Lyla Kaplan: Feast & Functional Ware

By Margaret Gilmour

When local potter Lyla Kaplan takes a seat at mealtime, she knows where most of her food came from, and who created the tableware she presents to family and friends. After all, it’s likely that she’s the one that threw the mug or the bowl filled with seasonal fare.

But that’s not the only reason why.

For Kaplan, celebrating the connections between food and pottery completes a culinary experience. “It’s not just about the food,” she says. “It’s also about the form.”

Cooks and farmers from all cultures have long honored the flavors and scents of a well-prepared repast, presented after many hours in the field as well as in the kitchen. Kaplan doesn’t believe mass-produced, white plates belong in that scene, however. “It’s such a disconnect,” she says. “The look and texture of handmade pottery adds to the language of food. It completes the quiet pleasure of meals.”

For total harmony at the table, connecting the people who share in the meal with the farmers who grow it is also important to Kaplan.  So much so that she joined the food movement and founded Down to Earth, which she describes as “an exhibit and series of events that celebrate the connections between functional art, local food and community.”

Through Down to Earth and her own soda-fired functional ware, Kaplan raises awareness of and financial support for her local Buy Fresh, Buy Local chapter. Once again, the relationship between farm and food is the key ingredient in this cause. “In it is a labor of love. Both potters and farmers work the earth,” she says. “We all depend on food (and farmers) for existence, and good food contained in handmade vessels helps celebrate that existence.” 

Kaplan became interested in pottery making in high school. “In pottery I could just be myself” she says. “It’s always felt like home for me.” In college, however, things changed. She felt stifled by the rules her art teacher imposed and which she didn’t want to follow. All of a sudden pottery class was just another course, not a means for self-expression.

It wasn’t until Kaplan moved to North Carolina after graduating with a masters in psychology that she began throwing clay again. “In North Carolina pottery is in the air,” Kaplan says. “I was inspired by so many potters who poured their heart and soul into their art. And I thought, ‘I can do it too.’”

She began by joining local guilds before becoming an apprentice to professional artists Tinka Jordy and Lois Sharpe. She also discovered area potter’s associations and attended workshops.

In between studio visits and part-time jobs, Kaplan got married and followed her husband’s work first to Michigan, where their baby was born, and finally to Downingtown in 2003, where she and her family now live.

In Downingtown, she found a property isolated enough to build a kiln, which took her over two years to complete. Together with her husband and brother Nick, a homesteader living in Virginia who is still instrumental in encouraging Kaplan’s creative side, they constructed the primitive structure with recycled wood and bricks salvaged from a salt kiln.

When spring arrives each year, her brother brings her buckets of hand-dug clay from Virginia’s mountainside. Kaplan prepares the clay (drying, screening) before she combines the raw material with her store-bought clay. Mixing the two earthy substances “breathes life into the pot,” Kaplan says.

Kaplan throws on two antique treadle wheels, one a sit-down Leach style, and one a stand-up version for larger work. By the time she sits at her wheel, she’s ready to dig in to her art form as the creative process for Kaplan occurs when she is out and about during the day, especially when visiting friend’s farms.

“Being close to a farm and close to food helps me identify who I am as a potter,” Kaplan says. Her functional shapes attest to a food aesthetic: they include rough-hewn vases for herbs, shapely salt and pepper shakers and textured mugs.

Kaplan single-fires her pieces, and plays with the kiln’s atmosphere by reducing oxygen levels at various intervals, while also introducing soda and heat. Sodium is briefly introduced for added volatility, which encourages the random texture and colors Kaplan prefers.

Restricting oxygen in the kiln produces warm reds and browns for Kaplan’s unbisqued, earth-toned pieces. The entire firing process is unpredictable and much of it beyond Kaplan’s control, a technique she favors. After all, “It’s all about relationships,” she says. Indeed, it is.