White Pot Genuine Hand Made Horse Hair Pottery by artist Natalie Jetter.

This art lover's delight is exceptionally unique pottery with precise techniques and skillful production. Natalie uses horse hair in the firing of this pottery, which creates the shadowy, reticulated streaks that meander about the walls. This pottery is hand coiled, making Jetter's horse hair pottery most likely the only hand coiled horse hair pottery in the world, so you won't find it anywhere else! The process of hand-coiling a pot is unlike molded or thrown pots. It is exacting and intricate, so one pot can take longer than a day to complete, and definitely longer than just one sitting, making hand-coiled pottery a true test of technique, artistry and patience. The hand made quality and effort going into making just one pot increases the value and individuality exponentially, making each one of a kind piece of pottery a smart investment and a beautiful addition to a home or office. The horse hair and hand coiled nature of the pot combine to make it a true one of a kind, only found here. This pottery is about 6-1/4" wide by 5-3/8" tall with a 4" mouth and a 19-3/4" circumference. Signed on the bottom NJ by the horse hair pottery artist Natalie Jetter.

Building a Hand Coiled Pot

In sculptural terms, coiling is an additive process, as the pot is created by adding material to it, rather than beginning with the whole chunk of clay. The floor or bottom of a coiled pot is usually a slab of clay the same thickness as the finished pot will be. Coiling begins on the upper surface of the pot's floor, not at the sides. Doing it this way results in a much stronger and sturdier joint. Once the first coiled row is in place, the excess slab is trimmed off and the outer edge of the slab is welded upward into the coil for a firm base. Soft clay can be directly welded row by row. The strongest joints are welded on both the interior and exterior of the wall. Usually, the thumb will be used on the inner surface moving downward, with the fingers on the outer surface welding upwards. If the clay stiffens at all, the potter scores each surface to be joined, brushes on slurry or slip, then lays the row and welds. When coils are welded the wall will thin and expand outward. The more aggressive the welding, the more the walls will thin and expand. Because of this, coils may be made substantially thicker than the final wall will be. As a general guideline, smaller pots will use coils 3/8 to 1 inch in diameter, and large pots will use coils 3/4 to 1-1/2 inch in diameter. The natural inclination of the clay is to expand and move outward. To move the wall inward, coils are applied to the inner surface of the uppermost row. To compliment this direction change, the top of the applied coil can be welded inward and the interior side downward. At the final row of the pot, another coil can be added either to the outer or inner surface of the rim if the welding process has left the rim too thin. At this point the pot's form may be completed, or the artist can further refine the form and thin the walls even more. Once the initial coil pot has been created, the potter may smooth away some of the texture left from the welding process. Both the pot's surface and form can be refined once the clay reaches the soft leather-hard stage. Two common methods to do this are the paddle and anvil technique and the rib and hand technique. The paddle and anvil technique makes changes in the pot in small increments. It compresses the clay, tightens the surface, and expands the wall. This is accomplished by gently hitting the side of the pot with a wooden paddle while a smooth anvil is held against the inner surface of the wall. Paddles are shaped like flat wooden spatulas. They can be smooth or may be textured in order to add a decorative surface effect. Anvils are usually 3-6 inches across. They may be a rounded river stone, an ovoid or spherical piece of wood, or a solid piece of bisqued clay. If bisqued clay is used, the clay is shaped, multiple air holes are made in the solid clay ovoid, and it is very slowly dried before firing. The rib and hand technique moves the clay faster than the paddle and anvil technique but does not compress the clay. Because of this, it is often used in conjunction with the paddle and anvil method. In this technique, a hand is kept on the outer surface of the pot, supporting the walls while the potter smooths and expands the inner surface with a wooden or rubber rib. Strokes with the rib are made horizontally. Because this method does expand the wall rapidly, cracking can become a problem. As soon as a crack begins to develop, it is moistened slightly with slurry and welded back together. The coiled pot can be completed before the paddle and anvil or the rib and hand technique, but the finishing touches add definition and character to the final work of art.

Dating back many years, horsehair pottery is a Native American art form. As its name implies, it is made using hair from the tail and mane of a horse. The pots are hand thrown, bisque-fired and returned to the kiln. Handcrafted horsehair pottery is created by burning horsehair on the surface of a piece of pottery when it is red hot. The red coloring of many of the pots is caused from iron when the pot is sprayed with the iron-laden etching acid. Each piece is similar, but none are the same because of the free flow of the horsehair. It's been written in Native American folklore that a pueblo potter's long hair blew against a piece of pottery she was removing from a hot kiln and stuck to the piece, which first made horsehair pottery. The finished piece was so interesting that she duplicated it with hair from a horse's tail. Today, members of various tribes make horsehair pottery, including the Navajo people.

Natalie Jetter has been creating elegant pottery for 7 or 8 years and specializes in horse hair pottery. Her interest in cultural art has a foundation in her youth, when her family traveled around the world and lived overseas. She found a way to express her creativity through pottery when she was working on her Master in Education and needed an art class for her degree. She was extremely accomplished from her first pottery class, when her instructor told her she must have been a potter in a previous life. She was selling pots after one year, in galleries after two, and winning best in show after three. She visits K-12 art classes and hopes to inspire children to find their art at a younger age than she did. Natalie has won several best in show awards out of hundreds of competitors and has given public demonstrations on Good Morning Arizona. Each horse hair pot in unique and part of Natalie's individual vision.