I’ve been making pottery for most of my adult life, and own Fireborn Studios on Sarah Street in Pittsburgh’s South Side.

Most of my work starts with porcelain on the wheel. Porcelain is demanding — it’s less forgiving than stoneware — but it shows texture sharply and responds to glazes with a clarity that suits what I’m after. Rather than painting on surfaces, I prefer marks pressed directly into the clay — with wood pieces, handmade stamps, found objects. The impression becomes part of the form itself, not decoration added afterward.

Glaze is where the transformation happens. I spray layers, including ash glazes made from real wood ash, and let them interact in the kiln. Most of my work is gas-fired; occasionally I do wood firings that bring their own atmospheric variation. Either way, the surfaces shift depending on how you hold the piece and where the light hits it — that’s part of what I find interesting.

I make things to be used. Plates, mugs, bowls, vessels for the table. Pottery has always lived at the intersection of daily life and ceremony, and I find that worth continuing.

Form and function are carefully built into the design of all my utilitarian items. They’ve been used in my kitchen and perfected over the years. If a piece isn’t beautiful as busque ware, without gaze, in the morning light coming through the window, like the jars the top of this page, it doesn’t need my standard of excellence. Beautiful glazes only do justice to beautiful forms.

— Dan