Our Town Revisited: Pottery in Wicomico County
WICOMICO COUNTY, Md. – It’s time for our special series, Our Town revisited, and we’re here again, taking the trip down memory lane, heading to Princess Anne, Maryland.
Bonnie Wilson’s Pottery: 1999
Former Anchor and Reporter Kelly Rouse went to see a local potter who took the bold move to change her career mid-stream to pursue her dream and said she wouldn’t have had it any other way.
Like the clay she shapes so gracefully on her potter’s wheel, Bonnie Wilson is helping to shape a new life in downtown Princess Anne. The front door to her studio and shop is open to the street, a welcome to anyone who wants to come and watch.
She says being in Princess Anne allows her to have a life she has always dreamed of having. “Well, I love being on Main Street because I like seeing people and there’s a lot of life and energy here, for a country town.”
In addition to her studio, Wilson has a small retail shop, which she says is dedicated to beautiful handcrafted functional objects. “I really want people to use this. i don’t have any fancy la-dee-da ideas about me being an artist or anything like that. I’m just a potter and i hope whatever people find in here that they like they buy it, and they use it.”
Wilson has some words of encouragement for others who may be thinking about going after their dreams, no matter when that may be in their life. “I just think you have to jump right in and do it. you can’t spend a lot of time analyzing it. it’s a risk. But I think you have to take it. life is really short.”
Amused Pottery Studios: 2025
25 years later, unfortunately Bonnie Wilson’s pottery studio is no longer with us. However, Wicomico County has artists all around. Less than 15 minutes down the road in Fruitland stands another pottery studio with much to admire. Let’s take a look.
Owners Robert Johnson and his wife Sarah Halcott opened Amused Pottery a little over 2 years ago. Robert says, “I can show that craft aspect of it but then slowly lead you into a deeper form of experiencing it, experience how to use the clay, and expressing yourself through manipulating it- in which case, at the end of that journey you’re then more artistic.”
They met at Salisbury University almost 20 years ago, Sarah says “There’s something in me, that just needs to create- and when I’m not creating, I’m not as happy.”
Crafting Clay
And they’ve been crafting clay ever since. Robert shows us how. “There’s a couple of ways to make pieces of pottery one is to shape it by hand- obviously I am shaping this by hand but the wheel is doing a lot of the work of allowing me to expedite the process of what we would call hand building where we would just roll clay out into slabs or use coils which is like a snake of clay. In this case I’m using the wheel to turn the clay so that I can stretch it.”
After it dries, for lack of better terms, Robert says, it gets cooked! “Once it’s completely dehydrated, I can put it in the Kiln, and then once it goes in the kiln the first firing goes up to 1800 degrees Fahrenheit so that’s what we call biscuit firing and that hardens the clay and leaves it solid.”
He breaks it down even further. “Then we would apply our surface decorations, if we haven’t done any previous surface decorations, and we will put the glaze on and then it goes into a second firing, and that second firing goes up to 2,232 degrees Fahrenheit.”
Gift of Glaze
Sarah is in charge of most of the glazing. They tell us they’ve gone through extensive testing to make sure everything is dishwasher and microwave safe. Sarah says because it took her a minute to learn some of these techniques.
She tries to make it as simple as she can for her students, including the youth who she loves to inspire. “Kids are so creative and so open, and they don’t need that immediacy. They don’t have preconceptions in their mind about how perfect it’s going to be, and when it’s not perfect, they’re ok with it.”
Ceramic Classes
They offer classes on the pottery wheel and building by hand and say with time you’ll see that everyone has an artist inside. “And it’s about practicing not creating a thing at first. People want that immediacy, but it’s not always available to everyone… That’s the beauty of ceramics and clay it that you don’t have to “feel like you’re artistic” because it’s a bridge, you can just experience the craft of it.”
Amused Studios is open Thursday through Sunday from 12:00 pm to 6:00 pm, located at 100 W. Main Street in Fruitland, MD. Feel free to stop on by, or if you’re interested in pottery classes or anything else they have to offer, visit their website.
