Mark Shapiro

Pitcher

5.25 x 5.25 x 2.75

Mark Shapiro (b. 1955) earned his BA in anthropology at Amherst College. In 1986, he moved from New York City to rural Western Massachusetts to make pots and build a wood kiln. He bought a farm with an unusual feature from which he took the name for my pottery-a stone pool that Russell Conwell, turn-of-the-century preacher and educator and founder of Temple University in Philadelphia had built in 1893. The farmhouse, where Conwell was born, is rich in history-it had been a stop on the Underground Railroad during Conwell's childhood, and he remembered John Brown and Frederick Douglass staying at the house. While doing work on the property he dug up a shard of a gray salt-glazed four-gallon crock that happened to have the makers' stamp on it. "Hastings and Belding, Ashfield Mass." It turned out to have been made only about 15 miles away, at the middle of the last century. It got him thinking about pots that were made, bought, used, broken and disposed of within a specific region and the connection this implies between the community of users and makers.

Mark Shapiro has taught numerous workshops nationally and internationally and mentored many apprentices at his studio, Stonepool Pottery. He edited A Chosen Path: The Ceramic Art of Karen Karnes (University of North Carolina at Pembroke, 2010) and has published many articles. A 2019 Smithsonian Artist Resident Fellow and 2021 Craft Research Fund recipient, he co-curated Crafting Freedom: The Life and Legacy of Black Potter Thomas W. Commeraw at the New York Historical Society (2023). He was a founding member of Pots on Wheels (POW!), and founded the annual Make-In Studio at the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts. Shapiro is on the board of the American Ceramic Circle and an advisor to Studio Potter and Ceramics in America. He is currently a National Museum of American History Research Associate. His work is included in many public collections.

Donated by Marsha Gold

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