A winding journey to Shino
Bowl with Malcolm Davis Shino Glaze, February 2020
A recent Malcolm Davis Shino Bowl from my February firing - This particular Shino recipe has long been a favorite of mine, and those across the ceramics world. While the colors are stunning (if you're lucky), it's the story behind the glaze's creator that really makes it a standout for me.
Malcolm Davis originally went to seminary to prepare for a life in ministry, but through a love of social activism and the civil rights era became a force for peace and justice in his local community.
Here's a brief portion from his Washington Post obituary:
“He’s a historical figure in pottery because of that glaze,” Mikhail Zakin, a potter and teacher at the Art School at Old Church in Demarest, N.J., said. “He was just intuitively a beautiful potter.”
There was something about his discovery of ceramics that had the life-altering force of a religious epiphany. Mr. Davis had spent years grappling with the eternal questions of the human spirit only to find himself drawn in a direction he never expected.
“It was when I touched clay for the first time in my life, at almost 40, that it changed my life forever,” he said in a 2010 speech to the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts. “Something inside took over. . . . Clay found me without my seeking it.”