Tuesday, December 3, 2013

holiday shop update!




HOLIDAY SHOP UPDATE!
   Sunday, December 8th, at 6pm edt    


I will be offering a selection of smaller pieces for this holiday sale which will include bowls, plates, spoons, cheese boards and platters.  If your purchase is a gift I will be happy to pack it in a gift box as pictured above at no extra charge.  The brown kraft box has the elephant ceramics logo stamped on top and will be tied with a dark indigo woven ribbon.  Please email me within 24 hours to let me know which pieces you would like boxed and include any message you would like written on the gift tag.  If you are shipping to friends, family or colleagues please have those addresses on hand for checkout.  I will ship everything out on December 11th leaving plenty of time for UPS to make your delivery in time for the holidays!  
                                       -michele xo  





bon appetit






I'm so happy to have one of my pieces included in bon appetit's November 2013 issue in a gorgeous story about how the Mondavi family in California celebrates their Thanksgiving holiday.  It was photographed by Mikkel Vang and prop styled by Heather Chontos.  My chocolate brown platter with matte white glaze is sporting grilled brussels sprouts with chanterelles. Thank you, Heather, for including elephant ceramics in your shoot! xo




veoveo



Here's a little article that just came out in the Spanish magazine Veoveo about elephant ceramics.  This a wonderful magazine all about makers and how they make a living doing what they love to do.  Thank you, Laia Blanco, for including a piece about my journey to ceramics.  





Wednesday, November 20, 2013

india/part two







































I have so many images from my trip to India which makes it very difficult to edit down to just a few for my posts!  We visited some really wonderful work spaces of the local crafts people and artists.  These  photos come from our time spent at the Indigo Village, Sanganer which is a block printing village, and to the Leheriya Dyer's workshop in Old Jaipur (the walled part of the city.)  We watched as carvers hand carved blocks of wood for block printing.  There were demonstrations of the various techniques used in hand block printing.  At the Leheriya Dyer's workshop we were shown how one piece of fabric is tied with multiple pieces of string to create a striping or plaid pattern....this can take up to three hours just to tie one piece of  fabric! These fabrics are used for saris and turbans.  It's one of the last remaining workshops in Jaipur still making this cloth by hand.  

Coming next in my series on India will be images from around Jaipur, along with photos of my trip to see the Taj Mahal. 






















Tuesday, November 5, 2013

india/part one

































I just returned from an amazing journey to India where I took part in a hand block printing workshop taught by Lotta Jansdotter and arranged thru Angela Ritchie's Ace Camps. I met up with a dozen amazing women in Jaipur who all signed up for this trip which included my dear friend, and fellow ceramicist, Paula Greif, and also included the photographer Jen Causey the creator of The Makers Project (you will want to see her images of India on her website.)  We spent four days at the gorgeous villa of Andree Pouliot, Ninder Mahal, learning about and making block prints....it was heaven!  Ninder Mahal sits high on hill overlooking a little village where we had a clear view of the activities of the resident monkeys, one of which visited us one afternoon for lunch.  They're not as cute when they want your lunch!  These images are of Ninder Mahal during our workshop including the beautiful lunch they prepared for us each day, the confections that Angela bought for us in the Old City to enjoy with our afternoon tea, some of the prints I made, the antique printing block of a cat that Jessica named Jerry (Jerry now lives in Brooklyn with Lotta!)  and Andree greeting our group on the steps of Ninder Mahal.

This will be the first in a series I will be posting about my journey in India.  I have so many photos to share.  The next post will include some of the places Angela and Andree (who has been designing hand block printed textiles for over 30 years and sold thru her Jaipur store Soma) took us to including an Indigo Village, a Leheriya Dyer's workshop in the Old City of Jaipur, the Anokhi Museum of Bock Printing and the block printing village of Sanganer.  

You can also see my India photos on my instagram page.









Wednesday, September 18, 2013

lost at sea






I am so excited to be invited by the artist, Heather Chontos, to participate in the "lost at sea" show at the Milk Farm Road Studio in Portland, Maine!  Heather is an amazing painter whose work I absolutely adore.  I am thrilled to have my ceramics exhibited alongside her paintings.  The show is on Friday, September 27th, from 6 to 8pm.  If you are in the area please come out to meet us!  Hope to see you there! xo








martha stewart living










Thank you, Ayesha Patel, of Martha Stewart Living magazine, for including my little porcelain cheese board in this beautiful story photographed by Maria Robledo!

donna hay black and white issue





I'm delighted to see one of my ceramics in the recent Black and White issue of Donna Hay Magazine!  The image is gorgeous!  If anyone knows who the photographer is kindly let me know so that I can credit them.

Below are "behind the scene" images taken during the shoot of this collector's edition of the magazine.  Look carefully at the table of white props and you will see a bunch of Elephant Ceramic pieces that Donna Hay purchased from me for this issue! Thank you to Matt Armendariz of Matt Bites blog for bringing this to my attention in his post!










Monday, July 29, 2013

dinner by chef david levi of vinland































Last week I hosted a very special event at my home.....a dinner by David Levi who will soon be opening the much anticipated restaurant, Vinland, in Portland, Maine.  Vinland will be the first restaurant in the United States to serve 100% local, organic food. 

David is a very passionate about the restaurants mission and you can read The Vinland Manifesto here.  David intends for his restaurant to be part of a food revolution "which is part of the broader revolution of our time, a revolution in consciousness, politics, and society."  This is a chef that truly cares about the food he will be serving you at his restaurant.

The menu, cooked that evening by David, Kate and Alex, was one amazing dish after another.  David and Kate had foraged quite a few of the ingredients the day before.  My husband and I even foraged for young milkweed pods along our road which David incorporated into two of the dishes.  As each dish was served and consumed my guests excitedly talked about ingredients that they had never tasted before and how surprising some of these ingredients were.  Beach radishes!  Have you ever had them?  We had not and now it's one of my favorite flowering greens that I hope to find on my next beach excursion. How about Reindeer Lichen cooked in duck fat?  So delicious!  You can see the menu below.  

David was a history teacher before starting on his journey to becoming a chef.  It's quite apparent that David is very comfortable with sharing his knowledge about the ingredients he uses, their nutritional value, his cooking methods, the benefits of fermentation and much more.  In his journey to open Vinland he spent time at both Noma in Copenhagen, and Faviken in the northern region of  Sweden as an apprentice chef.  

I wish I could have taken more photos of David's food that really did justice to the beauty of each dish.  Thank you to David, Kate and Alex for making this a very memorable dinner for all of us!  We await the opening of Vinland with much anticipation!


Vinland Tasting Menu: July 24th, 2013

Snacks
Mahogany clam with lambs quarters and ramp
Reindeer lichen
Hardfiskur with butter and nori
Kohlrabi chip with strained yogurt and cucumber
Grilled carrot with Olga and sage
Squid chip with coral emulsion and green onion

Mains
Lobster in broth with chanterelles and beach mustard, Chive, tarragon
Summer vegetables, raw, grilled, with 63°C egg and purslane herbed lardo
Raw beef with escarole juniper grass juice, sorrel, yarrow, pine and beach radish
Tomatoes with squash, summer corn, snow peas, basil butter and tomato syrup
Halibut with yogurt whey, new potatoes, scape, nasturtium and beach goosefoot and goosetongue
Juniper and Hay smoked leg of baby lamb on squash hay with mint oil, and broth onion
Honey goat Kefir granita with blueberries
Parsnip crepe with raspberries, and maple whipped cream