Bridport Hill Pottery -- CS Manegold

I first put my hands on clay as a teenager in the warm and cluttered studio of a Virginia potter.
She was elderly and I was young, and our time together was companionable. She always gave me a warm mug of tea. That cup became a ritual as important to me as the wedging of the clay, an unspoken signal that the world outside could drop away – if just for an hour or two.

For many years after, I wanted to be a country potter.

Instead, I pursued another passion, and lived and worked all over the world as a journalist with The New York Times, Newsweek and the Philadelphia Inquirer. It was work that sent me out reporting from points north and south, east and west. Those travels gave me a complex sense of the world.

My sense of life grew bigger, less provincial, more nuanced. Everywhere, I soaked in the craft and discipline of artists working from the townships of Johannesburg to the back alleys of Manila and the jostling streets of Port-au-Prince. The joy of creativity was evident in every corner of the globe, like an engine forever humming in the background. It always moved me, and many nights I imagined a life in the country where I could listen to the birds and the spinning of a wheel turning gently.
It wasn’t to be.
(Not then.)

Instead, day after day my work explored the many strange and often troubling ways in which we humans interact. It was work I loved and did with passion, trying to tell the stories of those times. But after a time I needed a calmer pace, a different life.

So I moved from The New York Times to teaching and writing books...

Believing -- always -- that the endeavor of finding and telling the truth about the complex world we make is an essential service. I want students to understand that, too, and discovered a second passion -- helping them find what lights them up.

And yet the country life was always calling.

Today my roots dig deep in the clay soils of Addison County where I grow enough food for a football team and play with clay, and with our cats and dogs... and teach.

And now that I've left New York, Tokyo, DC, Manila and other cities far behind, I'm not afraid of making a mess! Or wearing my potting shoes...

and clay-encrusted pants in town.

Maybe I'm more boring than in my foreign correspondent days.
But I am never bored. The symphony of birds at dawn and the sometimes furious snows of winter are enough to keep me entranced for the remainder of my days. And always, just as it has ever been, the pottery wheel presents new challenges and unexpected joys.

To see work available for sale, please visit the shop or drop me a note through the guest book to arrange a studio visit.

* Yep, you read that right. It's B.R.I.D.port .

Get Connected!
Sign the Guest Book!
Get updates on firings and shop updates on Instagram and Facebook.

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Maker

I first put my hands on clay as a teenager in the warm and cluttered studio of a Virginia potter.
She was elderly and I was young, and our time together was companionable. She always gave me a warm mug of tea. That cup became a ritual as important to me as the wedging of the clay, an unspoken signal that the world outside could drop away – if just for an hour or two.

For many years after, I wanted to be a country potter.

Instead, I pursued another passion, and lived and worked all over the world as a journalist with The New York Times, Newsweek and the Philadelphia Inquirer. It was work that sent me out reporting from points north and south, east and west. Those travels gave me a complex sense of the world.

My sense of life grew bigger, less provincial, more nuanced. Everywhere, I soaked in the craft and discipline of artists working from the townships of Johannesburg to the back alleys of Manila and the jostling streets of Port-au-Prince. The joy of creativity was evident in every corner of the globe, like an engine forever humming in the background. It always moved me, and many nights I imagined a life in the country where I could listen to the birds and the spinning of a wheel turning gently.
It wasn’t to be.
(Not then.)

Instead, day after day my work explored the many strange and often troubling ways in which we humans interact. It was work I loved and did with passion, trying to tell the stories of those times. But after a time I needed a calmer pace, a different life.

So I moved from The New York Times to teaching and writing books...

Believing -- always -- that the endeavor of finding and telling the truth about the complex world we make is an essential service. I want students to understand that, too, and discovered a second passion -- helping them find what lights them up.

And yet the country life was always calling.

Today my roots dig deep in the clay soils of Addison County where I grow enough food for a football team and play with clay, and with our cats and dogs... and teach.

And now that I've left New York, Tokyo, DC, Manila and other cities far behind, I'm not afraid of making a mess! Or wearing my potting shoes...

and clay-encrusted pants in town.

Maybe I'm more boring than in my foreign correspondent days.
But I am never bored. The symphony of birds at dawn and the sometimes furious snows of winter are enough to keep me entranced for the remainder of my days. And always, just as it has ever been, the pottery wheel presents new challenges and unexpected joys.

To see work available for sale, please visit the shop or drop me a note through the guest book to arrange a studio visit.

* Yep, you read that right. It's B.R.I.D.port .

Get Connected!
Sign the Guest Book!
Get updates on firings and shop updates on Instagram and Facebook.