Making a piece of pottery is an arduous process — from the moment it starts as a lump of clay to its dizzying 10 or so minutes on the wheel, to its first trip to the kiln (called the “bisque”) to its day or so on the drying shelf, to its second trip in the kiln (this time at 2,100 degrees, or Cone 6, in potter’s speak) for nine to 10 hours, to its final cooling. But that doesn’t slow Candy Shweder down. She does two firings a week and still finds a way to reuse all her trimmings.
“I look at everything and think, how can I use that?” Mrs. Shweder said at her studio nestled in the woods off Middle Road in Chilmark. “Paper, oh, yeah, I can make designs on pieces of pottery. That was before recycling was popular.”
One of her best-selling designs, called The Wave, features a dark blue streak through an otherwise white glaze. It looks a little like a cross section of blackberry cheesecake, and arose out of a mistake.
“I think I may have dripped a little puddle onto a bowl, and liked it,” she said.
The studio has two wheels, one for white clay, the other for brown (which she just began throwing this year), and two kilns, one a small oven for experimenting, the other a Taft-sized tub. Under her work table, there are dozens of slabs of clay, one 50-gallon garbage can of white glaze, and another dozen or so buckets of other glazes she has mixed herself.
Two miniature ceramic gargoyles that her daughter made (her “kiln gods”) preside over the firings.
Mrs. Shweder built the barn that houses her studio eight years ago. She does two shows a week at the Grange Hall in West Tisbury and ships her work, which includes plates, colanders, vases, ice cream bowls, serving trays and more, all over the country.
“I’ve been doing this for 35 years,” she said. “And my back knows it.”
Yet even with a packed studio and a knack for taking errors in stride, Mrs. Shweder is exacting about her work and her workspace. It’s clear she’s not just an artist or a potter: she’s part dentist, part chemist and part baker too. Her trimming tools, perfectly arranged near the wheel, look like they are used for cleaning human teeth and gums, not molding ceramic lips and feet. She has a cabinet of alumina, silica, oxides and fluxes that would make Walter White giddy. On her wall hangs a list of measurements used to delineate the precise amount of clay she needs for every pot in her arsenal.
Pottery wasn’t always a part of her life. She grew up in Westchester County, N.Y., and graduated from college with a degree in English literature. Although she took many art courses, she could never get into a pottery class because they were always full. Then one Sunday, a friend of her husband’s invited her over to pot. She reluctantly agreed and the rest was history.
“As soon as I put my hand on the wheel, I felt, this is it,” she said. “I was in love.”
She liked how fast-paced it was, especially compared to the other artistic mediums she’d attempted, like photography, sculpture or woodcarving. “I’m sort of impatient, and with pottery there was instant gratification.”
Her stylistic signature is the unique lip she makes on the edge of her pots. “It makes it look like it’s going to be heavy,” she explained. “And then people pick it up and they’re like, woo. The only place I don’t use this rim is on the big bowls because I want them to look like they are going to go on forever.”
Her bowls have a peaceful elegance to them, just like the studio in which they are made.
“I do like being in the studio,” Mrs. Shweder said. “It’s sort of my quiet place.”
When she is working at the wheel, that world extends no further than the tips of her fingers, the deft touch of her toes to the pedal and the Island sounds outside her barn.
“This is my home. This is where I love. I wouldn’t be anywhere else,” she said.
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