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Joppa Mountain Pottery is a family of potters and artists living in the foothills of East Tennessee approximately 22 miles northeast of Knoxville. McDonald Crosby, Master Potter, and his wife Ann started Joppa Mountain Pottery in 1995. Ann's son Shane Fowler joined the business a couple of years later. McDonald graduated with Honors from Brevard College with his degree in Art, and followed up with a Bachelors of Fine Arts Degree from the University of Tennessee in 1977. And has been making pottery for over 30 years. Ann has owned and operated her own ceramics shop which produced over 3000 different molds. And has roughly 20 plus years invested. They have taught their trade to Shane and Renae, and they all work together to make Joppa Mountain Pottery a successful business.
We are proud to say that we have sold our award winning work all over the world through our collectors and the galleries that carry our work.. And also through the many art shows and festivals we do each year. Joppa Mountain Pottery has been featured on Home and Garden Television (HGTV) in 1999 on Mary Emmerling's Country At Home, segment 408 and on PBS's Tennessee Crossroads Episode 2101 February 2005. Our Raku Halloween figurines were featured in Country Marketplace Magazine in August 2004, in addition to being featured in many other television segments, newspaper and magazine articles.
The artists at Joppa Mountain Pottery produce two different types of pottery. Raku and Stoneware. Each piece of pottery is either wheel thrown or hand-sculpted, decorated, carved, painted, glazed and kiln fired using our own hands. Our glazes are also hand mixed and of our own creation. Each piece is of our own original design and we use no molds of any kind in any of our processes. EVER! When it\'s handmade it goes through a 20 to 30 step process. Sometimes more, depending on the piece. Glaze is a simple term meaning happy dirt. All of our glazes are recipes we created and changed through out the years. From different combinations of \'dirt\' from all over the world, we mix and combine these elements to create the wonderful colors we\'re known for. We use Chung reds, cobalt blues, earth-toned browns for stoneware glazes and nickel, copper, iron metals in our Raku glazes and many many more. Because each piece is handmade there will be slight variations in the sizes and the finish of the glaze. That is the beauty of handmade pottery also giving it the uniqueness, originality, and over all superior quality our customers expect.
Each piece of pottery is kiln fired twice. The first time firing, called a bisque, fires the piece hard enough to handle for glazing and also weeds out the potentially flawed pieces. Once the pottery is taken out of the bisque kiln, we glaze it either with Stoneware glaze or Raku glaze, depending on what the piece is.Our Stoneware Pottery is high fired to approximately 2350 degrees using the reduction method. Stoneware pottery is a slow firing process, gradually turning up the temperature about every 15 minutes for 6 or more hours. After firing is finished, the kiln has to cool down completely before the pottery can be viewed or removed. This can take 6 or more hours. Once it is removed and cleaned, it is ready to be used! We use lead-free glazes, which are food safe. All of our stoneware pottery is kitchen functional (to some only decorative). You can safely use the functional items in the oven, microwave, dishwasher and refrigerator. Our stoneware pottery is also great for the garden, but be sure if you display your piece outside, to either turn it upside down for the winter freeze or bring it inside.
This was in Ashville NC
2010- Art In The Park
Beautiful Raku and Vases!
One of a Kind Pottery,
Hand made at JMP
LOOK FOR US AT BUSH BEANS
