Mark Shapiro on the virtue of handmade and the "ethical pot"
This week on the Tales of a Red Clay Rambler Podcast I have an interview with potter Mark Shapiro. After an early career as a carpenter and metal sculptor Shapiro has been a dedicated studio potter for almost thirty years. He continues to fire the wood kiln he built shortly after moving from New York City to Worthington, MA in 1986. In the interview we talk about the virtue of handmade, questioning the "ethical" pot, and Mark's efforts to establish and document an apprenticeship system for potters. To find out more about his pottery please visit www.stonepoolpottery.com.
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"I was able to buy a shipwreck of an old place that has an unusual feature from which I took the name for my pottery—a stone pool that Russell Conwell, turn-of-the-century preacher and educator and founder of Temple University in Philadelphia had built in 1893. The farmhouse, where Conwell was born, is rich in history—it had been a stop on the Underground Railroad during Conwell’s childhood, and he remembered John Brown and Frederick Douglass staying at the house."