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photo provided by Holmes County Pottery
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photo provided by Holmes County Pottery
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photo provided by Holmes County Pottery
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photo provided by Holmes County Pottery
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photo provided by Holmes County Pottery
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photo provided by Holmes County Pottery
Your favorite mug — that treasured vessel — can become something very personal. Cary Hulin, owner of Holmes County Pottery in Big Prairie, sculpts his wares with this in mind. Decorated with hand-painted leaves and flowers, each one-of-a-kind mug shows off skilled craftsmanship and delicate detailing that turn everyday objects into art.
“Things end up really holding a special place in your life,” Hulin says.
Open for over 30 years, the pottery workshop — with a handmade kiln and a store — is located inside a transformed barn on the Big Prairie farmhouse property of Hulin and his wife, Stephanie. Visitors can find everything from dinnerware — including pie plates, pitchers and teapots — to other functional pieces like vases, piggy banks and birdbaths. The store features a diverse selection of pieces sculpted, decorated and fired on-site.
Hulin mindfully shapes each piece using his hands and a spinning potter’s wheel.
“How you interact with a soft material [clay] like that really ends up leaving a record on the finished product,” says Hulin. “The fewer tools I use the better — the pots seem to be more honest and sincere.”
Once the clay has taken on the desired form, it’s set to dry, dipped in a glaze that creates a base color and passed to Stephanie. She paints on designs that boost the piece’s character. While most items flaunt a winding leafy or floral pattern made from simple brushstrokes, bigger pieces can inspire larger, more intricate designs.
“She will take one particular pot, sort of absorb the shape of it and ends up visualizing how a decoration would situate itself on there,” Hulin says. “She has a great gift for improvisation and [is] very fearless about it, and because of that, her decorating is very free-flowing and has this beautiful sort of movement.”
A lamp base, for example, is dipped in a soft brown glaze. This, along with its form, prompts Stephanie to paint a leafy flower in mustard yellow and a contrasting lighter brown.
After the pottery is decorated, Hulin uses scrap wood from local Amish furniture stores to traditionally fire it, instead of using gas. With this method, the wood ash naturally distorts the glaze in an interesting way.
“It has a very earthy warm feel,” says Hulin. “I’ve always been attracted to these old pots like that because you can determine so much after the fact when you see them, like how they were situated in the kiln or what sort of wood they were using.”
Holmes County Pottery’s care while designing and crafting makes a big impact on pieces that could become someone’s favorite — such as a mug ($35) with a celadon glaze and iron brush pattern, or a soft ombre mug that shows the flame’s path in its coloration.
“The decoration that Stephanie ends up putting on it occupies the space on the pot so beautifully where it’s this combination of what we’ve both done and then the kiln and the firing has treated it so generously,” says Hulin. “You’ve got this happy convergence of everything being the best that it can possibly be on one piece.”
8500 County Highway 373, Big Prairie, 330-496-2406, facebook.com/holmescountypottery
