A Product of the Place: Creating Teaware and Ceramic Art, with Willi Singleton
From Talking Tea by Ken Cohen
May 9, 2024 · 47 min
About this episode
Willi Singleton discusses his creative process and the philosophy behind his teaware and ceramic art, emphasizing the connection to place and community.
Willi Singleton is a Pennsylvania potter who's well-known among students and teachers of the Japanese way of tea as a maker of beautiful, lustrous teawares that are joy to use. Today we're sitting down with Willi in his Kempton, Pennsylvania studio, at the base of Hawk Mountain, to explore his creative process and the techniques and philosophy that go into the creation of his unique teaware and other ceramic art. We chat with Willi about his introduction to clay art and especially Japanese clay art, his time in Japan studying and working with traditional Japanese potters, and his transition back to the US and the beginnings of his Kempton studio. Willi almost exclusively uses local and regional clay and glazes in his work, and we talk about the importance of connecting to the place, the locality, in which a work is made and how that plays out in Willi's process and its results. We discuss the techniques and challenges of working with place-connected materials, the "flavor" and what Willi calls the "veto power" of the clay, Willi's focus on elemental processes and mateirals, and the mystery and unpredictability inherent in the way Willi creates clay art. And we talk about Willi's…
People in this episode
Host: Ken Cohen
Guest: Willi Singleton
Topics covered
- teaware
- ceramic art
- Japanese pottery
- creative process
- local materials
- tea community
Keywords
- teaware
- ceramic art
- Japanese pottery
- local clay
- art community
- creative process
- Hawk Mountain
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: willisingleton.com
Places: Pennsylvania, Kempton, Pennsylvania, Hawk Mountain
More episodes of Talking Tea
- The NYTS Tea Studio, Sharing Gongfu Tea and Community · December 26, 2025 · 48 min
- Balhyocha, A Uniquely Korean Tea · December 14, 2023 · 34 min
- Turkish Tea: An Introduction · May 24, 2022 · 47 min
- Tea as Daoist Meditation, with Robert Coons · March 18, 2022 · 1h 1m
- Lakyrsiew: Unlocking the Magic of the Leaf · March 4, 2021 · 18 min
- Emptiness in Tea Practice · January 29, 2021 · 44 min
Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the Talking Tea podcast page.