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Kingsley is a potter working in Brookline, Massachusetts, who has been making and selling her work since 1993. Her formal
training and professional background are in architecture. She is a registered architect who initially became involved in
pottery as a hobby, but soon found it to be a more rewarding and satisfactory medium. Her study of architecture arose out
of a simultaneous interest in science and art, but it was the need to actually make things that made clay a more appealing
medium - things that still satisfy the needs for form and function that architecture does.
"Many of my designs are inspired by primitive decorative motifs, particularly african. I delight in the slight
inexactness of handwork. I do not layout my designs beforehand, and often end up with too much or not enough space when I
come full circle, but it is just this deviation that excites me. The marks reflect the tools and the hands that made them.
No two designs are ever alike - rather, each one builds on the ones that came before.
"The purses came about unintentionally, when a canister slumped and looked more like an old worn leather bag.
I put a long droopy strap on it and voila! Inspired by a childhood fascination with my mother's evening bag collection, and
the uncanny resemblance of my black glaze to patent leather, I created the first series of bags, and began experimenting with
ways to make them functional - cookie jars, teapots, jewelry boxes.
"I half-jokingly tell my friends (and former professional colleagues) that the only thing I miss about architecture
is the clothes I got to wear; perhaps the purses are a way of satisfying my interest in fashion and accessories, and of a
certain formality lacking in the casual and ever-dusty world of the pottery studio."
Kingsley has been a member of Feet of Clay Pottery in Brookline Village since 1991, and has been a manager there
since 1996. She sells her work in several local galleries, as well as the bi-annual Sales at Feet of Clay. Current galleries
include Shake the Tree Gallery in Brookline, The Clever Hand Gallery in Wellesley, and The Sign of the Dove in Cambridge.
All of the work is made of high-fired stoneware and fully functional. All pieces are food-, dishwasher-, microwave-,
and oven-safe.
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