A Vermont couple makes beautiful furniture and pottery together.

By Robin Cherry

The first time I met potter Miranda Thomas, it was five minutes into our conversation before I realized I'd been caressing her husband's arm the whole time. Fortunately, she understood. Her husband is furniture maker Charles Shackleton, and the smooth arm of his handcrafted cherry chair is irresistible.

The joint enterprise of Charles Shackleton Furniture and Miranda Thomas Pottery (www.shackletonthomas.com; 800-245-9901), in Bridgewater, Vt., makes and sells exquisitely handmade furniture, pottery, and accessories. Shackleton works out of a converted 1750s woolen mill on the banks of the Ottauquechee River; Thomas works out of a small white clapboard studio, just across the street from her husband. 

Shackleton's first woodworking projects, as a child in Ireland, were lamps and treehouses. A descendant of the noted Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton, he went on to study at the West Surrey College of Art and Design, where he met Thomas. After school, they went their separate ways. Shackleton was lured to Vermont in 1981 to train under glassblower Simon Pearce, but he soon realized that his true calling was in wooden furniture. Thomas had gone off to the English countryside, where she worked first with one of the legends of modern pottery, Michael Cardew, and then with Alan Caiger-Smith, world renowned for his luster decoration. In 1983, Pearce invited Thomas to Vermont to design a line of pottery. Shackleton and Thomas were married shortly after they were reunited. 

Though they work in different media, they share a devotion to hand-worked objects with clean lines and delicate decoration—and theirs complement one another beautifully.  Nothing looks better on a Shackleton table than one of Thomas' radiant white porcelain bowls.

Shackleton designs all his pieces and then constructs them with a team of furniture makers. A single craftsperson chooses the wood for, carves, sands, and waxes each piece. Wood is harvested from self-sustaining forests, and Shackleton's company is certified through the Forest Conservation Program of SmartWood and accredited with the Forest Stewardship Council. It's a sensibility that shows in Shackleton's quiet hand-carved embellishments: understated curls, leaves, and rosettes. The great woodworker George Nakashima once wrote, "The woodworker's responsibility is to the tree itself, which has been sacrificed to live again in the woodworker's hands." In the hands of Shackleton and his team, that responsibility is well met.

Across the way, Thomas and her team of potters shape and decorate her designs, which are highly animated by nature. After the pots are thrown, rabbits, fish, birds, and peonies are drawn freehand using a porcupine quill and then carved into the work with a piece of sliced bamboo. Translucent glazes elevate the classic forms. President Clinton commissioned several bowls, including a stunning white bowl decorated with a dove of peace as a gift for Pope John Paul II.   

Four years ago, Shackleton and Thomas decided to sell their furniture and pottery exclusively through their own workshops in Vermont. In the tradition of master craftsman and designer William Morris, whom they admire for his commercially viable devotion to the integrity of handcrafted arts, they've created a successful business of their art, sacrificing neither quality nor success. And that can well be called an art in itself.