Standard Clay Company

Just the Beginning

Tom Turnbull

Brian Grow: Educator and Maker

The Art League, Alexandria, VA

Clay Place at Standard

High School Exhibition Jurors Launch Young Artists into a Future of Possibility

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Tom Turnbull: Just the Beginning
November 19, 2024
Part of what makes Standard Clay an appealing company is the way it mirrors the arts society in its company culture of family and community. Both Ceramic Supply Chicago and Ceramic Supply Inc. in the New York area have dedicated staff members who foster relationships with the artists who purchase their products, building a communal group with a shared purpose. The central Pittsburgh business propagates this spirit, sustained by generations of the Turnbull family. Headed by Jim, who succeeded his father James, Sr., and managed by his son Graham, Standard is synonymous with the Turnbull name. Jim’s vibrant personality makes connections between ceramic artists throughout the world while Graham steadily mans the helm. But the Turnbull story includes another son of James, Sr., a prodigal son of sorts, who completes the triangle as an accomplished and distinguished ceramic artist. A young man who set off to find his own way, Tom built a life that always came back to clay and is now facing a journey that is launching him on a retrospective trip through his life and ideas that is pertinent not only to him but to anyone who has pondered the meaning of a life in the arts.
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Brian Grow: Educator and Maker
October 21, 2024
Brian Grow is a DC area potter whose long journey in teaching and creating led him to an organization that fits perfectly with his artistic vision. The Director of Ceramics at The Art League, in Alexandria, VA, Grow says that the vitality and variety of artmaking at this august, long-standing institution matches his own thought processes. “The rotating schedule of classes,” he explains, “not only in pottery, but in all the disciplines, makes for stimulating conversations in the hallways among instructors, artists, and students.”
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PennOhio Clay Guild: Nurturing Artists
October 01, 2024
Something has been brewing in New Castle, Pennsylvania among the area’s clay artists for a few years. At the PennOhio Clay Guild, people are talking, equipment is changing hands, ideas are percolating. To understand this association of potters, you must try to wrap your head around two wandering pioneers named Septimus and Jen Bean. The couple made a home in this small Northwestern Pennsylvania city in 2018, stopping along a circuitous route that they have travelled together since their college days at Kent State University in Ohio. Both consider themselves educators, not only in the traditional sense but through a far-reaching conceptual ethos that defines their lives. At first glance, one might think the PennOhio Clay Guild is like many collective clay studios run by artists searching for a way to balance a creative life with paying the bills, but a conversation with Septimus and Jen will take you on your own journey that quickly lets you know that this is much more than a studio.
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Archived Articles

The I’m fine. Project: Exploring the Self Image
The artistic process is one that draws on the whole person, rummaging through the depths of emotion and memory, sometimes ecstatic, sometimes painful, emerging in a thing of beauty. For central Pennsylvania friends Maureen Joyce and Carrie Breschi, the cathartic value of working with clay has become a life mission. Through heartbreak and the circumstances of life, these women have come together to offer healing workshops to people seeking emotional wholeness amid life’s inevitable challenges. I’m fine. uses the creation of human masks to explore the self.
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Potter Robert Deane: An Intimate Approach
While all artists have a personal relationship with the materials of their craft, potters share a special bond with clay that spawns a visceral connection to the earth. Southwestern Pennsylvania Potter Robert Deane brings this intimate dynamic to his work – in the clay he digs and refines, in the collaborative projects he undertakes, and especially in the philosophy of his teaching practices. This Media, PA artist teaches adults and children at the Wallingford Art Center outside of Philadelphia.
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Standard Ceramic Acquires Sculpture House Ceramics Division
Florida-based Sculpture House is a business with a long history in the greater New York area that traces a century old history through the tutelage of two families. By the end of this summer, Standard Ceramic’s Turnbull family will become the third line of craft-oriented businessmen to extend part of that tradition. Standard will acquire the Ceramics Division of Sculpture House as Bruner Barrie, the company’s CEO, moves closer to a full retirement.
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Eberle Studios: Developing Artistic Vision
Pittsburgh artist Ed Eberle is well-known in western Pennsylvania and around the world. With a career spanning over 50 years, Eberle works in a variety of media, including painting, printmaking, sculpture, mixed media, and installations, but most recognizably with ceramics. His porcelain vessels and sculptures often feature abstractions, geometry, and detailed figurative painting with terra sigillata used both as “gesso” and “paint.” To further a legacy in fine art ceramics, Eberle and family are now opening artist studios and open studio workspaces in Homestead, near the Waterfront shopping center.
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Blair Meerfeld and The Art League School of Alexandria: Community of Inspiration
When Blair Meerfeld left a solitary Colorado life as a studio potter in 2009 to accept a position at a thriving East Coast art school, he had no idea how radically his life would change. As the Chair of the Ceramics Department at The Art League in Alexandria, Virginia, Meerfeld oversees over 1,400 students a year in a program that has continued to grow under his stewardship. In a position that he thought he would keep for a year or two before returning to his independent artist’s life, his days are filled with constant interaction with students, faculty and administration. Yet it was not until the COVID-19 pandemic shut down all operations at The Art League that Meerfeld was able to reflect on his experience and fully appreciate the importance of human interaction in the creative process.
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A Layered Approach Dual Exhibition: Brian Peters and Philip M. Soucy
Two Pittsburgh artists will bring their work to ClayPlace@Standard for "A Layered Approach," a joint exhibition this coming October. Philip M. Soucy and Brian Peters share a similar technique of stacking clay coils but have a vastly different approach to the method. Soucy’s organic works are built by hand; Peters’ precise pieces are created using a 3-D printer. Each reveals a respect and affection for the material and creates pieces that challenge our ideas about humanity’s history of building and altering its environment.
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