JR Artisan Spotlight

Roy Hamilton

Owner/Artisan

How did you get your start in the industry:

Potting started as a weekend hobby in the 70’s to offset my career in textiles.  My good friend Kevin McNamara introduced me to Sister Parish and Albert Hadley.  They quickly took to my work and encouraged me by placing many orders for vases, decorative urns, and smaller accessories.  They gave me my serious start and things developed from there.

Describe your work in 5 words or less:

Classic/ Textural/ Soft-Edge-Geometric/ Subtle

What inspires you?:

My shapes have always come from classical Chinese porcelains.  Originally my surface treatments were based on textile constructions, for example Herringbone and Tattersall weaves, which I applied through centuries’ old craft of slip trailing, simply put, it’s like icing a cake.  As my handwriting expanded, I added soft edge geometric patterns; the Hadley Design was inspired by a pattern from Ancient Inca Ceramics, and the Rhodes Design comes from an Islamic dish found at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Describe your studio/work space:

I share my Bushwick/ Brooklyn studio with Nicholas Newcomb, another potter/artist with his own flourishing business.  My co-worker, Brad Parsons is a talented artisan, and Nic increasingly provides administrative support.  We are a very small outfit and production is custom and limited. The studio is typically a calm space where three or four of us are working side by side, although COVID Protocols have juggled our schedules.  Nonetheless, the studio offers a retreat from the busyness of  day-to-day life in New York City.

What’s makes your brand stand out from the rest:

I wish we knew the answer!

 

Any new techniques, mediums, colors, aesthetics you are experimenting with?

We already use a number of time tested decorative techniques like slip-trailing and hot-wax resist similar to Batik, but we are always experimenting with something new.  Last spring, I worked out a new process to create our very organic pattern, Cottonwood, which we first rolled out to the Rosselli Showroom in Speckled Beige and Pigeon.

Our next project is introducing two new tones of blue.  Sky and Cornflower join our established Cobalt. As seen in the attached photo Blue on cream, perhaps a small tribute to John Rosselli!

 

Roy Hamilton Studio is available through our New York Showroom
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