Segal’s pottery gets Newport “All Fired Up”

By: Allison Brown
Posted In: Entertainment

Watching Lee Segal, co-owner of All Fired Up, a pottery gallery on historic Thames Street, work his magic in finalizing a clay bread bowl before painting, truly is a fascinating experience. Segal, a Los Angeles native, has spent the past 30 years perfecting the fading art of pottery making and ceramics. Having lived up and down the California coast, Segal relocated to Rhode Island, and eventually settled in Newport. Segal opened up All Fired Up with co-owner Irene Parthenis in 1995. Previously, Parthenis had opened up a pottery store by the same name in Jamestown years before, but chose to relocate. The two of them craft and sell all of their creations in their two store fronts.

Having been inspired after taking ceramics his last semester of high school, Segal received his Bachelor’s degree in ceramics at University of California Santa Cruz. He then lived as a hippie potter for a few years in Mendocino, before relocating to San Francisco, where he resided until moving to Rhode Island in 1990.

In addition to being a potter and business owner, Segal mixes up all the glazes used for his pottery, and he teaches a pottery class to a group of 12 in South County, near URI.

Q: What made you first get into pottery and ceramics?

A: I always liked working with my hands. I had good woodworking skills, little bit of furniture making. Took three years of woodshop in Middle School and high school, and got very good at it. But then took ceramics my last semester of high school, and it was a lot quieter to work with. There was the addition of live fire to transform the clay pots into a stoneware consistency, there was plastic, you could add color to it. It just really attracted me for a number of reasons, and then I continued; I started studying it full time at Santa Barbra.

Q: I see that you make all the pottery, and do you fire it here as well?

A: We fire it here, and we have other kilns, we have electric kilns, we have gas fire kilns, and we sometimes share firings with other potters in wood fire kilns.And then you’re also dealing with high temperature and atmosphere in the kiln.

I remember you mentioned that you use earth materials for the glazes.

For potters, we buy our clay and glass making materials from large commercial mineral and clay suppliers.I mean there’s a whole many materials, and of each of those materials, there are different minds, and they have different characteristics, and we use them, and we make up our glazes. And, it’s almost like a cake recipe, but there are recipes for different kinds of melt, different color; it’s quite a science to that. That’s why the electric kiln is only oxidized, only a blue flame. You can’t create a red glass. To create a red glass, you take copper, and you reduce the oxygen, and it flashes red, and that happens at extremely high temperature. So I’m firing these kilns between, say 22 and 24 hundred degrees Fahrenheit.

Q: Are special-order pieces a minority?

A: .We’re probably producing about 1,500 pieces a year now, and maybe 100 custom pieces a year, for people. you know the truth is if I do a dinnerware set for 10 and four places, that’s 40 right there, 40 custom pieces. I just did four sets. So that’s 160, and I’m doing these. So it’s probably more, it’s probably, 200 pieces a year.

Q: So, what’s the most interesting question a customer has asked you, or requested?

A: One guy looked at a piece of fish sculpture, and said to me “That looks like a surrealistic fish.” Now, surrealism is a major art view movement in Europe and the Untied States, a lot of dreamers, and imagery. Salvador Dali is the most famous. So to have someone with an art education, not only as a studio artist, but there are less and less people with art educations.

Now to have somebody come in here and look at this fish vase here, and to have someone come in here, and look at this and talk about it that way, like to know what they’re talking about, that’s a great personal shopper as well. Yeah, so, and that’s a wonderful thing of course, it’s still not necessarily an art education.like these guys who build the wooden boats across the street.it is an art.but its not about, but subtly its about creative interpretation. But its not.like that big fish I showed you as a vase. So it’s a vase, right, but they don’t make theirs, but a boat is a boat.

It doesn’t get quite that far. There’s a very old argument between craft and fine art. And that I do both things. It’s a real different mental activity, art making, than, making pots, as beautiful as they are. Me making this bowl, now decorating, and dealing with patterns and things like that, this stuff’s subtle, and in fact I use what I learn here and then I’ll put it together in these more artful pieces.

Q: Would you say that the business differs a lot between the summer and the winter?

A:Yeah, you know business in Newport, in the winter, is very, very, very slow. This is a time, when I keep working, and, this time of year, I try to wholesale this work to different American craft stores, and gift stores, but the general, retail climate in New England is, very slow, and has been for, post-9-11, in my personal experience with what’s going on in New England.