Annual Summer Pottery Sale This Weekend in Tacoma, Wash.

If you're in the area, mark your calendar...

The annual Summer Pottery Sale’s on again, where local ceramicists sell their wares at great prices and all in one place. You can get cups, bowls, vases, sculptural pieces and more, as well as seconds and older stock for cheap. 

Potter Susan Thompson, one of the artists selling at this weekend's Summer Pottery Sale, works in her temporary retail space at 913 Pacific. Photo Dean Koepfler/News Tribune.

The sale runs 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Aug. 20 and 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Aug. 21 at 717 N. D St., Tacoma, in the Stadium District -- down near Garfield Par

Read more: Tacoma Pottery Sale

Adults with Developmental Disabilities Find Fulfillment in Pottery Program

At Franciscan Pottery we salute this worthy effort of PEP (Programs for Exceptional People) in South Carolina.

"Members of Programs for Exceptional People gathered Thursday for pottery class, rolling and pounding balls of clay into sheets that would later go over a mold. They'll add a design, fire it in the kiln and then paint on a glaze. Over the next several classes, each of the six members will have created their own piece."

"Part of the goal of PEP is to promote employment and independent living among its members." 

Read Justin Paprocki's full article on Find[ing] Fulfillment in Pottery Program.  

Rupert J. Deese dies at 85

Franciscan Pottery mourns the death of Rupert J. Deese on 27 July 2010, just two days after Max Lawrence died.

"He made elegant vessel ceramics in functional forms that were very well suited to the modern California home," Bobbye Tigerman, assistant curator of decorative arts and design at the museum, said.  "They fulfilled contemporary needs.... He was very much in touch with how Californians lived."

He worked in his studio during off hours, after his day jobs teaching art at Mt. San Antonio College or designing dinnerware for Franciscan. 

Rupert J. Deese

Max Lawrence dies at 98

At Franciscan Pottery we are sorry to hear of the passing on 25 July 2010 of Max Lawrence, co-founder (with wife, Rita) of Architectural Pottery in Los Angeles in 1950.

"The hallmarks of Architectural Pottery were graceful, geometrically shaped vessels, devoid of ornamentation and often large in scale. Radical for their time, their pure forms — cylinders, cones, bullets, gourds and totems — startled the eye in 1950s America, where fat-lipped terra-cotta pots had been the standard for generations."

Max Lawrence