The Ceramic Spectrum

By Robbin Hopper

The Ceramic Spectrum is mainly a story of personal discovery over a 45-year period, of playing with materials and fire and observing their interaction, of looking at colors and textures in nature and visualizing how to achieve them with ceramic materials, of looking at hundreds of thousands of glaze and color tests, always looking for the elusive or the unknown and sometimes being granted the unimaginable. Long-term interests in geology and ceramic history have also fueled this passion to understand and use elements of the earth to create objects of both usefulness and contemplation. Hopper helps eliminate confusion for others through his personal experiences and observations with this medium. Pottery making is a continuum where one generation has learned from previous generations, some as a family pursuit and some through the inevitable seduction of material and process.