The annual St. Croix Valley Pottery Tour has been hosted by potters’ studios located along Minnesota’s St. Croix River Valley since 1993. In anticipation of this year’s event, which takes place May 9-11, we are featuring a past series of oral histories ACC received funding to record with participating artists: A Measure of the Earth: An Oral History of the Potters of the St. Croix River Valley, Minnesota.
Recorded in 2013, the edifying conversations are available in the ACC digital collection and feature a host of craft makers discussing how a celebrated scenic area, just an hour from Minneapolis and Saint Paul, developed into a major center for pottery and a destination for a national ceramics audience.
One of the people you’ll hear asking questions on the recordings is Janet Koplos, a longtime editor of Art in America, co-author with Bruce Metcalf of Makers: A History of American Studio Craft (UNC Press, 2010), a guest editor for American Craft from 2010–11, and the author of “Potteryland,” a feature about the St. Croix Valley tour she penned for American Craft in 2023.
