laura peery

Asheville porcelain artist Laura Peery textures and cuts simple shapes to create her one-of-a kind figures, teapots and vessels.

Artist: Born and raised in Washington, DC, Peery took her first ceramics course at Ohio Wesleyan University. After graduation, she was an apprentice to a potter for one year before enrolling in the MFA program at George Washington University.

Studio: Laura Peery, also doing business as Laura Peery Porcelain, is based in Asheville, where she relocated in 2015. The artist works out of her home studio.

In the beginning: After earning her MFA, Peery waited tables while looking for a teaching job. She also started selling her work through galleries and craft shows.

“It didn’t hurt that I was included in the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery show titled ‘American Porcelain: New Expressions in an Ancient Art’,” said Peery. “I finally got that teaching job in 2010 but left after five years to move to North Carolina.”

Art & materials: Sculptural teapots, figures and some functional vases and mugs ($50 to $1,600). She uses porcelain clay, high fired in an electric kiln, simple glazes, and commercial colorants.

Fabrics are often impressed onto flat slabs of clay to give texture.

Process:

Uses thin porcelain slabs, cut from her own templates.
Shapes each piece using darting, coiling, and layering.
Adds texture to the slabs with old canvas and other materials chosen for their interesting surfaces.
Uses underglazes and does some under painting.
After bisque firing, patinas the clay with ceramic washes and airbrushes more layers of color on top.
High fire in an electric kiln.

Favorite tools:

A thin potter’s knife
A pointy chopstick.
Upholstery fabric samples which came from her mother’s design business.

Inspirations:

A poem or phrase in a song.
Figures inspired by life experiences.
Feminist art. Miriam Shapiro, and Viola Frey are examples.

Special or unusual requests: An urn for a sweet dog’s ashes.

Recent awards/honors: Included in a show at the Asheville Art Museum in 2023, titled “Too Much is Just Right: The Legacy of Pattern and Decoration.”

Recent project: A commission for a figure with a seamstress theme.

What’s next: A series of new teapots for the Southern Highland Guild’s Biltmore Village gallery. May 2024.

Teapots are complicated, with many parts, but so much fun to make, said Peery. Each piece takes on a personality of its own and often tells a story.

Where to buy: