When I was in college, I chose photography over pottery because I thought it was the better medium with which to express the things I thought the world needed to know. When I rediscovered pottery in my thirties, I found that it was enough to bring a little beauty into the world. With each piece of pottery I make, I try to create something that is finely crafted yet functional, something aesthetically pleasing yet natural. I don’t mind using traditional forms; a cup must be comfortable, and a bowl needs a smooth line inside as well as out. Each functional piece should be formed to hold up to everyday use, but that doesn’t mean that it can’t be graceful and artistic. My pottery exists, perhaps as pottery always has, precisely on the line between function and art.

I love experimenting with glazes. I am forever layering different glazes, firing and then firing again to see what new patterns may emerge. I like to make my functional pieces suggestive of something from nature, a geological formation, a glacier, an organic pattern like the stripes of a tiger. I take a lot of time with each piece, glazing and reglazing until the piece takes on its unique personality. Then I know that it is ready to find a home.

Anne Porter Elliott is a studio potter living in Stamping Ground, Kentucky. She produces finely crafted, decorative and functional hand-thrown and altered stoneware vessels. She started working with clay her teens, but concentrated on photography in college. At the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, she earned a dual major in Visual and Performing Arts and Environmental Studies.

Upon moving to Lafayette, Louisiana in 1989, she rekindled her love of ceramics, teaching both pottery and photography classes at Gumbo U, the leisure learning program at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette while taking pottery classes at Louisiana State University and University of Louisiana. She also attended workshops in Ceramic Sculpture, with Janis Mars Wunderlich, and in Crystalline Glazes, with Don Holloway.

She is a juried member of the Kentucky Guild of Artists and Craftsmen and Kentucky Crafted. She teaches pottery classes at the Thornhill Learning Center in Frankfort and participates in craft fairs through out Kentucky, including St. James Court Art Fair, Madison Chautauqua, Francisco’s Farm, Keeneland Art Fair, Kentucky Crafted-The Market, Cherokee Triangle, and the Woodland Park Art Fair. Her work can be found at the Kentucky Artisan Center in Berea.

Anne Elliott
Anne Porter Elliott Pottery
(502) 695-7713