Each piece is lovingly made and hand thrown one at a time by Aby in SE Portland.
All pieces are hand thrown, with individual design work done on each piece; making each a unique functional work of art.
Aby has been working with clay for the last 16 years.
Aby and her Great Dane Zahara
Every piece you see on this site or in person at a market is all hand thrown by Aby. Each piece is individually and lovingly crafted.
The same goes for the design work you see on each piece. While they all have a similar flavor, every design in individually crafted for that piece making it a unique piece of art.
Aby’s unique aesthetic came about over 17 years of experimentation. Having been fortunate to travel the world doing artist residencies and also moving around a lot it came to make less and less sense to use beautiful local clay all over the world and then cover it with glaze.
That is where Aby’s unique aesthetic was born. She started to expose more and more of the clay body to accentuate the medium that she is working with. After 17 years working in ceramics her knowledge and respect of the clay body goes deep. Her design work is a way of acknowledging and respecting this special medium.
Aby Henry is an artist, writer and potter that calls Portland, Oregon home. She lives there with a plethora of plants and an overabundance of books (if there is such a thing), her partner Tom, their great dane Zahara, their cat Knock, three bunnies and a ridiculously large garden.
She has been an artist from a young age thanks to her amazing grandparents. She has been throwing and working with clay for 16 years.
All work is thrown and trimmed by hand, by Aby, at her studio in SE Portland. Every piece is individually crafted - never slip cast. Every piece is a unique one-off creation, no two pieces are ever exactly the same! Aby works almost exclusively with porcelain. With 17 years in the field, Aby’s love and respect for clay goes deep. But her love and adoration of porcelain was solidified during an artist residency in China where she was able to go to the original kaolin mines that porcelain was mined out of in Jingdezhen.
Unless specifically noted all work in microwave and dishwasher (top rack please!) safe.
Aby Henry is a graduate of the masters program at the Oregon College of Art and Craft (OCAC) with a Masters in Craft and an emphasis in ceramics. She also attended the University of Nevada, Reno, and received her BA in ceramics with a minor in art history. Aby moved to Portland to start her own art/farming business with her sister in 2008. She continued her work at Shop People in SE Portland starting in 2012. She was the head of the ceramics department from 2014-2016. Aby is on the board of the non-profit The Alliance of Oregon College of Art and Craft Alumni.
Sculpture and other art can be seen at www.abyhenry.com
Aby has attended:
Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts
Haystack
Playa Summerlake
Sou’Wester
Custom orders are currently OPEN. If you are interested in a custom order please send an email to abymhenry@gmail.com with details about what you are hoping for. Due to time constraints etc. not all requests can be taken, but I will do my best to accommodate! The average turn around is 4-6 weeks depending on the size of the request. Please note that larger custom orders include a non-refundable deposit of half the amount of the order up front. This covers time to create the item, clay, glaze, and firings. As I incur these costs either way, the deposit is non-refundable.
All orders are shipped through USPS because they are very reliable, and because I believe it is extremely important to support the United States Postal Service. I make every effort to ship orders within 1-2 business days. However, I am a one woman show with a lot of spinning plates so this isn’t always possible. I do however guarantee that orders will ship 3-5 days after the order is placed, with the exception of orders place on Saturday as USPS does not ship on Sundays.
Rushed shipping is available at an additional fee. If this is something you would like to do please select PDX pickup (as it is free) and then email me with how you would like it shipped. I will send you a Venmo request for the difference.
If you select PDX pickup, please email me with when you hope to come by. There is a Bridgetown Sparrow Sign out front, and your order will be on a table next to the front door with your name on it. PLEASE try to pick up your order within two weeks. There are a lot of spinning plates and sitting on orders for long periods of time is extremely frustrating.
All pieces that are a white clay body are porcelain. I use midrange porcelain and stoneware. What this means for you is that these pieces are extremely strong because they are fully vitrified (think fully hardened and mature!) which makes them very hardy. While all non-commercial pottery will technically last longer with hand washing - everything on this site is dishwasher safe (top rack please!) and can go in the microwave.
There are two kinds of ceramic work out there. Slip cast or hand thrown. Slip casting is where there is a mold of the shape. Liquid clay is put in and poured out and it gives you an identical copy of whatever the item is.
The other way is throwing on a wheel. Every piece created on a wheel is hand thrown. The quality of the work is purely indicated by the skill of the person throwing the object. Each piece even if they appear similar will have its own unique touch of the maker.
A good way to tell if something is hand thrown or slip cast is to flip it over! Slip cast items often have a seam that shows. They also typically have a smooth bottom. Hand thrown items will have what is called a “foot”. Aka the interior of the bottom has been trimmed away, often leaving behind a beautiful spiral that is indicative of the wheels rotation and the makers hand.
Thick and heavy doesn’t equate to strength, it simply equates to skill.
