Asian art and culture inspires Frederick potter

some pottery at his studio. Melton did so and was able to raise about $1,000 for his trip.

The trip was better than he’d imagined, he said. “One of the highlights was that I was staying in a town near Mount Fuji. It was just beautiful, waking up every day and looking over my shoulder to see this massive volcano. It was incredible.”

He also loved interacting with people because everyone was so nice, and he felt like he instantly fit in.

He was able to meet some area potters in person and talk with them, sometimes with the help of a translator. He talked with Robert Yellin, of Robert Yellin Yakimono Gallery in Keyto, who doesn’t create pots but sells work from potters across the nation. Additionally, James Erasmus, a wood-fire potter who studied in the UK, showed him around studios, and he and his family put Melton up for the night.

“It’s my favorite memory because they were all so kind to me,” he said

He also toured the campus of Kyoto University.

“I’ve never been to a university just for art, but the facility they had was pretty amazing,” he said. “And seeing the number of kilns and the size of the kilns especially, it was pretty awesome. It’s nothing I’ve seen here.”

The large kilns he saw were roughly the size of a bedroom, he said.

He also visited what he calls “pottery towns.”

When he asked Melton at what temperature he fired them, Melton told him immediately. In that instance, van Gilder said he recognized in Melton another young potter: himself.

“I saw a little piece of me in Philip,” van Gilder said. “I know that maybe sounds egotistical, but I thought, well, I get it, and there’s no reason why he can’t do it.”

He said when he was 16 years old, he went to a potter’s studio with a box of his own pots and told the potter he wanted to be a potter. He worked with that potter for three years.

Melton started his apprenticeship with van Gilder in August 2021, the same month he started taking classes at Frederick Community College, where he was pursuing his ceramics career and studying under art professor Shane Sellers. Additionally, Melton balanced his schoolwork and pottery with a parttime job.

Van Gilder said Melton has been a good fit for his studio.

“One of the things I value a lot in this young man is his work ethic,” he said. “He’s not afraid to work — and it’s actually really cool to have a young, hip kid around the studio. Keeps me up-todate on what’s actually happening out there.”

Melton said he has learned a lot from van Gilder, who has shown him the technical side of building pots. He’ll often go to van Gilder’s studio a couple times a week, then come home and practice on his own. Melton said he’s noticed that his technical skills have shot up quite a lot in the past year, under van Gilder’s guidance.

But he’s also learned that pottery isn’t all about making pots. It’s also about creating a business, so being a potter can be a career path.

When Melton told him about wanting to go to Japan to explore pottery and tour some college campuses, van Gilder suggested he sell

“Each pottery town had a different style of pottery,” he said. “ And I think my favorite style of pottery was in the town of Bizen. I talked to a couple of potters there, and some potters showed me their workshops.”

He explained that Bizen pottery has a clay body and doesn’t use glazes but, rather, is glazed naturally from the kilns themselves and the ash.

“I love that, because it really produces a natural, earthy type of look,” he said.

The trip was more than a lesson on Japanese pottery, though, and he’s decided that he wants to permanently move to Japan sometime this year.

“As much as I like the pottery, the thing that spoke to me the most was just Japan in general, the culture,” he said. “Japan just felt like home.”

Crystal Schelle is a journalist whose work has been published locally, regionally and nationally. She enjoys trivia, cats and streaming movies.