Susy O’ Donnell holding Black-eyed Susan motif plates— hers on the right side of the photo, and Griffiths’ s on the left. Taken at the Brown County Library.
~ by Cindy Steele
Susy O’ Donnell has a passion for pottery. She says the rhythm of the work“ settles” her. She likens the process to baking or starting a garden and enjoys bringing the clay through the various stages of texture, color, and smell.
Her redware pieces start out hand-thrown on the wheel and are left to dry to a leathery state before they are coated with a cream-colored slip, a liquid clay. The designs are sketched on the surface, then the coating is scratched off with a sgraffito tool to expose the red clay underneath. When the clay is rock hard the decoration is painted on. The works are moved to the kiln for a bisque firing, are glazed, and then return to the kiln for a final bake.
O’ Donnell was introduced to pottery in the late 1980s when she audited some ceramics classes at Indiana University and mentored under a potter from the Bloomington Potter’ s Coop. She also took classes from Carolyn Mullet, attended workshops, and visited museums including the Philadelphia Museum of Art that houses a fine collection of redware.
photos by Cindy Steele
Gerard and Deb Davis of Davis Fine Art approached O’ Donnell in 1999 about making some“ new” historic pottery for their museum / shop that was located at the north end of Nashville. She researched the Davis’ s antique collection and the photos of early Brown County pottery. Susan Snyder, of Italiana Pottery, helped refine her technique on creating the layout, and painting the designs. About a year later she also made items for the Carter’ s Artists Colony Inn’ s gift shop and for the restaurant’ s tables.
The redware designs were created in the spirit of the early Brown County potters Helen and Walter Griffiths. The Griffiths started making pottery when Walter lost his engineering job during the Depression of the 1930s. Brown County pottery was a fixture in Nashville for more than 20 years at the Old Bartley House on Van
40 Our Brown County Jan./ Feb. 2016