Pleasantly plotting pottery perfection
Christine Anderson is thrilled with her creative business success
There are days when Christine Anderson wishes she had never dropped high school chemistry.
As she takes her creations from the potter’s wheel, experiments with different glazes and colours, inserts everything into the kiln, and then waits for the moment of truth, she can only hope the subtle interplay of time, temperature and chemical composition will produce the desired result.
“Opening up the lid of the kiln can make your day or ruin your day very quickly,” says the owner of Anderson Pottery, based in Rockland, just south of Berwick.
“Sometimes everything looks exactly as you wanted. But when you’re going for bright blue and you get pondscum green it’s not a good feeling.”
Those creative misfires are the exception, however, as Anderson’s custom pottery has struck a chord with customers across the province and beyond. Her Maritime Mug collection, in particular, has been so successful that she often has difficulty keeping up with the demand.
Anderson’s creative talents have deep roots in her family tree.
“My grandfather’s sister was a ceramicist, a painter and a carver; a real multi-talented artist,” Anderson recalls. “So as a small girl I would get really excited when she would come to visit us from Montreal because she would always bring some of her pieces with her.”
Anderson remembers making Easter bunnies and other ceramic creations while she was in 4-H, but her real passion was clay and pottery.
In 2001, she began apprenticing with a local potter, learning the fundamentals of the craft. She came upon a second-hand potter’s wheel at an estate sale and in 2002 she opened Mudslingers Pottery Studio in the carriage house behind what is now Kellock’s Restaurant in Berwick.
In 2005, Anderson was offered a position with Michelin Tire, where she still works today as a manager. The pottery business went on the back burner, as she sold her equipment and did not touch a pottery wheel again for 12 years. Eventually, however, the call of the wheel brought her back to her craft.
“I needed something to keep me busy so I started up the wheel again,” she recalls. “It grew very quickly from there.”
Her intention was to start selling her products while meeting and mingling at a few local craft fairs, but by 2020 her Facebook page was propelling her business forward.
“Very quickly I found myself busier than I had intended,” she recalls.
Her Facebook page now has more than 10,000 followers. Anderson Pottery opened its online store in 2021 and she sells exclusively online. One of her newer items is the Northern Lights Beer Stein, designed with a comfortable thumb rest and handle to hold a 500 ml. cold one.
Another new addition, the wine “thumbler,” has lovely little indents that make it the perfect vessel to hold your favourite wine. Built to hold 10 oz, it is just the right size when your professed intent is to have “just one glass.”