Lillie Turner is in love with clay – not a guy named Clay, as her husband’s name is Jeremy, but clay, as in pottery clay. Lillie’s first exposure to pottery was in 2015, at a community club taking 6 nights of wheel throwing classes. Throwing on the wheel did not come easy and is still a struggle somedays to center the clay, pull up the wall, and make pieces that match in shape and size, but she does not give up easily!

The community pottery club in town allowed potters 24 hours access to the studio which was great for a newbie who was very enthusiastic. Many hours were spent at the wheel- but Lillie had a keen interest in learning all aspects of pottery, so she volunteered to load kilns, maintain kilns, which gave her great experience early on. The next big step was to learn about glazes, with the approval of the club Lillie organized a 3 day glaze workshop with John Britt from North Carolina, which was incredible, but quite advanced as Lillie had never even mixed a glaze before- but that did not intimidate her- she bought a kiln, and set up a small studio space in her garage- and started glaze testing. The more glazes Lillie made, the more she wanted to learn about glaze chemistry.  Lillie found a fantastic online workshop for cone 6 glazes taught by Matt Katz of Ceramic Materials Workshop, which is an in depth course of over 50 lessons to work through at your own pace. Lillie jokes that she is now trying to learn chemistry at the age of 41 years old- as she was homeschooled from grade 6 onwards and never took chemistry.