern or form so the user gets to share an insight. Her work is created in an earthy, mid-range stoneware that is highly durable, food, microwave, oven and dishwasher safe.
The Local Pottery Studio Line is our in-house produced tableware line, with artistic lead from Lisa Howard. Formulated as a less formal collection than her usual, densely patterned work, the Studio Line is bright and comfortable for everyday use. Patterning and colors are created using our own slip and glaze recipes in combination with a wax-resist brushwork technique. With a wide variety of color and pattern ways, pieces are made to be mixed and matched playfully in a collection and used often. The Studio Line is a mid-range stoneware that is highly durable, food, microwave, oven and dishwasher safe.
Davin, the potter, and Susan, the painter, work together as Butterfield Pottery creating limited production fine handmade pottery in their home studio in Ulster Park, Hudson Valley, New York. Dave has his MFA from Wichita State University and his BFA from WVU where he studied with Robert Anderson. His forms study historical pottery and natural shapes in the tradition of American Art Pottery, synthesizing form and surface design.The gestural botanical imagery is reminiscent of the light and colors of impressionism, obtained through Susans painterly brushwork and the atmospheric effects of iron in oxygen as layered oxides melt into the glaze on the very edge of melting down at high temperature. Butterfield pottery is food safe, microwavable and dishwasher safe. All stoneware cooking pots are oven proof.
Summer Haze is a line of tableware by Martha Hayes out of Hallieford, Virginia. She has been producing her wheel-thrown and hand-built functional stoneware and raku for over 34 years. Martha says she fell in love with clay the first time she ever touched it while getting her BA of Business Management at Franklin and Marshall College and knew making pots would be how she earned a living. She went on to Alfred University for her BFA in ceramics. She founded Summer Haze Pottery in 2004 with her husband in Mathews County, VA, and while he has since retired, she continues her full-time production of stoneware that is food, microwave, oven and dishwasher safe.
Steve Murphy is a potter, sculptor and artist working primarily in high-fire stoneware and porcelain in the Boston area. He received his BFA in Design from UMass Dartmouth then pursued an intensive study in Nagano Japan nearly 30 years ago which laid the foundation for his current work. Study of Yakimono, Japanese tea ceremony, and love of food add to his philosophy for functional ceramics as pottery that can be used every day and treasured as a work of art. Sculpturally, he creates a variety of forms including incense burners inspired by Japanese and Mayan beast sculpture and study of animals at the zoo. His more modernist sculptures are based on microscopic organisms. Many of his pieces are carved, creating variations in the glaze thickness and color. Surface patterns are made with altered brushes and colored clay slips. Most pieces have a single glaze that is fired in either a gas reduction or wood fired kilns, colors emerging from a variety of natural sources, including Asian, British, and American clays, minerals, and ashes from leaves, wood, rice straw, and volcanoes. These materials and techniques, along with Murphy's firing process, combine to produce a wide range of effects.
Julie Peck received her MFA from the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. She served as an apprentice at Moravian Pottery and Tileworks, Doylestown, PA and was an Artist-in-residence at ARCO, Lisbon, Portugal. Julie divides her time between studio work for local galleries, commission work, teaching at Mudflat Studios and leading ceramic projects in various Massachusetts schools, grant-funded through the Massachusetts Cultural Council (MCC). Her work is included in two Lark books, “500 Tiles” and “500 Vases”. Using thick slabs and fat coils, she creates a wide variety of forms, then carves her imagery into the clay. This carving melds the surface decoration into the form of the piece, playing with two- and three-dimensional design possibilities unique to clay. Once the building is complete, each piece is hand-painted with glaze. Peck’s ceramic work is built with a dark brown lowfire earthenware clay, which she loves for its color and its strength. It is highly durable, food, oven and dishwasher safe.
Maureen Mills lives and works in her studio in Portsmouth, New Hampshire with her husband and potter Steven Zoldak. Maureen was Ceramics Department Head at the New Hampshire Institute of Art in Manchester, New Hampshire, and is the author of Surface Design for Ceramics. She did not initially pursue a career in ceramics, finishing a degree instead in Chemistry from Knox College in Illinois, discovering during this time, however, her interest in clay and surface design. As a potter for more than 30 years now, she has displayed as well as taught workshops and given demonstrations of her work across the world through the International Symposium on Ceramic Art Education and Exchange. She uses a high-fire stoneware which is highly durable, food, microwave, oven and dishwasher safe.
Andrea Brown is a potter, sculptor and painter from West Medford, MA. She has studied sculpture and ceramics in a number of places including Harvard Ceramics, Mudflat Pottery Studio, and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She describes the process of pottery making as fulfilling seemingly universal primal urges to pay with both mud and fire, and in turn generates useful objects for eating, drinking and ritual. Working primarily with the potters wheel, Andrea Brown creates a line of high-fire stoneware kitchenware called Fire Garden Pottery, all of which is highly durable, food, microwave, oven and dishwasher safe.
Located in Philadelphia professionally, Jason Silverman studied at the Rhode Island School of Design. There, he refined his contemporary vision for his ceramics which combine traditional techniques inspired by Chinese Chun Dynasty pottery and other media such as blown glass and turned wood. Known for his vibrant glazes and smooth, sweeping forms, he notes that it is the balance between function and beauty that guides all of his pottery. Silverman uses a high temperature process to produce a range of subtly different pieces that are both beautiful and durable (food, microwave, oven and dishwasher safe).
Little Cat Metals is the partnership of Carol Joannidi and Dana Hunt, from their studio in western MA. Carol is the founder, lead artisan/designer, and metalsmith spending most days in the studio hammering, cutting, or melting metal into shape. Classically trained in metalsmithing at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Carol’s designs are lightweight and durable, hinting at a timeless modernity. Inspired by nature, math/science, & her surroundings, it stresses positive and negative spaces. Creating hand-fabricated designs using only traditional metalsmithing techniques, Little Cat Metals begins with North American recycled sterling silver and gold and ethically sourced stones to minimize environmental impact. Each stone is handset in artist-made bezels allowing for a more diverse selection of stone shapes and sizes and truly unique pieces.
Anne Hanson is a metalsmith and jewelry designer originally from MA, working currently out of Ruckersville, VA, in a variety of metals, primarily Argentium sterling silver, 14k gold, and Bimetal (18K gold on silver). Initially self-taught, she received a B.A. in Art Education from Cornell College in Iowa, with her senior thesis in jewelry and ceramics and furthered her education via master classes at the DeCordova Museum, in Lincoln, MA, the Worcester Center for Crafts, and MetalWerx in Waltham, MA. In the summer of 2004, Anne suffered a stroke, which impaired her speech and all dominant side motor skills. The Massachusetts Rehabilitation Commission’s Assistive Technology Center helped to modify her studio space, creating methods and tools that make it possible for Anne to work once again. Undeterred by some physical limitations, she works with mainly her left hand, creating intricate and detailed jewelry. Texturing and dimension are hallmark style elements in Anne’s unique designs. Her line of jewelry is handcrafted solely by her, using traditional smithing methods of forging, roller printing, and soldering.
