I was born an old (but not bent) potter, in
Greenville, S.C. in the year 1959.
Greenville County, situated in the upstate area, includes mountains to the north and stretches south about 50 mi. to the lower Piedmont area of the state. Considered geographically, it is clay country.
My arrival in this area post-dated the decline, and eventual failure of the local pottery industry by a matter of a few decades.
The tradition of hand-turned pottery for house-hold and industrial needs ran strong there for most of two centuries. As the world turned toward modern industry, so it turned away from the artisans and craft masters who had supplied the people their needful implements of the day, including pottery.
By the time I was born, virtually all of the pottery-making families had left their traditional skills or lost them as they took on new skills and traditions.
All of these factors and considerations contributed to a very young Jimmy Weber (me!), seeing a local potter demonstrate his skills at a local arts festival. The community would have to survive one less fireman, or policeman, or doctor, or whatever. . . . I was going to be a potter.
My pots, are for the most part, vessels. The potters of my earlier memories made traditional, utilitarian sorts of pots. Those influences coupled with my geographic location and it’s historic implications, shaped me into the potter I am today as surely as I shape my own work. Function, form, and color are my primary considerations when potting. I rarely embellish or sculpt artistic designs as an act of creative composition. I use clay more as a building material, than as a canvas on which to paint, less artist; more engineer. The trend in pottery today seems to me, to lean heavily towards objects of art, which happen to be made of clay, with increasingly less emphasis on traditional utilitarian forms. While I celebrate the former, I regret the loss of the latter.
I have taught pottery for most of the last 20 years to “all comers”. I teach small children, from as young as four years old, to elder adults, as old as eighty, or more. I regularly demonstrate my craft as an act of sharing, much as I saw the demonstration when I was a young child.
There is a long, but straight line, from those first “sharings” in my community, when I was too young to remember from year to year how much I enjoyed the potter and his wheel, to the classes I now teach and the demonstrations I give.
It has been most of forty years since my first class and nearly fifty years has passed since that first demo in S.C.
I am nearly now the potter I once thought I’d be.
I am blessed.
Jim Weber
I have lived in my great-great-grandfather's
"Dog-trot" log cabin since 1987. It was built sometime prior to 1825,
some 70+ years ahead of my g-g-g-father's ownership. My wife Sally ( who also
makes pottery ) brought up our two sons in Milner, Ga. in "this old
house."Greenville County, situated in the upstate area, includes mountains to the north and stretches south about 50 mi. to the lower Piedmont area of the state. Considered geographically, it is clay country.
My arrival in this area post-dated the decline, and eventual failure of the local pottery industry by a matter of a few decades.
The tradition of hand-turned pottery for house-hold and industrial needs ran strong there for most of two centuries. As the world turned toward modern industry, so it turned away from the artisans and craft masters who had supplied the people their needful implements of the day, including pottery.
By the time I was born, virtually all of the pottery-making families had left their traditional skills or lost them as they took on new skills and traditions.
All of these factors and considerations contributed to a very young Jimmy Weber (me!), seeing a local potter demonstrate his skills at a local arts festival. The community would have to survive one less fireman, or policeman, or doctor, or whatever. . . . I was going to be a potter.
My pots, are for the most part, vessels. The potters of my earlier memories made traditional, utilitarian sorts of pots. Those influences coupled with my geographic location and it’s historic implications, shaped me into the potter I am today as surely as I shape my own work. Function, form, and color are my primary considerations when potting. I rarely embellish or sculpt artistic designs as an act of creative composition. I use clay more as a building material, than as a canvas on which to paint, less artist; more engineer. The trend in pottery today seems to me, to lean heavily towards objects of art, which happen to be made of clay, with increasingly less emphasis on traditional utilitarian forms. While I celebrate the former, I regret the loss of the latter.
I have taught pottery for most of the last 20 years to “all comers”. I teach small children, from as young as four years old, to elder adults, as old as eighty, or more. I regularly demonstrate my craft as an act of sharing, much as I saw the demonstration when I was a young child.
There is a long, but straight line, from those first “sharings” in my community, when I was too young to remember from year to year how much I enjoyed the potter and his wheel, to the classes I now teach and the demonstrations I give.
It has been most of forty years since my first class and nearly fifty years has passed since that first demo in S.C.
I am nearly now the potter I once thought I’d be.
I am blessed.
Jim Weber
I made pottery full time from 1984 up until I took full time employment with KIA of Ga. early in 2012.
Threaded-Lid Teapot" :
The "threaded lid" which I have engineered into my teapot came as an extension of another project. I was commissioned to produce a "burial urn" for a customer, who asked if I could, "make the lid screw on ?," to which I replied, "Absolutely not . . . . "
Which of course sent my mental gears into overdrive to consider "why or why not ?"
This type of lid is of my own invention . . . . I am aware of several other designs (most of them requiring a mechanical aid, or a "tapping/threading tool/device") which potters may use to fabricate a "screw-on-lid." My design is totally hand cut and each is engineered separately, with no two exactly alike.
My work tends toward a more traditional line of generally quite functional pottery and as that is the case, I approach each piece from more of an engineers aspect of "function-based design and production." I am delighted with "What to make?" and, "How to make it?", rather than "What to make?" and, "How to embellish it?"
As far as I can tell, my threaded lid is unique and original, and not produced or available from any other potter . . . . anywhere.
I've only done a few "urns" with this lid, but have made dozens of teapots with the most obvious tribute being that the lid will NOT fall off and break ! (more my "cup of tea" than burial urns.)
Just bought one of your pieces! It's truly beautiful!
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