"INSPIRED IN BERKELEY"
By Kanika Marshall
It was a cold, wet
morning when seven intrepid Sacramento Potters Group members met in 
south Sacramento and Auburn to drive to
Leslie’s Ceramic Supply, at 1212 San Pablo Avenue in Berkeley. A few of us were uninitiated to the wonderful variety of ceramics products found at Leslie’s. We cavorted around the store with the wild abandon of children on a Christmas morning. Leslie’s had tools of all shapes and sizes for
wheel throwing, hand building, and plaster and mold making. They had elaborate metal and wire armatures for all types of three-dimensional sculptures. There were many different types of low-fire and high-fire clays, including “paper” clay which most of us had not used before. And what a tremendous
array of low-fire (cone 05‑06), mid-fire (cone 5‑6) and high-fire glazes (cone 10), with Duncan, Inspirations, and Leslie brands, among them! I really appreciated the sample glaze chips that showed the impact of the various glazes on white and red clays.
In the back of the store was a “kiln garden” with dozens of different types of kilns and potter’s wheels. The rain was pouring down by then and the sound of the deluge on the corrugated metal roof lent a soothing resonance to our “garden” walk. I had my eye on a Skutt kiln and Shimpo wheel, but
$3,000 was more than I was ready to spend for both of them! We also found numerous sieves, tile setters, and extruders at the edge of the garden path, close to a group of art enthusiasts taking a class. For those of you looking for ceramic-related resources, Leslie has an extensive library of Ceramics
Monthly magazine and books on glazing, throwing, and building large sculptures. Lots of pretty pictures and sage advice, you can be sure!
I held off in getting a basket for as long as I could, but Laurie Kneppel gave me the brilliant idea of buying a small sieve to place on top of an empty salsa container for use in my air sprayer. Then of course I got some tools, thick armature wire, and some E6000 glue. Cindy Dangles bought several
beautiful books. Anita Posey Lowe and Connie Chadwick bought a sizeable amount of cobalt oxide and kiln stilts. The others bought stuff too, but I wasn’t nosey enough to see what it was. It was time to brave our way through the flooded streets into our cars and onto our next adventure.
A few miles away, the Berkeley Potters Guild is located at 5th and Jones Streets. Soaking wet, we were mercifully greeted with hot chocolate and cookies that awaited us inside the front door. We left our dripping umbrellas and coats on the floor behind some pedestals and began listening intently
to President Pam Zimmerman who explained the history of the Guild.
The Berkeley Potters Guild is housed in a large, rustic building that was originally a window
factory in 1962.
Hippies inhabited the structure in the late 1960s and started the Guild in 1971. Now there are 19 members who work cohesively as a team, but only 14 who actively create their clay masterpieces in the Guild building. More than half of these members make their living from pottery sales. The Guild is
open every Saturday and Sunday; twice a year they have open art shows, with special Christmas sales every weekend in December.
It was Willie Hulce’s turn to show off her lavender and yellow pottery, and large, authentic, stone-looking tables and other works in the front of the building. Evidently, the Guild uses a lottery system to determine which of several rotating tasks each member will assume, from sharing the running of art sales to
building maintenance, to having their artwork being center stage at the front of the building. Members pay for the amount of gas or electricity they use, via carefully placed energy meters throughout the structure.
The floor plan is comprised of several rooms ranging from a good-sized gallery showing a remarkable sampling of artwork from each Guild member, as well as individual spaces that are about 100 to 300 square feet each, where one or more members may share space and kilns and other equipment. Some artists had spaces
on the second floor. A couple of the spaces had couches and refrigerators and other comforts of home. Some spaces were starkly dedicated to glazing only.
There were so many huge, brick-clad, gas kilns lurking ominously throughout the building (each about 7’ tall by 6’ wide and 6’ deep). They were vented to the outside via 15’ tall, foot-diameter, metal tubes which extended vertically to the ceiling. In fact, one kiln cost $30,000 to purchase and install!
Health is an important consideration among today’s progressive potters, so adequate venting, fans, and no smoking in the building are mandatory precautions at the Guild.
There were several smaller electric kilns too, depending upon the technique used by various artists, and shelves and shelves of glazes and tools. There were rooms and rooms filled with tiles and stacked bowls and plates, and three-dimensional sculptures. Portable carts were filled with greenware,
bisqueware, and glazeware. But what was so unbelievable was how clean the entire building was! No dust, no grime, and each space quite orderly. Amazing!
The members produce a variety of work: Julia Kirillova, a Russian immigrant, makes a colorful
array of fanciful,
three-dimensional, figurative sculptures. 
Kimi Masui uses brilliant red and
other colorful glazes on her very fine porcelain pottery.
Ricki Gill has a complex method of layering many different glazes to simulate overlapping flower shapes on her plates and other pottery. Lynn Landor has a similar
style to mine except that she leaves the backs of her figures open so they can be used as open vessels.
We had spent about two hours in the cold building and, even after eating lots of cookies and drinking hot chocolate, our stomachs were rumbling. We chose to dine at the famous Chez Panisse on Shattuck Boulevard, a five-star restaurant started in 1971 by Alice Walker. Alice
and Chez Panisse have become convinced that the best-tasting food is organically grown and harvested in ways that are ecologically sound, by people who are taking care of the land for future generations. The quest for such ingredients has largely determined the restaurant's cuisine. Chez Panisse has tried for years to
make diners partake of the immediacy and excitement of vegetables just out of the garden, fruit right off the branch, and fish straight out of the sea. In doing so, Chez Panisse has stitched together a patchwork of over sixty nearby suppliers, whose concerns, like the restaurant's, are environmental harmony and optimal
flavor.
So after parking a couple of blocks away and walking through the rain to the two-story restaurant with blooming wisteria flowing down the front of the rustic façade, we walked upstairs to sample the sought‑after
food. We had not made reservations 30 days in advance (!), but because it was mid-afternoon and they were not swamped with crowds, they fit us into a long table in front of the kitchen, so we could watch the chefs prepare the food. We tore into the whole-wheat sourdough bread and fresh butter with gusto.
After what seemed like an eternity, our food arrived. Joyce Westergaard and I were presented with moist slices of chicken and one half of a quail, served with tiny turnips and tender greens, next to a flavorful bed of polenta. Anita had an exquisite pizza topped with nettles (like spinach) and pungent
strips of cheese. Cindy and Laurie had a small pizzetta topped with sauce and cheese. Donna Ward dined on scrambled eggs with black mushrooms and she selected a wonderful (and expensive!) red wine. Connie had a dainty asparagus salad with luscious red beets. We rolled ourselves out of the
restaurant after paying the hefty $$$ lunch bill and drove onto our next exploit.
Since we still had an hour before the galleries closed, we traveled to the Potters’ Studio at 
637 Cedar
Street, also in Berkeley. The gallery store showcased the lovely work of about 17 potters. We saw teapots which could win awards at the Lincoln Feats of Clay show, along with amazing glazing techniques. Many of us had to buy some of their “seconds!” We were taken on a tour of the artist’s
studios in the back of the building. This was a different setup from the Potters Guild in that many of the artists shared the kilns, plaster tables, and other equipment instead of having their own indi. Classes are held and firing services offered. Cindy verbally admired the work of one of the potters
so much that he gave her some of his clay to try out. The Potters’ Studios are open Monday through Thursday from 11:00 to 4:00 and weekends. They are having special Mothers Day and Holiday sales.
With packages in hand, it was recommended that we check out “TRAX,” another ceramic gallery, located at 1812 5th Street.
Today they had a workshop with Warren McKenzie and were having a special lottery of sorts to purchase his work on the opening day of his show. There were crowds of people examining his faceted vessels and plates. Joyce had to have a piece from this esteemed potter, so she picked number 50 from the lottery
bowl and had to wait until 5:00 PM when the purchases could start to be made. The rest of us decided to explore the artsy shopping center around the corner from TRAX as the sun broke through the clouds. Some of us had coffee and investigated a stained glass store and kitchen store, while Anita, Donna, and Connie left for home.
When we returned to TRAX at 5:45 PM or so, it was Joyce’s turn to purchase one sculpture (but she couldn’t take it home until after the show ended in May!).
Our adventure complete, we walked back to Cindy’s car and drove back home, inspired from all we saw in Berkeley and ready to get our hands into clay and try some new techniques.