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Drop in to the Summer Exhibition Gallery at 115 Bobcaygeon Road and have a chat with Susanne James, potter, about her pottery techniques and designs. Perhpas you are a knitter and want to know about her yarn bowl that will keep your wool clean and close at hand? Or how about her platters that have real pine boughs emprinted into them? If you don’t have time to stop in then take a look online at www.MadeInHaliburton.ca.
Margery Cartwright is a Canadian potter who is very happy to be able to live in the beautiful surroundings of the Haliburton Highlands, with all its lakes and trees, and make a living as a potter. Margery incorporates nature into many of her designs. Her signature work is her line of pottery that is decorated with an oak leaf and acorn. She uses a real oak leaf and acorn as her pattern thereby bringing the natural environment that surrounds her into her home and work.
Margery began her career as a potter in London, Ontario where she joined a group of fine craftspeople selling their goods at the Covent Garden Market. She was drawn to the Haliburton Highlands by courses at the Haliburton School of the Arts and soon began to realize that she could move to this lovely area and make a living with her pottery. She believes she has truly benefited from being a part of this dynamic, artistic community.
When Susanne James is not busy selling cottages in the Haliburton Highlands she is busily at work in her pottery studio creating a variety of functional stoneware items including the incredible dragonfly mugs that are the prize in May 2012′s draw for those who sign up for the www.MadeInHaliburton.ca newsletter or “Like us” on Facebook. Susanne has a passion for dragonflies and sees them as the “good bugs”, ones that are welcome especially when those nasty biting bugs appear. 
After all the dragonfly consumes these nastier creatures and thus, the more the merrier. All of her functional items for the home are dishwaher, micro wave and food safe. Each item is handmade and one-of-a-kind. Thus, don’t expect these two dragonfly mugs to be exact replicas of one another as they were not made from a mold. Most of her pieces are wheel thrown but she has a few square or rectangulare pieces that she hand builds. For the platter shown on the left she brings twigs from the forest into the studio and uses them to duplicate mother nature’s designs precisely.
In addition to functional items for the household Susanne likes to knit and thus, has created an innovative series of knitting related pottery items. The best known of these items is her knitting yarn bowl. Great way to keep your yarn clean and close by. Her other items include mugs with a cable knit pattern on the side and needle and spindle holders.
Susanne took her first pottery course at the Haliburton School of the Arts 20 or more years ago and has taken many additional courses since. While she has dabbled in other artistic media she is most taken with pottery. She loves the texture of the red clay she works with and the aroma of cocoa bean shells that it gives off as she works in the studio that has been created for her in her home. Her firing is done in an electric kiln.
Susanne is a very active member of the Arts Community in the Haliburton Highlands. She is a member of the Arts Council~Haliburton Highlands, a board member of the Rails End Gallery and Arts Centre, and a participant in the Tour de Forest, a studio tour that takes place on the August long weekend each year. Take a look a a sampling of her work at www.MadeInHaliburton.ca.
