SHARI
JACOBS
Shari Jacobs makes wheel-thrown porcelain and stoneware ceramics for the table. Originally from the Midwest, Jacobs splits her time between her family’s central Virginia home and Frederick, Maryland, where she is earning an MFA in ceramics from Hood College. She is a member of the Charlottesville-area Artisans Studio Tour and the Potters Guild of Frederick.
Shari Jacob’s current body of work is in soda-fired porcelain. Soda-firing is an involved process, but the surfaces it creates are one-of-a kind. When the kiln reaches about 2000 degrees Fahrenheit, she opens up a port in the wall and sprays a soda ash solution directly into the hot kiln. The sodium vaporizes and reacts with the clay and glaze inside, creating running effects where the pots are glazed, and melting the silica on the surface of unglazed pots into a glaze of its own. The direction of the flame through the kiln and the spray of soda ash leave their marks on each pot, sometimes trapping carbon in the glaze or creating flashes of orange as the fire moves around the pot and reacts with the iron in the clay body. The pottery that comes out of the kiln shows the marks from this process long after it is over.