Two potters and a kiln on Kiln Row
Celadon started in 2019 in a former tyre shop in Asheville's River Arts District, with one wheel, a secondhand kiln and a bucket of glaze that wouldn't behave.
The glaze was a celadon: clear, with a trace of iron, that turns green only if the kiln is starved of air at exactly the right moment. It took two winters of test tiles to get it to come out the same twice. The studio is named after it, and its colours run through everything we make.
Today there are two of us, six glazes and a shop at the front of the building, so you can see work drying on the shelves before it's fired.
From clay to shelf in five steps
1. Throw
Each piece starts as a weighed ball of stoneware, centred and pulled up on the wheel.
2. Trim
A day later, when the clay is leather-hard, we turn it over and carve the foot.
3. Bisque fire
Dried pieces wait on the shelves, then go into the kiln once to harden.
4. Glaze
Each piece is dipped by hand in one of our six glazes.
5. Glaze fire
A second, hotter firing melts the glaze into glass. Two days later we open the kiln.
Who makes it
Mara Ellison
Tableware and glazes
Mara throws most of what's on the shelves and spent two winters getting the celadon right. She still keeps every failed test tile.
Theo Okafor
Classes and the kiln
Theo teaches the Saturday classes and loads every firing. The tenmoku and the ash glaze are his; the ash comes from the studio stove.
Mara and Theo are fictional, like the studio. Each is shown by the glaze they're known for rather than a photo.