the great basin
Great Basin Pottery is located about ten miles southeast of Doyle, California. It sits at the northeastern foot of the Sierra Nevadas, in Long Valley, at 4547 feet above sea level. It’s high desert country, with sagebrush in the valleys and junipers, pine, cedar and fir trees in the mountains. The winters are cold and the summers are all dry heat. Almost every evening the wind kicks up and on most night Orion can be spotted above.
Prior to the Pottery, this place has been a homestead, a potato farm, a plant nursery and a cattle ranch. The meadow across from us is still grazed in the summer and fall. There are some ruins nearby– the foundation of a barn and a place where a house once burned down. Judging from the bits of metal and crockery, the place was "settled" by people of European extraction in the mid/late 1800s. Prior to that, the earlier inhabitants were the ancestors of the Northern Paiute and Washoe people.
Paul herman
Paul Herman bought the property that would become Great Basin Pottery in 1982, after he had already been potting full-time for almost a decade. The land was void of buildings and infrastructure, but full of potential. Paul and his first wife Cathy set to work and built a small cabin, a workshop, and a modest propane kiln. Paul settled into his new home and life of making stoneware pottery.
“When I was fifteen years old, I started making pots in high school. By the time a year had passed, I wanted to be a potter. The wet clay smelled rich, like an abandoned silver mine we played in as kids. When I open a bag of clay today, the smell takes me back 38 years, to the mine up in the barren hills north of Reno.
I began potting full time in 1974, living around the small towns of the Great Basin of North America. Living on the ragged edge of civilization (as we know it) is appealing. Thinking about making pots in the city, I knew the system could devour me. I chose the little towns, and have no regrets. First, I had rudimentary studios in Wadsworth Nevada, and then at John and Rachael Bogard's Planet X Pottery, up in the Smoke Creek Desert. In 1978 I moved to Doyle California, and five years later, ten miles south to Scott Road. It seems like a good place, and I'm staying here.” —Paul Herman, 2005
Building the ANAGAMA
In the late 1990’s , potter Joe Winter moved to the area. As chance would have it, he ended up buying a piece of land and building his home and studio just five miles from Paul Herman. It didn’t take long before the two of them were scheming to build a kiln together. Joe had some experience building and firing, and Paul had an interest in woodfiring and a prime location. With some research and a lucky lead on fire brick, they started building the anagama style kiln in 1999. Construction was completed in the Spring of 2000 and since then, the kiln has been fired every spring and fall.
second generation
Casey Clark met Joe Winter and Paul Herman in 2004 and learned to woodfire under their guidance. After attending college, completing a ceramics residency program, and firing kilns around the West, Casey returned to Reno, NV to fire alongside his friends and mentors. With Paul’s passing in 2019, Casey took on the stewardship of Great Basin Pottery.
While the pots have changed, the commitment to the process and this place remains the same. Having learned from Paul, Casey is continuing the work of producing beautiful, functional pottery in the Great Basin tradition.
