posted 07/07/11 06:16 PM | updated 07/07/11 06:16 PM
Featured Post! | Views: 353 | Comments : 0 | Arts, Music & Culture

Two of Ketchum’s Texans at Ketchum Arts Festival

Wedding Plate by Dianne Taylor

Like so many of us, Dianne and Elmer Taylor fell in love with the Wood River

 

Valley the first time they visited.  That was back in 1986 when Elmer was invited here to

 

do a three week workshop for the Sun Valley Center for the Arts.  “I can remember

 

driving over the old railroad bridge south of town and seeing a panorama of mountains up

 

close and in the distance, says Dianne.  I felt like I was coming home. Elmer looked over

 

at me and said ‘This is it!’  We’d been looking for a place to retire eventually and open a

 

small pottery shop.  We knew we had found it.” The Taylors purchased a small log cabin

 

on Washington Avenue before they left to return to Texas.

 

For the next sixteen years, the Taylors rented the cabin during the school year and

 

returned every summer to live in it and make pots in a building in the back yard that they

 

converted into a studio.  When they weren’t here, the Taylors were in Texas teaching at

 

the University of North Texas, near Dallas.  Dianne taught Art History, and Elmer taught

 

(and still teaches) Ceramics.  In 2002, Dianne took early retirement to move to Ketchum

 

full time and open Taylormade Pottery in the same cabin on Washington Ave., where

 

they live.  Elmer still teaches, coming to Ketchum in the summers and during other

 

school vacations.  Dianne began teaching Ceramics part time at the College of Southern

 

Idaho Blaine County Center in 2009.  She also manages Taylormade Pottery.

 

            Both Taylors have been making pots since the 1960’s. After Elmer graduated

 

from Arizona State with a Master of Fine Arts in Ceramics, he went to England to

 

apprentice with English Master Potter Michael Leach, son of Bernard Leach.  (Bernard is

 

credited with reviving Studio Pottery, making functional pottery in a small studio setting,

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