Weston, Connecticut based potter Frances Palmer's passion is to create irreverently shaped white tableware and accessories. Frances offers both custom works, which she throws by hand in her studio one at a time for private clients, and the Frances Palmer Pearl Collection™, a line cast from her handmade molds by century-old Buffalo Pottery.

The hand-thrown process leaves a good deal of the outcome to fate. Frances revels in this serendipity, and is fond of saying that the clay “has as much to say about itself as I do.” She also loves the randomness of the transformation in the firing process. “As it dries, it moves. And when it is fired two or three times, it definitely changes. The best part is seeing what emerges after the kiln is opened.”

This is why she can describe something like a set of twelve cups as each having its own personality, a goal she sets for all her pieces: to be simultaneously functional and artful. To that end, she looks to the turn-of-the-20th century Bloomsbury-based Omega Workshop, an artists’ collective making useful objects in defiance of the Industrial Revolution. Other influences on her design approach include the elegant proportions of ancient Greek and Roman vessels, the simplicity of the 19th century European creamware and Song dynasty ceramics, the stoneware and porcelains of British artist David Leach, and the dramatic sculptures of Diego Giacometti.