Pot Stuff

The expensive glaze contains zinc oxide crystal nuclei that grow during the long firing process. The fan-shaped crystals foam and float on the surface of the glaze while it is molten and freeze in place as the glaze cools. "It melts like butter on a hot potato. But if it's too hot too long, it just runs off and I lose everything," he said.

Morgan's gleaming creations look as if they belong in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but they are displayed simply next to his salt-glazed pots in his working studio with its plywood floor, old sofa and resident basset hound (who is corralled behind a child's safety gate for customer safety).

A particular vase caught my fancy, but, priced at $850, soared above my budget. The artist corrected me. The price was $8,500. "There are six hours of work in a single coffee mug and I sell it for $45," he said. "It should be $145. People don't see half a day's labor in that mug. I have to educate them."

Offering us a cold Pepsi, that's exactly what he did for the next hour.

Ben Owen III: Brilliantly Red

During Ben Owen III's private kiln openings, the lines are so long to get in the door that he periodically has to lock up and restock before new customers can enter. "We have had 100,000 people through our shop," Owen told us. "Sixty percent are repeat customers."

Owen, 33, is a member of a Seagrove dynasty whose ancestors came from England. He is a cousin of Vernon Owens at Jugtown -- same family, different spelling of the last name. His grandfather, Ben Owen, worked at Jugtown from the 1920s until 1959, when he opened his own studio. His father helped his grandfather. Ben took over the studio in 1981 and uses the same rebuilt groundhog kiln his grandfather originally built. He has several kilns and one multi-chambered gas kiln that will be fired for the first time this summer after two years of design and construction.

"You have to have the right tools in the kitchen. You don't use the same batter bowl to make a pie as you do a cake," said the artist of his different kilns.

Owen's cakes and pies are something. Displayed in his modern studio -- next to delicate blooming orchids for a dramatic effect -- were a dozen brilliant red vases, a trademark of his family's style. His work is internationally recognized and he has traveled to Japan to participate and teach in ceramic workshops. He has been an instructor at Penland and Arrowmont craft schools and has had a slew of exhibitions, including ones at the Chrysler Museum in Norfolk and at Alfred University in New York, which is widely recognized for its ceramics program.

Owen studied by tagging along behind his grandfather and later at East Carolina University where he earned a BFA in ceramics. His grandfather told him to keep life simple. "I try to do that where I can. My work is handmade, one-of-a-kind. It is designed for collectors.

"In an age like today, full of mall shopping and instant gratification, it's nice to slow down and enjoy the pleasure of something made by hand."

Susan Harb last wrote for Travel on a shopping trip to Mexico.

Details: Seagrove Pottery

GETTING THERE: Seagrove is in central North Carolina, 40 miles south of Greensboro and about a six-hour drive from Washington via I-95 to I-85 to Highway 220 south. Potteries are scattered among the farms, barns and churches of the rolling rural countryside; homemade signs tacked to trees direct you from one pottery to another. It's a lovely drive. It is also a dry county. If you want a glass of wine before dinner, bring your own. No alcoholic beverages are sold in restaurants or stores, and our B&B didn't even have a corkscrew.