About the pottery

The first ceramic horse

Joan then purchased the copyright to "Saucy" a curio size Suffolk mare sculpted by Kristina Lucas. Having no experience whatsoever with the art of ceramics, Joan employed Laurilyn Burson (of "Made with Love") to make her first mold and teach her the process of creating production molds. Laurilyn also made the mold for the Welsh pony stallion "Owynn", but after that, Joan was on her own. Learning to clean greenware without breaking it was the first difficult task!

The first "Saucys" were offered at the 1995 Jamboree event. There weren't many available, but they proved quite popular, and sold quickly. These initial pieces were hand-painted with only minimal airbrush accents. Joan later had to add the fine art of airbrushing to her skills as well as other finishing work. Since then, Joan has researched and perfected her greenware cleaning and finishing techniques to produce a product that is in high demand with the collectors of ceramic horse figurines. Detail, realism and personality abound in the pieces produced today.

A small dealer network was introduced in the fall of 1995 to market and sell the pieces, as Joan felt that she could not spare the time to take that on herself. However, by the summer of 1996, Joan realized it would be easier to simply sell direct from the pottery. This change went into effect with the offering of the new bay color Welsh pony "Owynn" and the mini Shetland "Bressay". Orders for these pieces were taken at the 1996 Breyerfest and that's where people really started to take notice of the pottery. Seeing the pieces in person really made the difference to many hobbyists who'd been skeptical before. Joan quickly had as many customers as she could handle!

photographs:
Jamboree Saucy
Joan's aquarium of botched and bisqued ware
Rubber horses cast from the waste mold
(Note the seam lines, Joan's greenware horses come out of the mold intact, no assembly required!)

next: And now...