Skip to main content

A Night at the Pottery Studio

Do you remember when I told you about this place, the pottery studio in town that is like a sanctuary and has the feel of being in another world?

I went there last night with Eustacia and a few friends. Eustacia is home for the weekend because it's the weekend for Pantasia, the high school steel drum band's big concert. She was a part of the group for four years and wanted to be here for the concert. She's behaving like a 13th grader, she fears.

Anyway, it's tradition on this weekend that I host a big hairy deal dinner for the band directors and the guest percussionist, Tom Miller, who comes here from San Francisco/Denver to conduct a three-day clinic and be part of the concert. This year we decided to do something different and go to the pottery studio for what the potter and his wife called the Empty Bowl Extravaganza. For one price, you select a unique soup bowl made by the potter, fill it with one of a selection of fresh soups made by a local baker, have some bread and cookies from the same local baker and sip some wine from a local winery.

The room was warmed by a coal-burning stove and absolutely beautiful. As I mentioned before, the studio is in what was a one-room school house built in 1887. When the owners bought the place, they found amazing things like huge trunks that had been abandoned. These served as tables and were surrounded by mismatched chairs. There was great music in the background, and lots of happy chatter.

We admired the pottery, the bowls each of us had chosen and the gumption of this husband and wife who put it all on the line to be able to live simply by their skills and dreams. A few of us (not me) ventured down into the old basement that had a dirt floor, and they discovered handcut sandstone blocks that made up the foundation and saw how the school children from 100 years ago had written lasting messages on the blocks.

I'm not sure how the subject came up, but we started sharing what we would want for our last meal should we find ourselves in the position of choosing it, knowing it would be our last. Some of us recalled amazing meals in amazing restaurants, and we wondered if the atmosphere made the food taste better. If we had that same meal in another setting and in another time, would it be as memorable, or would it be disappointing?

I didn't share my last meal at the time, but if I had to choose it, I would choose my grandmother's fried chicken, green beans cooked to death with bits of ham hock, fresh squash from the garden and a giant piece of coconut cake with seven-minute icing. Sigh. It would have to be served by my grandmother while in her kitchen in Alabama. And I would have to be sitting at that old metal dinette set with the smell of all-day cooking in the air. And there needs to be cornbread made from scratch, not like that fake stuff that comes from a mix.

So, it was a magical evening in the pottery studio. Here are the bowls we chose—Eustacia's is on the left, and mine is on the right. Question: what would you choose for your last meal?

Comments

Terroni said…
Would you mind being a little more specific about where this is? I have some friends and family in your area who would be very interested in supporting the local artisans.

tterroni at hotmail.
11:13 AM
dive said…
This sounds like a wonderful evening, Robyn. I love the pots and the whole thing sounds amazing fun.
12:33 PM
Anonymous said…
If you get my name at Christmas I want something from that shop! I'll join you with Mimaw for a last meal - the table is likely to be crowded if we all get our choice.
2:33 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

No More Mr. Nice Guy

It's good to be a nice person--to say nice things, to do nice things, to write nice things--but I declare an end to the use of the word nice. Nice is what you say when you can't think of any other adjective. Someone shows you a picture of their back yard--that's nice. Someone tells you about their afternoon adventure--that's nice. Or someone describes their childhood in great detail and sometimes with painstaking effort--that's nice. It's a lazy word, and it's non-descriptive. Nice is like mashed potatoes with noodles and chicken gravy all in a big pile on one plate with some canned corn for garnish. Everything is the same color and texture and base substance--starch (this is a favorite Amish dish). Nice is like a partly cloudy day in April when outside feels like inside, and you can't tell a difference between the lighting and the temperature of your living room and the lighting and temperature of your front yard. Nice is a glass of lukewarm water. ...
20 comments
Read more

Ish People

Tell an Ish person to show up around 9 a.m., and you'll see them somewhere around 9 a.m. Tell them to show up at 9ish, and you'll see them anywhere from 9:05 to 9:20. You have given them license to dilly dally, and who wouldn't take advantage of that? The other night at the big shindig dinner party, one of the drummers said the rehearsal the next morning would begin at 9ish. "I am an ish person," he says. Immediately the clanker goes off in my head--oh, good, I thought. I can deliver my daughter a little late. No Ish person is early, so if you say 9ish, that does not mean give or take 5, 10, 15 minutes. It's exclusively a taking phrase. Take an extra 10 minutes to drink your cup of coffee. We won't mind. We're Ish people. Sunday's rehearsal started at 2:00. Because it was conducted by the same people who conducted the Saturday rehearsal, my understanding was 2-ISH. My daughter is worse than I am about taking liberties with Ish time frames, so she d...
14 comments
Read more

Long Live Anita Bowser

You know I occasionally check my hometown newspaper's website to scan the obituaries (morbid, I know, but I'm at that age). Over this past weekend, I read the obituary of Indiana State Senator Anita Bowser . She was a noted Democrat who championed causes protecting the neediest in the state's population. She was respected on both sides of the aisle for her intelligence and plain and outspoken approach to law making. The picture on her senate page is lovely. I remember none of those things about Anita Bowser . My first year or so in college was spent at a branch of Purdue University, and in the early 80s, Anita was a political science professor. She taught my American Government class my freshman year, and she was a mess. Somewhere in my old text book, I have a sketch of her drawn on a particularly dull day in class--her hose sagged at her ankles, her slip showed at least half an inch all the way around, her hair had been slept on but not brushed, and her bright red lip stic...
18 comments
Read more