Meet the artist!
Julie Taft was born in Massachusetts and started making stoneware pottery in 1998. In 2005, she moved to Maine and set up a new home based studio, now called Versatile Vessels. She lives with her husband, cat, and dog near Portland, ME. She attended Massachusetts College of Art and graduated with a BFA in Sculpture with a minor in photography. Julie designs and throws all of the pieces for Versatile Vessels.
A tradition continues.
Hand thrown stoneware pottery for functional use. Made in the USA since 1998.
Versatile Vessels started as a small, in home pottery studio by Julie Taft and was supported by commissioned pieces and Open Studio sales. In 2020, sales became public when the Versatile Vessels website went live. I am committed to providing quality, durable stoneware pottery pieces that are unique and continue to honor the tradition of pottery making.
Wheelthrowing is time consuming in practice and can take several years of patience and dedication to become proficient. Both wheel thrown pottery and hand built pottery require knowledge, understanding and expertise of the standards of craftsmanship needed to create beautiful works of art.
From start to finish, the process takes approximately three weeks to complete a piece of pottery. The pots I make are kiln fired twice(bisque and glaze). After creating a fresh piece and allowing it to dry slowly over the course of a week or so, it is very delicate and called greenware. The greenware is placed in the kiln when it is bone dry and fired to approximately 1945 degrees Fahrenheit(cone 06-04). The pieces that come out of the kiln are called bisqueware. They are sturdy and hardened with a measurable porosity based on the exact recipe of the clay body itself. The pots are then cooled, wax resist applied to the bottoms and decoratively glazed. All of my stoneware pieces are glazed fired at a cone5-6 range (about 2100 degrees Fahrenheit).
Once the glazed pots are cooled, I add them to the collections and make them available to you!
