Good Elephant Pottery is
the work of Mea Rhee. Mea is a functional potter, her work is both wheel-thrown and
slab-built. She makes lots of food-safe tableware, but also makes
decorative items such as lidded jars, vases, and lanterns. Most of her
pots are fired to cone 6 (approx. 2200°F) in an electric kiln.
Mea’s aesthetics are guided by her Korean
heritage, Maryland upbringing, and graphic design education. Her pots
are minimal and rustic. Above all, they are functional. She makes them
gray and brown — the colors of rocks and dirt — so they are
like natural objects that have been dug out of the ground.
She makes many elephant-shaped items, which are
neither political nor historical. In fact, their significance is
entirely mundane. But it’s a secret.
Her work has been featured in Ceramics Monthly and on Home &
Garden Television (HGTV), and has won several awards from local arts
festivals.
She has been practicing pottery since 1994, when
she signed up for a course in wheel-thrown pottery and was unable to
stop thinking about it! It challenged her physically, psychologically,
and artistically, and continues to do so today.
Mea is also an award-winning graphic
designer. She runs both the design and
pottery studios from her home in Silver Spring, Maryland, just outside
of Washington, DC.
