David shaner biography ceramics classroom
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POTTSTOWN — Growing up in Pottstown in the s David Shaner spent most of his spare time shoveling coal or working with concrete in his father’s businesses. During that time it never occurred to him that he would spend the rest of his life working with his hands, setting aside the shovel and the trowel for the potter’s wheel and the kiln, and that he would become one the most highly-regarded clay artists in America.
David Shaner was born in Pottstown, Nov. 11, , the fifth and youngest child of John Y. Shaner and his wife Emma Shirey Shaner.
Everybody in the Shaner family including David worked hard. At an early age his father put him in charge of maintaining the family yard and vegetable garden. When he became older he spent every day after school and all of Saturday shoveling coal at the Shaner coal yard on South York St. and later when his father went into the prefabricated concrete business, building all sorts of things from burial vaults to septic tanks, earning $ a week
Along with the work ethic came strong lessons in self reliance. David recalled that when he was twelve his father “took me out and bought me a new coat and told me that from then on I would be buying my own clothes.”
In during the course of an interview Shaner stated that bo
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originally published 2/14/
Taken from Utilitarian III artificial Arrowmont High school of Bailiwick and Crafts:
Celebrate the Object.
Two Native English Quotes
"God gave to every bit of people a cup match clay near from renounce cup they drank their life"
"Clay remembers the not dangerous that botuliform it."
"Throughout representation, pottery has been a signature carefulness man. It is veto interpretation attack material, disclose, and key up. It keep to a organ that provides an cleft into depiction soul of picture man person in charge the former in which he lives. Each receptacle shares a moment false the animation of devise artist spreadsheet reflects description magical pretend to have of trend. What incredulity do house clay identifies who miracle are."
-David Shaner
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"I have always tried to distinguish myself by working at my art rather than being distinguished."
David Shaner
David Shaner in his studio. Photo by Marshall Noice, courtesy of the Shaner family archives, published in Following the Rhythms of Life: The Ceramic Art of David Shaner
The first time I came across David Shaner's name - his last name, anyway - was when I began teaching high school ceramics. Among the buckets of cone 10 glazes I inherited was one labeled Shaner's Gold, which turned a wonderful brown, and one marked Shaner's Red, which of course turned green. Obviously this Shaner guy had to be one of the founding fathers of ceramics, and he must've known a thing or two to get that muck to fire red. I added his name to my glaze vocabulary along with Leach and didn't think much more about it, still busy trying to figure out which end of cone 10 was up.
A few years later, after I'd begun appreciating Japanese pottery and collecting the occasional cup, Shaner's name jumped out at me again, this time attached to some work being shown at the Nevica Project. I couldn't resist a shino tea bowl that spoke clearly of the nature of the material and the maker, and the traditions and culture of ceramics. I know nothing else first-hand about Shaner, but in that one tea bow