“I consider my own gardens — where a clay pot is never less important than what’s planted in it — when Mara and Lenore ask me to design a pot for the Seibert & Rice ‘American Collection.’ I draw a basic Long Tom. It grows into a Longer Tom with a thin rolled edge at the top. And another roll at the base, for balance. I doodle wispy vines. They will be incised above and below the rims. I doodle some friendly critters, homage to my coworkers in the gardens that we share. They are hand-throwing the pots that I designed, these artisans of Impruneta who don’t speak any English. My Italian couldn’t be worse. Yet, positioning Abbie’s critters with the flying ones on top and the crawlers on the bottom, that was their interpretation. We’re talking the same language, the language of the garden." - Abbie Zabar
