1992: Michael Miller, Potter
The process and pots of the beloved late St. Francisville potter Michael Miller
This story was selected by the Country Roads magazine editorial team as the representative piece for 1992 in the archival project "40 Stories From 40 Years"—celebrating the magazine's 40th anniversary on stands. Click here to read more stories from the project.
There’s something oddly fitting about what potter Michael Miller does in the pastoral reaches of rural West Feliciana, steeped as the area is in the history and heritage and a long tradition of fine craftsmanship. But there aren’t a lot of other people who’d still go to all the trouble.
It takes a lot of time and energy to create any artwork by hand, be it a finely rendered painting or delicately carved parlor chair. In potter Miller’s case, it takes not just time and energy but sweat and blood as well, for his acts of creation entail a rigorous three-day process of continually stoking a wood-burning brick kiln whose interior measures an incredible 210 cubic feet in addition to a big firebox and stack. Heating this kiln as high as 2400 degrees Fahrenheit for 24 hours a day demands the labors of some 15 to 20 helpers in addition to the artist himself and utilizes five full cords of wood carefully selected for its age and type and chemical composition in order to yield exactly the right deposits of ash and fire.
The big-shouldered shapes of Miller’s pots are especially suited to his chosen methods of creation, taking their comforting forms from traditional large storage vessels and urns used throughout history, reminiscent of shapes no doubt familiar to the Houmas and Tunica Indians whose feet once trod the very paths traversing the Weyanoke farm Miller settled with friends in 1977. These large pots are designed with shoulder ledges broad enough to accommodate the ash which gives each piece its unique decoration, for the mark of Miller pottery is the firing process during which each piece is individually decorated by the deposits of ash in the absence of a more customary glaze.
For three full days, stokers throw wood onto the fire from an immense woodpile continually replenished by other helpers, the rhythm is controlled by the operator of the door to the firebox, another worker stationed at the back side of the kiln manipulates the all-important ashes which fall through the grate while other cook and carry out the orders of the master craftsman coordinating the whole operation. For the privilege of sweating buckets and participating in such an increasingly rare creative process, volunteers come from as far aways as California or Boston or, occasionally, even Paris. The toll is heavy however, and even Miller finds he can no longer sustain the energy required for more than an annual firing, planned around Halloween.
Every firing, he explains, is different, producing 20 or so big pieces so highly individualized that they could never be duplicated. Newer, more modem kilns involve a process of decorating pots by heating to melt an applied glaze, while Miller’s time-honored method, so labor-intensive that is is increasingly rare to find such a kiln outside a large art school or professional pottery, involves molding raw clay and decorating it in intense heat by the burning of ash cast upon it, the mark of the fire on each piece. Having perfected the process over a period of ten years, Miller finds green pecan his favorite, along with oak and other hardwoods, and after using up three cords of bid pieces of these woods, the resultant ash is thrown on the pots and two more cords of smaller cut wood (often donated by Doors Inc.) is burned for another 12 hours to melt the ash into the pottery.
The natural, uncontrived shapes of Michael Miller’s very special pots grave collections in museums and private galleries from Chicago and Atlanta to San Francisco, and can be enjoyed in this area at Taylor Clark Galleries in Baton Rouge, at Shadetree in St. Francisville or on occasion by appointment with the artist.