In Citrus County in central Florida there is a chain of lakes called Lake Tsala Apopka which is American Indian for "place to eat trout." Gospel Island is in the middle of one of the larger lakes. My grandparents built a house on that island in 1950 while the cowboys of the open range days were still driving small herds of cattle across their property. Eventually that house was completely taken over by the ceramic studio, which stayed in that location for 35 years. The picture above was taken there for a newspaper article in the early 1970's. The lady standing in the back is Pat Young, my grandmother and founder of the Pat Young Ceramic Arts studio. The other people are some of the artists she employed to help her fill orders for her creations.

Currently I make 130 designs in 18 colors, using no molds though I still use some of the leaf impressions made almost 50 years ago by my grandmother. All of the pieces are individually hand made; all modeled from actual plants and sculpted to look like leaf and flower arrangements that double as candleholders, plates, cups, bowls, butter dishes, vases or wall plaques. You have to hold a piece to feel how very light weight and delicate it is. Most of my round bowls ring like crystal goblets when thumped with a finger. I could play a song on them if they were tuned correctly.

Begonia Leaf Bowl

Begonia Leaf Console Set

The bowls in the Begonia Leaf style have each been modeled from 3 individual angle-wing begonia leaf impressions attached to a small base. The candleholder is made of 3 smaller leaves on a base. The difficult part of creating these pieces is to control the drying phase so that the shrinking stresses do not break them apart. The matt glaze color is Jade.

Begonia Leaf Candleholder

I am always looking at the leaves of plants and trees for new ideas. Originally my Grandmother grew all of her leaves in her own greenhouses, but as the volume of orders increased she had to make a decision to either be a horticulturalist or a ceramist. Ceramics won. So when I design a new piece I take the best live leaf example I can find and make a master bisque impression, as she started doing when the greenhouse was phased out. From that bisque impression, I make a latex impression that is rolled into the clay. Real leaves fall apart after using them 2 or 3 times, latex lasts for hundreds of impressions. There is no way I can keep a large enough supply of live plants to fill all of our orders. Many of the master impressions I use now were made in the 1950's to 1980's.

I use earthenware clay fired to 04 for bisque and 06 for glaze. We have always used commercially mixed glazes; I encounter enough challenges without making my own glazes! Over the years the glaze companies have dropped colors or changed formulas. In most cases we have been able to find another color that was very close to the original. I have one of the original color charts made of glazed ceramic geranium leaves that the early salesmen carried on their sales calls in the 1950's. Most of the colors I use match those old color samples. The current catalogue has a color chart showing all the glazes now being used.

An interesting story about glaze color...recently a long time customer asked me to replace some Cabbage Dinnerware pieces she had broken. (Actually she told me her "staff" had broken them). She had purchased the dinnerware set in the mid 1960's. She asked me if we still carried the Super White Satin glaze. I told her we did since the title and order number of the glaze has never changed.  She ordered 15 pieces to be glazed in white. I sent the pieces to her and she sent them back because they did not match. 

It took almost a month of research but finally the glaze company told me their formula had never changed but the fired result was different because their raw materials were now being made with less impurities. GREAT! The glaze had lost it's satin look and is now really a stark white. So goes this business. 

This customer is now looking for matching pieces that she hopes to find on e-Bay. (Quite often I see PYCA pieces on e-Bay.)  I wrote about my problems with the white glaze dilemma on ClayArt and Snail sent me part of a jar she had from years ago. Wasn't that nice of her?

I use a total of 24 different leaf and flower species to make my ceramic art, plus molds of frogs, turtles and toads. The style designs not shown on this website are cabbage, fiddle fig, cineria, monstera, oak with acorns, maple, hibiscus tree and hibiscus flower, angle trumpet, rice leaf, catalpa, sycamore, holly and elephant ear. You can request a catalogue to see my complete line of 130 items. I make dinnerware sets, different sized platters, bowls of several shapes, cream and sugar sets, dip bowls plus chip and dip sets, vases, pen-cig-toothpick holders, napkin rings, flower wall plaques, candleholders and those frogs, turtles and toads that can show up on any of the above items.

The picture of me at the top of this webpage was taken while I was apprenticing with my Aunt Barbara in 1996 when she ran the studio. That was 20 years after her mother, Pat Young had retired. I had just taken the first 3 Magnolia Centerpiece that I made by myself from the kiln. It was a great day for me!

See a complete selection of my pottery at www.patyoungceramicarts.com

William Sheppard
Pat Young Ceramic Arts
1901 Ohio Ave., N.E.
St. Petersburg, Florida 33703-1759
phone: 727-527-8684

You can request a catalogue via email at
patyoungceramicarts@hotmail.com

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