Malcolm Davis Original Vintage Modern Alberta Slip Shino Olive Green Glaze Porcelain Fine American Art Studio Pottery Platter

Malcolm Davis, (1937-2012), was born in 1937 in Newport News, Virginia. His parents soon moved to next-door Hampton, and he grew up on the Hampton roads. His father was a banker, and his mother a homemaker and active community volunteer and leader of many organizations, including the church.
Davis grew up in Hampton; (the oldest continuous English-speaking settlement in America, where he went to high school. In school. He didn’t have any particular goal in mind.

He wanted to go to Duke University, but it was an issue of money, and he ended up going to the College of William and Mary; a state school. He took a broad curriculum, finally majoring in mathematics.

When he graduated from William and Mary, he was number one in my class. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa, in 1959, with a BS in mathematics; and carried the Colonial Mace in the graduating procession.

He soon took a job as an actuary with the Connecticut General Insurance Company. The starting salary was $13,000.

He worked two days and did not return. He left his two day paycheck and left Hartford, which he had grown to hate in a short time.

It was in the midst of all this turmoil that Davis' next door neighbor invited him to attend a class at the DC Department of Recreation. When he arrived, it turned out not to be a lecture, but an experience with a material they called clay. He didn’t want to get all dirty. But eventually I took the clay and somehow rolled out a coil, wrapped it around
a form, and soon had a little bowl with three little feet.

He is quoted as saying he did not know how to make a pot, but he was aggressive in exposing himself to clay. He took three courses in three different places, and also studied at the Corcoran School of Art for a semester. He found a used Shimpo wheel and put it in the basement, and a used kiln that he put in the backyard.

He began making and firing pots. He had a little show in his home for friends, selling pots for a few dollars. Clay was becoming more dominant in his life. He took a course at Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina for two weeks, and another at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Maine. He exposed myself to a variation of methods, and teachers.

In 1978, Malcolm Davis returned to Penland School as one of the weekend cooks. There were six sessions, and in return for cooking he received free board and room. During those sessions Davis studied with six different people. Bob Turner was the first. Another was David Keator, who made them all work in porcelain. As soon as Davis touched porcelain, he was transformed. He couldn’t center or throw with it, but he loved it. He never touched stoneware again, except to roll out his cone packs.

On a grant from the Middle Atlantic Arts Foundation and the National Endowment for
the Arts, he went to work at the Baltimore Clayworks for a year; thanks to Debbie Bedwell. One of the potters there was testing what she called “Shino” glazes. He had never heard of Shino at that time, but was able to access her leftover glaze tests, and mixed them all together. He dipped a pot into the glaze, not knowing what he would get, and put it in
a kiln fired by another potter. It was everything that his white pots were not.

"There was incredible variety and drama on the pot. It was peach, then gray, with carbon-trapped oily spots floating on the side. It was the most exciting pot
 have ever made. I didn’t know it at the time, but it wasn’t the pot itself but everything that had happened to it in the kiln."

Malcolm Davis
(1937-2012)
Original Vintage Shino Glazed Porcelain Pottery
Approximate Measurements are 12 3/4"X 16"
Hand Signed on the Bottom
Estimated at late 1980's, to early 1990's
Mint Original Condition
True Color Varies on Body from medium to dark olive. Shino Glaze. True to life color is best represented by the darker photos.
Alberta Slip
Pewter/Metallic Glaze Rim

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