On the farm: Mike Crouch pottery
A SERIES ABOUT OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH FARMERS, RANCHERS, FOOD PRODUCERS & MAKERS.
THE MAKER: Mike Crouch of Mike Crouch Pottery
LOCATION: Lawrence, Kan.
INGREDIENTS: Mud, ash, wood, fire
Chef Vaughn Good scans several stacks of stoneware plates before spying one of his favorite pieces buried near the bottom.
He plans to use the shallow rimmed, speckled gray plate to serve Barham Family Farm smoked beef heart tartare, a signature dish at Fox and Pearl that is prepared in a cast-iron Dutch oven over coals in the restaurant’s custom-designed wood-burning hearth.
“Over time, I start to remember the plates, and I’ll dig down until I think, ‘Oh, yeah, that one is cool!’” Chef Vaughn says while rubbing his index finger across the plate’s face. “My favorites are the ones with texture. They look like a piece of rock to me.”
The gray complements the bourguignon-style braised beef heart, which is accompanied by a wedge of pumpkin turned on its side and punctuated by a white beef bone harboring tiny spoonfuls of buttery marrow.
The rustic collection of wood-fired, hand-polished custom porcelain and stoneware vessels that have become a cornerstone of the restaurant’s timeless aesthetic are the work of Lawrence’s Mike Crouch.
Mike’s pottery studio is located in North Lawrence, a residential neighborhood with old-fashioned back alleys and tree houses. Flanked by a giant weeping willow, the kiln in his backyard back yard is approximately the size of two telephone booths pushed together.
On an unseasonably warm afternoon in early December, Mike uses a long metal pole to stoke a lava-hot fire with lumber stacked like a Jenga game, scruffier chunks of fragrant Eastern red cedar and, finally, splintery pieces referred to as chopsticks.
The wood-fire eventually reaches 2300 degrees Fahrenheit. The scorching heat, along with smoke and ash creates chemical reactions such as flashing, a process which imparts natural residues ranging from dusky red, orange and yellow desert sunset tones to the rainbow iridescence of glass.
The pottery is mostly unglazed, except for the ash build-up that forms a natural glaze inside a bowl, on top of the plate or sometimes around the rims. Swirling eddies of ash dispersed by the air currents, as well as the placement of pieces within the kiln, affects the final color and patterns.
“I let the wood kiln do the decorating,” Mike says.
No two plates are exactly alike, yet they are uniform enough to stack because they are thrown on a mold. Using a mold allows for shapes that have the same thickness and weight, but also gives each piece its “own little wobble.”
When Mike is not working as a potter, he’s most likely working as a plasterer on custom homes, and his craftsmanship is visible on the gray cement stucco exterior walls of his own home.
“Everybody kind of knows about adobe, but it took a while before it finally dawned on me that you could build a house out of dirt,” he says.
A small straw bale studio with clay walls and a wood-burning fireplace at the edge of the yard serves as his showroom and workshop.
“I just like mud!” Mike says.
He played in the mud as a child. His grandfather tried, in vain, to teach him the art of shaping mud pies. And that love of mud would continue to shape him into adulthood.
When his father died in 2007, Mike dutifully honored his last request to use his ashes to create keepsakes for family members.
“I harvested some dirt from down by the pond and I mixed his ashes with it. I got a lazy-Susan and used it as a pottery wheel, and fired them in his little wood stove, and that is how I got started,” he says.
As Mike continued to create more pottery, he built a kiln and fueled it by wood, in part because he didn’t know anything about running gas lines. A typical firing requires 30 hours. When the fire reaches its peak temperature, Mike allows the temperature to reduce to 2100 degrees, at which time he closes the doors to the firebox and applies wet clay with a trowel to seal up the cracks between the exterior bricks.
Deprived of oxygen, the fire rumbling inside the belly of the kiln seeks to escape its confines, sending billowing puffs up the smokestack and out the seams of the pergola, fingers of flame lashing out of the various peep holes used to monitor the process.
“I’d love to have a glass wall to know what is happening in there,” says Mike, who must keep close watch throughout the process for both art and safety’s sake.
The chemical reactions continue as the kiln cools for another five days, at which time the door can be opened, and the carefully stacked pieces removed. The pieces are hand-rubbed with small discs of sandpaper to remove a layer of color deposited during the firing and any rough edges.
When Chef Vaughn opened his first restaurant, Hank Charcuterie in Lawrence, the sandwiches were served on metal trays lined with a sheet of butcher paper. As the butcher shop morphed into a full-service restaurant, the search was on for distinctive plateware.
Chef Vaughn initially encountered the artist who he would dub the “plate wizard” while visiting a Lawrence coffeeshop that had commissioned a supply of coffee mugs. While Chef Vaughn had specific ideas about the functionality and dimensions he wanted for his own restaurant’s dishes, he was otherwise hands-off.
“That he was open to the idea of unglazed wares in the first place was remarkable, not to mention the whole idea of using bespoke, hand-crafted wares in a restaurant setting. I count myself very fortunate to be able to partner with Vaughn,” Mike says.
The pottery specifically designed for Fox and Pearl includes hubcap-size platters originally designed for charcuterie and a half-plate/half-bowl hybrid with a squared lip just high enough to keep sauces from running. The platters are heavy to carry but stand up well to high volume usage, and although some pieces eventually nick or chip, that everyday wear only adds to their rustic charm.
“I feel like artists are sometimes dictated to by a client. When you’re cool with an artist’s style, it’s best to let them run with it. It’s important to allow artists the freedom to be themselves,” Chef Vaughn says.
“I think that’s generally true for any kind or art. The more you try to choke it into submission, the more you’re squeezing the soul out of it. Better to let it ride.”
Diners have come to recognize the distinctive small-batch wares and associate them with Fox and Pearl.
“I knew from the start I didn’t want white plates,” Chef Vaughn says. “A lot of restaurants have dishes that try to look like handmade pottery, but they are actually mass produced. When I saw Mike’s first run of plates, they just seemed to make sense with the style of food I do.”
“I feel like artists are sometimes dictated to by a client. When you’re cool with an artist’s style, it’s best to let them run with it. It’s important to allow artists the freedom to be themselves”
