Lainey Fink Scott grew up in a family where food was a big deal and the dish that held it was sacred. Most of her childhood meals were served on handmade ceramic dishes.
For her, food is bolstered by the plate on which it is served.
“It enhances the dish,” she said.
Mrs. Scott, 32, is a graphic designer, partnering with her husband Ben Scott to form Bluerock Design. She spends her days working on a computer. But after the work day is over and the computers are powered down, she disappears into her basement workshop, where drying bowls sit upside down on a table near her throwing wheel, and blocks of clay are stacked on a shelving unit. Her squat kiln sits off to the side.
Upstairs, her kitchen shelves are filled with plates, bowls and mugs that she’s made herself. Restaurants in Boston, New York and on the Vineyard also serve meals on plates and bowls she’s thrown.
Mrs. Scott’s side career in ceramics began in college at the Rhode Island School of Design when she took an introductory pottery class on a whim. It was a tactile antidote to all of her computer focused graphic design classes.
“Just being in the studio and feeling clay and mud and being dirty and not staring at a computer screen,” she remembered fondly.
After graduation, while living in Boston, she had no access to a studio or equipment. But when the couple moved to the Vineyard in 2014, her husband pointed out that Featherstone Center for the Arts was just a short drive from their new house.
Mrs. Scott began visiting Featherstone’s open pottery hours. Eventually, she purchased her own wheel and set it up in her basement. But she still had to travel back and forth to Featherstone to use the kiln.
“I definitely had some breakage,” she said, referring to traveling with fragile pottery. There was also the separation anxiety of leaving pieces in a building she didn’t always have access to.
“The thing with pottery is you have to monitor pieces,” she said. “They are kind of like these little babies that you have to foster each one’s life.”
She purchased a kiln and stocked the basement with blocks of clay and drying tables. In just a few months time, Island chef Nathan Gould asked her to make some pieces for the Beach Plum Inn.
“I started thinking really seriously about when you plate food how it looks compared to the glaze or the shape of the bowl or plate,” Mrs. Scott said.
She developed a style of simple, functional dishes including flat-bottomed plates with a small lip, sturdy beer steins and sloping vases. Soon, with the help of Instagram, she was inundated with orders. Companies that Bluerock Design works for began asking for ceramics as well as high end restaurants like O Ya in Boston and New York, and Lamplighter Brewing Co. in Cambridge.
Though she has quickly made her way into the world of professional ceramics, Mrs. Scott said she spent hundreds and hundreds of hours figuring out what styles she liked and how to turn out a consistent product.
“There’s a lot of loss with pottery, you kind of have to play around a ton to get what you like,” she said.
Many pieces end up in a box that she offers to friends and family who visit her house.
“Whenever [my dad] comes and visits he’s like, ‘so can I check out the box? Let’s go and look.’ He usually ends up taking everything.”
Her parents have pottery of hers dating back to her time at RISD. Other pieces not ready for sale end up on her own kitchen shelves.
“I keep all the stuff that I can’t sell because of imperfections, or they are prototypes or they’re a little too funky. So we have all the funky stuff.”
Her cups have been also sold at Behind the Bookstore, and Vineyard Decorators will soon have a selection of her work for sale as well. In rediscovering pottery, Mrs. Scott developed a second career. “I would be doing it anyway, even if I wasn’t making money off it,” she said. “I don’t know, I just have to.”
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