Stark Pottery

Peter and Susan Stark have been making functional pottery in Colorado for over 20 years. They mostly make serving pieces and dinnerware. They enjoy making pottery that is used everyday to cook and serve food. Peter makes the pottery and Susan decorates it. Peter likes his pieces to appear animated and to impart a sense of volume. He throws most of the forms on the pottery wheel and then manipulates them on and off the wheel to achieve the shapes that he desires. Peter is influenced by Japanese, British, and Korean pottery. Susan uses the Majolica Technique to decorate the pots. Majolica is a colorful watercolor-like decoration which is applied on top of an opaque white glaze. Susan has a background in painting and printmaking and enjoys using the white background as a three-dimensional canvas that she can decorate with a watercolor-like imagery. The influences for her work are Italian and Spanish Majolica, British Tinware, and botanical drawings of all sorts.

Peter and Susan met when they were going to the Kansas City Art Institute, where they both received their bachelor’s degrees in ceramic arts. Peter then went on to graduate school at the University of Massachusetts where he got a master’s degree in ceramics. Susan continued her education at Cranbrook Academy where she also received her master’s degree in ceramics.The couple had their first pottery studio on Cape Cod in Massachusetts and then moved to Longmont, Colorado in 1990, where they started a family and set up the studio where they still enjoy creating their wares.