Wishbone Dressing and Limoges Porcelain

Taste, Touch, and Memory...

ltd. edition cup • limoges porcelain • 2025

My son had zero knowledge of the salad dressing that was always on the table at my grandmother’s house. Its classic silhouette, the tell-tale green cap, the plastic bottle with a stamped pattern. If he had ever tasted that dressing before, it had not been in our home.

He also had no idea when he served a salad last summer with iceberg lettuce, thinly sliced red onions, cherry tomatoes, and a freshly made zesty-Italian dressing that he would instantly transport me to my grandmother’s house at 6 Ardmore Road. To a crowded table in a cramped dining room and a bowl of iceberg lettuce holding a place of honor in the center. The scent of a roasted capon sneaking its way out of her kitchen throughout the rest of the home. Aunts and uncles, younger cousins, and a random mix of folks from my parent’s past finding a place to sit on any available couch or chair. My uncle’s room in the back, full of speakers and hi-fi equipment from the glory days of classic, solid-state components…and more importantly, his endless supply of Hubba-Bubba that every cousin knew was always available, regardless of what our parents said.

I have no idea what else my son made us for dinner that night last summer. He had just graduated culinary school and was home for about a week before he began cooking at his current job in Napa. I’m sure the rest of that meal was delicious, but those dishes lacked the simplest and most powerful ingredient of all. Nostalgia.

I was reminded of that dressing a month ago when I was in the studio in Vallauris. I had just opened a bag of Limoges porcelain that I had picked up at the ceramic supplier earlier in the week. I hadn’t planned on working in porcelain while abroad, but the idea of working with a clay recipe from Limoges for the first time was impossible to resist.

Nothing was out of the ordinary as I began a quick, test round on the potter’s wheel in early November. I was getting ready to throw some cups off of the hump and explore this clay’s properties which were bound to behave differently than what I was used to. I took the clay out of the bag, and wedged it up as I have each time I begin my process. I was first struck by how beautiful it was. A pure white clay, much brighter than my clay back home.

Within a few minutes I was leaning over the wheel centering the clay and my initial idea of that making session had shifted. It was no longer the simple one I had expected. The touch of that porcelain against my hands and the memories it held was immediate and surprising. A cup began to rise as the wheel turned. The Limoges Porcelain was moving and reacting to my touch exactly as the porcelain clay that first teacher had used. Each revolution brought me another memory.

I was back in the studio at Skidmore College trying that “advanced clay” for the first time. Late nights in the studio, flipping through stacks of old Ceramic’s Monthly magazines. Endless failed attempts of ambitious pots, each one providing enough new information to fail differently on the next one.

Thirty years on, in France, my hands and my mind now had the patience for a clay with that level finickiness. The confidence that I was pretending to have back in my college days was now quiet, allowing each cup to find its way from my hands and give my mind the space for the memories to flow.

limoges porcelain cups drying in the a.i.r. vallauris studio

I knew immediately that I was going to get more of this lovely porcelain at the following week’s material run. It was also clear that I would sit down for a proper throwing session with it.

I hadn’t planned on making anything functional during my residency program, but nostalgia once again unleashed its power and I now have a suitcase full of these very special, very limited edition cups. My work and I will be back in Austin next week. These cups will be available during my upcoming Holiday Sale, ready to be filled with much more than solely my own memories.