Pig Pen Pottery - Functional and Decorative Pottery, Masks, Lamps Fountains and Lessons in Great Falls, Virginia

Pig Pen Pottery is a fully operational studio on the first floor of the house called
Orchard House at Hidden Springs Farm, offering ongoing pottery classes for adults
and occasional raku workshops. Laura welcomes students and visitors. Please call for
further information.

This traditional red clay is fired to the relatively low temperature of 1800 degrees F. Laura’s un-glazed cooking pots, with cookbook, are extremely “user friendly.” You choose what you want to eat, put it in the pot, put the pot in the oven and go away. You can cook for a long while in a cooler oven or faster in a hotter oven. These pots are ideal for those who want to eat healthy as the pot retains the goodness of vegetables and makes succulent meat dishes with no fat. Also in terra cotta are bowls, Terra Cotta Group

plates, loaf pans and casserole dishes. Laura has used these pots in her own kitchen for many years.

Stoneware Platter Highly functional and versatile, stoneware is fired to about 2250 degrees F in a gas reduction kiln, which Laura built.

She prizes the soft worn look that heavily used pots have. It is her intention that her dishes be put to work. These pieces can be used in the oven or microwave, they are dishwasher safe. Laura makes stoneware tableware, mugs, sushi plates, serving platters, decorative flower holders, lamps, Heron Fountain

table fountains, and masks. Many of the fountains and lamps have glass incorporated into the design. They are lit from within, and so become night lights as well.

Laura practices the Western version of this Japanese tradition. The ware is fired outside in a propane fueled kiln to a temperature of about 1800 degrees F. She removes the molten pot from the kiln and places it in a bed of combustibles causing immediate flaming and burning. She then “starves” the fire of oxygen. The resulting "reduction" causes the Sugar Raku

otherwise white clay to turn black, white glazes to crackle and copper glazes to go chaotically multicolored. Raku ware is primarily decorative, although it can be used to serve or display dry foods and flowers.

Laura Laylin Nichols is a self taught potter of some thirty years, still learning. She is a native of Great Falls,
still living at Hidden Springs Farm which has been in her family since 1939. She has three children and five
grandchildren. She works and teaches out of her studio, Pig Pen Pottery, on the farm.

Laura’s formal education includes a BA in French Literature (Bryn Mawr 1968) and a doctorate in Linguistic
Anthropology (American University 1988). Her informal education has lead her to experiment extensively
with clay in various forms. She shows her work in several shops in Connecticut and Northern Virginia. Laura
welcomes visitors to her studio as well.

Laura’s pottery can be categorized into three types. These differ principally in the type of clay used and the
firing atmosphere and temperature. There is no lead present in any of the clays or glazes at Pig Pen Pottery.