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GA06001
Communion Ware highlights Presbytery's international ties by Robin C. Oliver
BIRMINGHAM, June 15 * As Birmingham ceramic artist John Rodgers sits at a table in his suburban studio, carefully stamping each hand-thrown chalice plate with an intricate design, an onlooker can easily conjure the image of another artist. This second man is working with the same intensity and care. His studio setting is less familiar but yet in some ways similar to Rodgers' rural Alabama town.
Photo courtesy of Committee on Local Arrangments. The pattern he is carving * the same that Rodgers works to replicate in clay * is a pattern of interlocking arms repeated in an unbroken circle. In this artistic partnership, those arms stretch across the ocean from the Congo’s West Kasia province, where the pattern was born, to Alabama.
When the faithful meet for worship at the 217th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), they will also be part of this international connection. The stoneware chalice that will be used during Communion will be from the chalice Rodgers created. The chalice, which will be available for purchase, is a replica of a wooden communion chalice made in the Congo and given to the Presbytery of Sheppards and Lapsley by the Congo Partnership Team.
The chalice celebrates the enduring connection between the Presbytery of Sheppards and Lapsley and the peoples of the Congo, which can be traced to 1890 when a missionary team from Alabama made the journey overseas.
Once the Committee on Local Arrangements decided to have the chalice reproduced, they set about looking for an Alabama potter who was up to the task. Because of the detail in the chalice pattern, producing each of the 400 needed for the General Assembly proved to be cost prohibitive. They found the solution in Rodgers last summer at Pepper Place, a weekly farmers market near downtown Birmingham where local artists occasionally can be found selling their work.
Rodgers’ background is in production ceramics. A native of Alabama, he moved to Alaska as a young man to take a job in construction. During an economic downturn, Rodgers found himself without work and stumbled into ceramics as a hobby to keep him afloat.
The temporary self-employment eventually turned permanent, and Rodgers earned a name for himself making figurines and shipping them across the state of Alaska. His studio grew to an 8,000-square foot production facility that was featured in Giftware News and Collector Editions magazines.
After returning to Alabama, Rodgers turned to making and selling wheel-thro wn work. When he saw the wooden chalice, he knew his experience creating molds and mass-producing work in Alaska would make it possible for him to tackle this project.
"I liked the piece and the challenge it presented," Rodgers said. "They wanted the piece enlarged. There are a lot of mathematical calculations and working with the clay and doing test runs to make it work."
Each chalice was created in a mold press in Rodgers' studio in Chelsea, just south of Birmingham. He recruited a small team of potters to carefully touch up the delicate pattern on the pieces as they were removed from the mold. Rodgers designed a plate to accompany each chalice, and the plates were wheel-thrown and the design applied by hand.
The chalices will be available for sale in the General Assembly gift shop. The price is $95 for a chalice and plate.
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