By
Lily Sullivan

Photography by Bailey Robb.

Katie James Launches Good Connection Ceramics


“My specialty is slow,” says ceramicist Katie James, who since 2015 has been developing her design practice while working as a full-time wardrobe stylist in New York City. Her line Good Connection went live last month with a small number of wholesale accounts and a site for custom orders.

This move wasn’t an obvious or easy start for James, who felt drawn to ceramics but wasn’t sure where to begin. After two years of studying wheel-throwing and hating it, she took a hand-building class in Queens where she learned the processes behind coil- and slab-built ceramics. She continued to study coil-building, traveling to Oaxaca and working alongside a women’s collective based there. “It’s a lot more time-consuming, but really that’s the process I love: the attention to detail and working with the clay to figure out a more organic shape,” she explains.

Last fall, James took a fifteen-week course on the geology and chemistry of glazes, taught online by Harvard-based professors Rose and Matt Katz. “It’s like being a painter and making your own paints,” she says. “It’s really unique to this practice.” Ultimately she’d like to go on to make her own clay, but for now, James is the studio manager of a twelve-person ceramics studio in Bushwick, where her fellow studio mates work across styles and mediums. Building relationships with suppliers and learning about running a business, “I’ve had a chance to grow not only with my practice but within the industry,” she explains. “To me, it’s so much more than making a plate or a bowl and selling it. I want to immerse myself in the community that supports me that I can support.”

James’s construction process results in designs notable for their heft and weight. “My work is more durable and heavy and the walls are thick. I’m not trying to make things that are delicate,” she says. “I’m almost making ceramics that if you drop them, watch out they might break your foot.” Ultimately her line is focused on social connection, with pieces that can be used to entertain large groups: “I’m embracing the nonconformity of hand-built tableware.”

The ethos of her brand comes down to connectivity—both between materials and between the people in her sphere. “Good Connection is a play on words that my teacher taught me: the textural connection and that friction between two surfaces of clay,” James relates. “She kept reiterating that you need to make this a good connection; for it to be strong it has to be good. That’s really where the brand name came from. I want to move forward with my customers, with my suppliers, all of my wholesale accounts, and things like that and have a strong connection.”

James plans to stay small and humble, building each piece by hand, avoiding molds and mass production. “I want people to honor and treasure material possessions,” she explains. “My goal is to stay slow and deepen the conversations with the pieces we have.”

For more information, please visit GoodConnectionStudio.com.




By
Lily Sullivan

Photography by Bailey Robb.

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