Dishing It Out | Maine Potter Elizabeth Benotti

Faced with a row of garage doors in an innocuous-looking business park in Eliot, Maine, it’s easy to riff on the classic Monty Hall question: What’s behind door number 20?

Frankly, given its anonymous nature, it could be anything. But on this particular day, the door is flung up to the blue sky, and birdsong accompanies my entrance into a cavernous studio overhung with an air of expectation. Rows of wooden shelves sit heavy with unadorned ceramics: bowls, serving platters, planters. Blank canvases, waiting for Elizabeth Benotti to continue her experiments in clay.

The pale, almost ghostly forms are a hint of things to come. Benotti’s eye for shapes—whether she is hand-building, casting in molds, or throwing clay on the potter’s wheel—is cleanly aesthetic. Her feel for color seems equally surefooted, relying on a palette of glazes she creates from scratch in signature shades of bluish-gray, green, yellow, and pink that complement food to dramatic effect.

Simple and strong. And the reaction was positive right from the start, Benotti says. Lifestyle behemoth Remodelista took note. And Anthropologie. And Erin French, at the Lost Kitchen, Maine’s restaurant equivalent of a unicorn, where you can find Benotti’s ceramic hand-pinched baskets (think updated bread baskets) in deep ocean blue, or a herringbone butter dish. “Once I began building more work and posting more, my Etsy shop started getting noticed, too,” Benotti says.

Chalk it all up to her particular world of stripes and those classic herringbones. Great colors. With a few grids, and some oval smudges for good effect. These vulnerable, hand-drawn elements feel like direct outreach—proof of the artisan’s hand.

“Me and words don’t really make good friends,” she says. “Which is probably why I communicate through my hands, you know?” She then confesses, “I don’t sketch a lot—it’s all in my head. Then I just have to make it. It goes back to not being a good two-dimensional artist. I’m not somebody who wants to sit down and draw.” She pauses, hearing herself. “Even though I draw on all my work!”

Those wavy surface textures reach out and communicate, too—they’re Benotti’s actual finger marks. They look like ripples.

Which brings us to Maine. Once Benotti and her husband moved to Eliot, she took up surfing. When she names her ceramic colors, it’s with an eye to the sea. She tells me about a line of work she calls Ebb and Flow—“I was thinking about the push-pull of water, and the shapes coming in and going out.”

When surfing, she says, “you literally forget about everything else that’s going on in your life. You’re in the ocean, you don’t have to care about anything else. You’re just looking for waves.” And when she talks about pottery, she observes, “There’s a lot of holding your breath. I just made a bunch of work that’s black and white—black stripes—and I have to hold my breath every time I’m pulling the brush down the piece.”

Benotti grins. Maybe the same focus hones both endeavors. “I don’t have a grand story for where my inspiration comes from,” she admits. “It’s just seeing colors and color stories that I like, and trying different things.” That, and surfing, makes her happy. elizabethbenotti.com 

Ideal Settings

In studios, barns, and basements, potters dig deep into the earth itself, and work that clay into dishes that enliven seasonal feasts.

1. Jane Herold Pottery

The list of restaurants using Herold’s pottery just keeps scrolling, all with identities as diverse as her dinnerware. But no matter the style, these sleek stoneware plates, platters, and bowls dress up a table as surely as a Michelin star confers honor. “It is the spirit of the maker, and of the materials, still visible in the fired clay, that gives each pot its character,” Herold says. It certainly adds fuller flavor to our food. West Cornwall, CT; janeherold.com

2. Gabrielle Schaffner Ceramics

As a college student, Schaffner spent a year in Florence studying ceramics, art, and language, and she is still inspired by Italian culture—it shows in the colorful, intricate images that adorn her pots. Also, she says, “My studio work is very much influenced by my love of cooking: I like a plate that looks good with food, a large cup to hold plenty of caffè latte, and a pitcher that doesn’t drip.” Boston, MA; gabrielleschaffnerceramics.com

3. James Guggina Ceramics

Who doesn’t love the idea of a dedicated ice cream bowl? Or carved patterns, wood firings, and earthy glazes that translate into handmade dinnerware, coffee filters, whiskey cups, and the random tagine pot? Guggina has been a full-time potter since the early 1990s, and says he’s still learning about pottery making every day. Northampton, MA; coolpots.com

4. Three Wheel Studio

Dwo Wen Chen describes his work as “fun, eclectic, and functional,” with a range of patterns that encompasses cheery birds, intricate flowers, and the elegant River Rock collection, looking very much like a table setting that just washed ashore. Providence, RI; threewheelstudio.com