Nick Corso, owner of Wissahickon Pottery, a one-person pottery operation in Roxborough, develops and formulates all of his own glazes. All of his pieces are fired in his gas-fired kiln.

by Lou Mancinelli

Old World attention to rustic aesthetic. A well-lit studio close to Wissahickon Creek. A connection with materials, product and people. For Roxborough resident Nick Corso, owner of Wissahickon Pottery, this is the rubric of making pottery.

For Corso, the craft of pottery is a process rooted in connection. Corso digs up the clay he works with himself, at a clay mine in Maryland. And he mixes the glazes he uses to color items like a forest green ergonomic pitcher himself, often collecting rocks and other material to be ground into powder on his own.

The pieces he makes, whether a natural ash honey pot or a vase, are embodied with a vintage, hand-crafted, homemade charm. Before moving to the area with his wife Rachael a year and a half ago, Corso spent the previous dozen-plus years developing his pottery studio outside Baltimore County in Maryland, where he was raised.

There he had built his own wood-fired kiln. His studio was surrounded by a wooded area, much like it is now, at his new home just up the hill from Forbidden Drive and Wissahickon Creek.

“I've always found that my best teacher has been working with clay,” Corso said during a recent telephone interview, a few days after hosting a December Open Studios event. The clay reflects his mistakes when the final product strays from his vision, and the clay highlights his achievements when his finished produced matches his initial vision. “Really looking at what I'm making and how well it fulfills my vision is the learning process,” he said.

Growing up, Corso always knew he wanted to be a craftsmen. As a kid he would make beads using a kind of play clay kids get their hands on, and he sold them to friends. While he studied business at a local community college in Baltimore County, his real education was learning the craft of pottery. He started learning shortly after high school. He would travel to different workshops, meet fellow potters, create a connection. Ten years after beginning, Corso finally felt like he could make a quality piece.

“I think when people buy things, they use them and create a connection to the pieces, like they would to a person, to a friend.”

In a way, an element of Corso's style is the process itself. By digging his own clay, Corso literally gets his hands dirty, establishing an immediate connection with both the earth and clay that he will later shape. His vision involves creating pieces that, in some way, have a life of their own.

“It's not just making it a certain kind of way,” Corso said. “It's about bringing a certain kind of life to each piece.”

That life Corso is referring to is the entire process he follows when creating his pottery. The pieces he makes grow from a vision rooted in tradition and informed by pottery that has been made across the world in different cultures for thousands of years. Indeed, there is a primitive element to Corso's work. You might say one of his teapots is uneven or looks lopsided. But this is all intentional. There's a level of quality and personality to the pieces you don't see in stock store-bought items from places like Target.

What Corso's work offers is a level of individuality. You get a craftsman with homemade, community values who lived in a cooperative living community for six years prior to moving to Roxborough. You get a 33-year-old family man (Corso's daughter is five months old), a small business owner interested in building his business in this community. (The couple moved to the area because Corso's wife grew up here.)

After having an established clientele in Maryland, Nick is starting over again now in northwest Philadelphia. Just recently he ran into someone at Weavers Way Coop who'd purchased a piece of his pottery. They told him how they saw Corso's pottery at a friend's place and how they planned to purchase more.

It means working every day and establishing connections with local retailers — The Cedars House Cafe and Random Tea Room downtown are two places his work can he found — and meeting with clients through appointments. “I'm just at the beginning of the path of establishing this business,” Nick said.

For more information visit wissahickonpottery.com