BETHEL, NY — To fulfill the requirements for her bachelor’s degree in art history at Allegheny College in northwestern Pennsylvania, Sara Patterson took a clay class. 

“I was in love with it right from the start,” she recalled. She was six months from graduation then, too late to change her major.

But the art history degree brought her to New York City, where she began taking classes at Earthworks Pottery. “I became a studio assistant there, then a studio manager and a teacher, and eventually I was able to buy it. I owned it for 11 or 12 years.” She moved to Sullivan County with her husband when he retired from his job three years ago and opened Crooked Willow Pottery on Route 17B. 

Patterson makes tableware, including bowls, mugs, plates and covered casserole dishes. “I really like making dishes, useful things that people will have in the kitchen to eat breakfast and lunch out of,” she said.

She begins with the clay, which she buys ready-to-use from a supplier. She prepares it through a step called wedging. “It looks like kneading dough,” she explained. 

When the clay is ready to be put on the potter’s wheel, she weighs the clay. “I make four different sizes of mugs. I know the weight of each of those sizes.” So, if she needs to make another of any one size, she’ll know exactly how much clay to use.

Patterson puts the clay on the wheel and works it until it’s leather-hard. “In England they call it cheddar hard, and if you can imagine cutting cheddar cheese, it’s like that, firm but still soft.” If she’s making mugs, she said, that’s when she shapes and attaches the handle. If she’s making bowls, she will trim away excess clay at this point.

The dishes are left to dry completely, then put into the kiln for the first firing, called the bisque firing, where the temperature reaches 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit. “I can’t change the shape after the bisque firing,” Patterson added.

The next step is to glaze the dishes, which is basically done using silica and colors that come from metallic oxides like copper carbonate, cobalt carbonate or iron oxide. “After I glaze them, they go back into the kiln to the final temperature of about 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit,” she said. “That makes them very hard.”

Patterson will make dishes upon request, as she did with a small covered dish that a customer requested. “Whenever I make something,” she said, “I make multiples. I was thinking that if one person wanted it, maybe other people would also be interested.” This led her to make covered casserole dishes. 

She will also make various pottery items if she feels she doesn’t have enough inventory to fill the shelves of her gallery or if she’s going to be doing a market. Currently, she sells her pottery locally at the farmers’ market in Kauneonga Lake once a month in the summertime, and indoors at the former Duggan School once a month in spring and fall.

Patterson’s love for teaching continued even after her move to Sullivan County. “I have a setup in the garage,” she said; it has four electrically powered pottery wheels to accommodate up to four students at one time. “Right now, I’m only doing single classes of approximately two hours.” She takes her students through all the steps, beginning with wedging their clay, using the wheel and seeing their pottery go into the kiln.

At the end, they have a piece of pottery that they’ve created. It takes the pottery a few weeks to harden completely before the finished piece can be picked up by students who live locally. For those living further away, Patterson will send it to them in the mail.

She feels that the easiest things to make are mugs and soup bowls. Plates are a little more challenging because they’re more prone to warping while they’re being made. “Mugs and bowls are much more forgiving.” The most difficult to make are probably tall pitchers and vases because as the wheel spins, it is difficult to keep the clay from becoming wider.

Anyone interested in visiting the Crooked Willow Potttery and its gallery, or in taking a pottery lesson can learn more at www.crookedwillowpottery.com, call Patterson at 845/701-7978 or email her at sarapots@me.com. Located at 2016 Rte. 17B in Bethel, the pottery studio is open most Saturdays and Sundays between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m.