A German Journeyman Potter | Anja Bartels | Episode 532
The Potters Cast
Paul Blais
4.9 • 592 Ratings
🗓️ 13 June 2019
⏱️ 57 minutes
🔗️ Recording | Apple Podcasts | RSS
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Originally from Hamburg, Germany, stencil artist Anja Bartels discovered pottery making while living in an intentional community in Virginia. Passion ignited, Anja returned home to study in the German Ceramics Guild, which honed her skills in a way much different from the typical experience in American art schools. With a strong focus on craftsmanship and technical skill, Guild training provided Anja with the groundwork for making a quality product paired with the practical experience of working with a master potter for three years. The apprentices must engage in all aspects of the business, including marketing, sales, accounting, and production.
Anja's nautically themed porcelain employs several different techniques including slip trailing, sgraffito (a technique where underglaze is painted onto greenware and a design is carved back through, revealing the clay body underneath), poured and sprayed glazes, and a unique resist technique used in the making of her beautiful urchin bowls. These bowls are thrown and trimmed on the wheel, then several thousand small slip-trailed spikes are applied using a surgical bulb while she listens to audiobooks about shipwrecks. Anja's personal aesthetic and process are consistent and highly developed, reflecting her upbringing in a port town and her love of ships and the ocean. It is as if her pieces were born in the sea.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is the Potter's Cast. |
| 0:02.0 | A podcast home for potters everywhere. |
| 0:05.4 | It's a community of potters dedicated to grow their business. |
| 0:08.8 | We're picking up where the art degree ends. |
| 0:11.1 | I'm your host, Paul Blaze. |
| 0:13.7 | I can't believe it, but it's true. |
| 0:15.3 | We're in episode number 532, which is a special episode because 532, think about 5 plus three is eight plus two is 10 so this is |
| 0:25.3 | not going to be a perfect 10 what hey welcome to the potters cast happiness flooding the soul |
| 0:34.9 | because we're hanging out and today we've got a great show for you. |
| 0:41.6 | This is going to be a German journeyman potter that we're going to have on the show. |
| 0:50.0 | Literally a journeyman potter. |
| 0:52.3 | And this is a person that I really enjoyed talking about. |
| 0:55.9 | This is Anya Bartels. |
| 0:58.1 | And she is a phenomenal maker, number one. |
| 1:02.7 | In fact, I would love for you to check out her work. |
| 1:05.6 | It's just so beautiful. |
| 1:07.7 | And you can find it at the potterscast.com forward slash 532 and that will take you to her |
| 1:16.9 | show notes page and then if you look at that before we get to the episode and then that'll give you |
| 1:22.1 | some ideas of the things that we talk about this lady is a landed maker, and yet she is a nautical maker. |
| 1:31.3 | What's up with that? It's like out of place, but it's so beautiful. So let's jump into this |
| 1:39.5 | conversation I had with Anya Bartels right after this word from the sponsor. Mugshot Monday happens to bring out |
| 1:47.3 | some of the best mugs on the Instagram and Summers underscore ceramic art has one of the most |
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