About

 About Horse Hair Pottery

The horse hair pottery that I create is hand crafted from a porcelain based clay. After the shape is finalized, the piece is trimmed and burnished several times. It is slow dried, bisque fired, and refired in a primitive wood firing where it gets background coloring and is heated to apply the hair. The piece is then pulled from the fire at a high temperature and the hair is applied to create the decorative veining design. It is then cooled, cleaned, polished, waxed, and embellished.

My custom horse hair pottery is for the purpose of creating unique memorials or commemorative pieces to honor special equine partners. It is the residual carbons from the hair that leave the veining design on the piece, thus always firing out black. I offer embellished options to incorporate braids within the artwork so that you can see the hair fired into the artwork as well as the original color of the horse in the braid.

The custom pottery option works with canine hair and feathers as well. The canine hair has to be the longest and coarsest hair of the dogs coat.

The story told is the original creator was a Navajo woman and this process was used by some tribes to honor horses that died in battle.

No horse is harmed in any way to acquire hair for this technique. It is part of the normal grooming process.