upside-down thrown vase, James Sheldon Carey

Exhibition Label: "Windmills to Workshops: Lawrence and the Visual Arts," Jul-2004, Kate Meyer Carey, a Fellow to the American Ceramic Society and KU faculty member, used innovative techniques to create his organic, textured vessels. Among his inventions was the upside-down wheel, which he used to create tall, slender works like this one. The wheel let Carey pull the clay downward, allowing him to work with gravity rather than against it. This made it possible to create pots in excess of three feet tall. Technical advances such as the upside-down wheel gave Carey more freedom in the kinds of forms he was able to create. In addition to ceramics, Carey also worked in glass. In the late 1960s, he initiated the glass program in the design department at KU, where he was a faculty member from 1944 to 1976. Archive Label 2001: Carey invented a throwing wheel that allowed him to make very tall, slender vessels such as this one in a single section of clay. After throwing and opening the clay on the wheel in the usual fashion, he would then turn the wheel upside down and reverse the motor, stretching out these tall vases by working with gravity instead of against it.