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Ready to Serve: Diana Fayt

Ready to Serve: Diana Fayt

Ready to Serve: Diana Fayt

February/March 2014 issue of American Craft magazine
Author Staff
Mediums Furniture
Tableware by Diana Fayt

Tableware by Diana Fayt. Photo: Mark LaFavor

Narrative

Diana Fayt has been making functional pottery for nearly 30 years. She works from her San Francisco studio using a process she calls “etching in clay” to layer her handbuilt or slip-cast pieces with original imagery and color.

What drives you to make your work?
I am a compulsive creative. I can’t help myself; I love to work in many mediums – sketching, printmaking, painting. Ultimately, clay is home for me, though; so even when I’m not working in clay, it’s what I’m thinking about.

What is unique about what you make?
I use form as a canvas to illustrate and tell my personal stories, which are often about my own life, travels, or other people’s stories. Most recently my stories have been about my mother and mushroom-foraging adventures, and how she was taught by her mother to find mushrooms. I find mushroom hunting both romantic and terrifying. It’s like hunting for treasure, but one bad one could kill you. I love the tension between those two emotions, so I’ve been drawing quite a bit of fungi lately, and they’re showing up on my work.

How do you imagine your work being used? Do you have particular occasions in mind as you work?
Some works I want to be enjoyed simply as an object and not used. Others, like my tumblers, I hope will be a part of someone’s everyday morning ritual.

What pot do you find yourself using most often in your own life? 
My assortment of handmade cups and tumblers made by fellow potter friends. I use them all, daily.

Do you consider yourself an artist, a potter, or both?
An artist potter.

Read the rest of our ceramic tableware feature.

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