![]() ![]() We walk back through her large, bright studio in the Florence Arts and Industry building to sit across from each other, the “before” and “after” stages of the drying colander we just left, spread out between us. T iffany Hilton carefully returns the stoneware berry bowl to the drying rack next to the other gray bowls and cups, off the wheel but not yet glazed. ![]() ![]() “See that there?” he says, tracing the wide, flat rim of the bowl in the air above it. He shoves them off only when they have piled high enough to get in the way. Wood chips fly out and stick to his hair and T-shirt and long curls of wooden noodles fall onto his arm and the floor. Scherer’s intention is to form a bowl, but he doesn’t yet know which bowl. The rest of it takes shape out of the rhythm of the dance. ![]() The slope of this bowl is determined by the parts of the wood he can’t use. Scherer makes about 250 bowls a year, but his eyes still light up as the wood transforms and he says, more to himself than to me, “So amazing, what happens on the lathe.” He moves his body from parallel with the wood to square himself in front of it and, over the course of the turning, completes several semicircles like a human protractor around the bowl. Circles within circles form as he works his way in from the leftmost edge and out from the base he carves in the center. The disc of wood spins as he plucks a tool from the table beside it and leans in. The “dance,” as Scherer calls it, begins once the lathe is switched on. A bowl can take shape in only 20 to 45 minutes on the lathe, but may need three months to a year to dry. This winter wiped out his wife Kathy’s whole hive and bee boxes are stacked in corners and on the stairs, adding something thick and liquid to the smell of cut wood planks beneath the worktable, burning wood logs in the stove, drying wood bowls on the shelves, and heaps and buckets of wood chips and wood shavings bowls shed while on the lathe.įinding a bowl inside a tree is loud work, but quick. Scherer’s workshop sits at the mouth of 90 acres of trees and trails in Orange and smells, of course, like wood, but also of raw honeycomb and the blocks of beeswax Scherer uses to finish his bowls. He’s a very important guy.”) Even when he uses trees from his own property or wood he’s traded for, he brings it to Jim to cut into planks. (“You have to put in Jim,” Scherer insists. This piece, like most of his wood, comes from Jim Conkey at C & M Rough Cut in Attleboro. S am Scherer pushes a piece of wood onto the lathe. The life of a good bowl begins long before it is filled. A ritual is marked by a bowl of warm rolls or cold berries placed in the center of the table, a signal of the beginning or end of the baking, the gathering, the day. A bowl becomes common ground for giving and receiving as it is passed around and across the table. A teacup rests in the palms during thought and between sips, as close to the face as breath. A mug sits squarely on the table and anchors the two hands wrapped around it as news is bared. All of the things that are said or not over coffee can be heard through the way a person cradles the cup. There is a proximity, a lingering close to the body, a holding and passing of intention. Story by Marykate Smith Despres | Photos by Brianna C Stachowskiīowls, cups, pitchers, pots: These are vessels that carry the weight of more than their contents. ![]()
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