July 8, 2015
Black Phoebe Ceramics
Today we’re thrilled to be featuring ceramicist, Black Phoebe Ceramics! These special pieces will be making their way to our LA Fair this weekend at Grand Park!
Heather Morton is the ceramicist behind Black Phoebe Ceramics. She’s been in love with ceramics since high school and this past year, she finally took the leap from assisting to establishing her very own studio, and is now a full time artist.
Black Phoebe Ceramics is located in Little Italy, San Diego inside a shared building with an expansive wood / metal / jewelry shop. With exposure to new materials, tools, and artists working in different mediums, Heather’s work has been changing to incorporate more than just clay. The textured stoneware bells, feature beautiful aged brass and copper, along with hand cut and vegetable dyed leather straps.
All glazes are mixed and tested in house. Heather prefers to spray and layer the glaze, to encourage organic reactions, patterns, and textures. The pieces look very natural and weathered, with a magnificent patina. Clean, modern silhouettes keep the pieces from looking rustic. It’s extremely important to Heather that she expose the clay body to show off it’s beautiful richness.
The name, Black Phoebe comes from the California native bird. Some of these winged creatures have created a home up in the rafters of Heather’s studio space (which you can see above).
For Heather, it’s been a very rewarding challenge to focus on custom ceramics. This past year Heather has been creating handmade dishware for restaurants, architectural ceramics for interior designers, and custom planters for local botanical design firms. Most recently she’s crafted, in collaboration with the design team at Bells + Whistles, 26 large wheel thrown stoneware pendant lamps for the new LA restaurant, Broken Spanish. With all of these large projects working with even larger companies, Heather is excited to finally have her own work available to the public at our Fair and on her website later this Summer.
We are so happy that Heather has chosen Renegade Craft Fair to showcase her new work! Be sure to stop by and say hello at our Fair this weekend in Grand Park. You can find Black Phoebe Ceramics online here: