Mary started her pottery life as a production potter making wheel-thrown pottery which was fired in gas reduction. About 15 years ago she made a big shift. She now hand builds and fires in an electric kiln. Her decorating technique is one of the most interesting and unique I have seen. She textures her pieces and then applies multiple coats of several slips and glazes--some on the green ware and some on the bisque. These multiple coats are applied with the kissing strokes of a brush barely wetted in the particular slip or glaze. She then carefully examines the piece and sometimes smoothes out the overlap areas before firing. She alslo selectively removes some of the slips/glazes with a scrubby or damp sponge on both greenware and bisque. Firing is slow and easy to give the slips and glazes time to migrate into each other further softening the edges.

Mary is also an associate editor of Studio Potter and she recently was the editor for a series of articles on electric firing in that journal. You can find it in Volume 31, Number 2.