In the Studio: From hands to hearts

Published 6:00 am Wednesday, March 22, 2023

Julie Furrer’s home looks ordinary and easily blends into the quiet, semi-suburban Central Point street around it. But inside the garage is a ceramicist’s studio were Furrer is forming her new passion into a potential career.

Sitting at her potter’s wheel with her back against the wall, she is surrounded by shelves and tables, every instrument and every bottle of glaze in its place. She gently pushes and pulls at the clay whirling below her as a bowl begins to take shape beneath her fingers. Her face is peaceful when she looks down at her emerging creation, but she’s instantly energetic when asked about her work on the shelf above her.

“I was just wandering around until I found ceramics,” she said.

Furrer’s most recent career has been working in construction with her husband. But that kind of work has its ebbs and flows, she said. At the end of 2019, during a lull, her husband signed up for a ceramics class at The Greenwood Estate in Medford. At the last minute, he wasn’t able to take the class and convinced his wife to go in his stead.

“Can’t thank them enough. They’re a very small studio, so they kept it open for us,” she said, remembering the three years of COVID she spent working there. “I think COVID kind of gave us all that break to learn a new trick.”

Last autumn, after she started making mugs for Creswell Bakery, she had enough work to start investing in her pottery as a business. She bought her first kiln and brought it into her garage.

On a shelf near the ceiling in her studio, a crowd of bowls, plates, platters and cups showcases Furrer’s unique style — a flirtation between art nouveau’s graceful lines and a kind of open-hearted whimsy.

Most of her work shows flowers, fruits and other joyful botanical shapes. Many of her pieces feature a colorful glaze accented by a centerpiece of intricate black and white sgraffito — a classic pottery technique created by scratching out a pattern after applying a layer of glaze.

On the table in the center of the room is a series of lidded containers with pink ceramic tongues hanging out.

“They’re spoons. There’s even the added effect that the clear glaze got a little drippy,” she said, as she pointed to a shimmering spot of opaque glaze on the corner of the tongue, easily replicating drool.

“My 17-year-old made them first, and I thought they were so funny. I told her I’d give her full credit for the original design,” she said.

The tongue spoons compared to the graceful pomegranates and sgraffito reveal the careful balance in her new life, she explained. She wondered how people would react to the tongues, but they’re too labor intensive to be economically viable as a product, she said. There has to be a balance between allowing herself creative freedom and thinking about how to best grow her new business, she said.

Furrer recently created an LLC — Mizzle Ceramics — to see how far she can take her dream.

“I would love to grow this into a full-time business, where I have employees and we do custom tile work. That’s the direction I’d like this to go, but I’m OK with being organic and seeing where it takes me,” she said.

She points to her latest work: series of tiles featuring butterflies, pomegranates and other botanical themes with graceful lines characteristic of her work.

Inside her house, she shows examples of the shining mosaics she hopes to provide for clients — behind her stove, proud yellow poppies fill the space from stovetop to range, while the fireplace is framed by a menagerie of flowers and fruits folded around each other.

“Coming from construction, coming from a very practical source and taking ceramics and art into something so practical was where my heart went,” she said.

Near the garage door is her first commission for a piece of this size, shining with dried glaze, ready and waiting to be delivered to the client. She looks at it with pride as a beginning.

Furrer hopes to show and sell some of her recent work from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, March 25, at the Grove Collective Pop-Up event at Growler Guys, 345 Lithia Way, Ashland. She will also be at the Barnstormer’s Vintage Fair at The Expo Friday and Saturday, April 7-8.