LEWISTON — Leaning into a lump of stoneware clay on her pottery wheel, Jennifer Gammon coaxed a cup to life. She built sidewalls, leveled the top and pressed a finger into its spinning sides to create a series of trademark ridges, from the bottom to the top.
In her basement studio, Gammon is relaxed, doing what she loves. She likes to think that translates.
“When I put everything into it and when you use it, you can feel that, ‘This person was happy making this mug,'” she said.
Gammon, 39, founded Oak Street Pottery two years ago.
“I wanted to try to make this something instead of ‘you happen to know me and happen to know I make pottery,'” she said.
In two weeks, it’s on to phase two: She’s leaving her marketing and design job to dive into Oak Street full time.
Each tumbler, bowl, plate, vase and mug is hand-thrown. And, so far, an earthy rust-chocolate brown.
It’s her thing.
She’s developed the food-safe, dishwasher-safe, microwave-safe glaze recipe herself.
Her customers’ most common question, “Why only brown?” Gammon said, laughing. “I am working on new colors, but my signature color will always be the brown, just because it’s my first color that I have come up with. Any potter can go use a commercial glaze, and a lot of them do, and they all look pretty similar.”
A reddish color is in the works.
Gammon grew up in Sumner and got her pottery start at Buckfield Junior-Senior High School. At the time, the school had just gotten new equipment and the art teacher “definitely saw I had an interest and she let me go crazy.”
She experimented with Native American and Greek pottery styles before landing on Japanese.
“They have this great philosophy, things being beautiful without being overly ornate,” Gammon said. “It’s this simplicity in itself that makes it beautiful.”
Instead of small, medium and large sizes, she’s also created her own way of describing her pieces by using the weight of the clay that she starts with. There are half-pound mugs, one-pound tumblers, four-pound bowls and all weights in between. Prices range from $12 to $60.
Most popular is the pound and a half mug, a regular coffee cup-plus size. “It gives you just that much more coffee or tea or whatever you’re having,” she said.
Gammon has pieces for sale at Morse’s Sauerkraut and Deli in Waldoboro and she’s building up a retailer base. Most online customers come from Maine but she’s also shipped as far away as Oregon and Wisconsin.
She’s at work now on a new tumbler for the Great Falls Brewfest with “BEER” stamped on the outside, and working on special coasters with Maine-dug clay, an outline of the state and “BEER.” Maine-dug clay is considered low-fire clay and too delicate to withstand the dishwasher, she said, which is why she doesn’t use it more often. She figured it would be a cool, local nod for the festival.
Her company name is a nod to nature and her neighborhood.
“Obviously, I’m on Oak Street,” Gammon said. “I like the idea of having my business name be a tree street in Lewiston. I think that section has a certain reputation but isn’t necessarily that way. I like that duality.”
kskelton@sunjournal.com
This story was updated at 9:24 a.m. to correct the spelling of Morse’s Sauerkraut and Deli.
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