Potters Market at the Mint
September 27, 2025
Susan Filley Porcelain, Chapel Hill NC
Susan works with porcelain clay using the wheel with altering + hand building techniques to create elegant pots and sculptural pieces. She has developed a beautiful array of glazes from vivid copper reds to soft micro-crystal surfaces. She hi fires her work in a gas reduction kiln.
I work with porcelain. Once fired, it becomes such a luscious material that I find it infinitely intriguing. “As white as jade, as bright as a mirror and rings like a bell.” (Jindezhen)
I have been making pots for over 40 years. The functionality of the craft first totally enchanted me. But now, for much of my work, and for many of us, we are making pots that most often are not used, save for their alluring ”aesthetic” function. So I find I am striving, dare I say, to simply make beautiful pots in all that I do.
I make many forms, using both the wheel and hand building. I love to make cups that perfectly fit the hand and lip, bowls that serve or not, and traditional vessels that are quiet in form, but rich in glazing opportunities. I also take on more complicated forms, tall elegant pitchers, gestural and dancing teapots, and highly altered and sculpted vase forms. My images represent some of these.
I have a passion for glazes. They enhance the movement of my work with luminous flowing crystal surfaces and they can embellish the pots with rich glaze depth and color. In addition to the glazes represented in the slides, I have formulated some copper red variations with floating white crystals for cups and vessels, several brilliant celadon and white glazes (the Dancing Teapot) and other microcrystalline combinations that I could not represent in the limited image collection.
After so many years exploring this fascination with form and surface, I look back and see that my work is still based on my very earliest training. I learned to draw and then to see, before I understood what that meant. I was influenced by the study of calligraphy and art through my uncle, a renowned design artist. My mind and eye go first to the quality of line in the volume, energy and motion of form and this guides my work.