Bulldog Pottery
Bruce Gholson and Samantha Henneke

Bruce Gholson and Samantha Henneke moved to Seagrove, North Carolina during the summer of 1997 and founded Bulldog Pottery. Their studio is on an old farm off Old Business Highway 220 five miles south of Seagrove and five miles North of Star.  When looking for Bulldog Pottery, the striking landmark is the Montgomery County blue water tower located at the entrance to their drive.  In 2007 Samantha’s parents, Ed and Gloria Henneke moved to Seagrove and joined Samantha and Bruce to live and work at Bulldog Pottery.  Ed and Gloria are ardent gardeners and help in the pottery, studio and the shop.

Ceramics stimulates in Gholson and Henneke a complete absorption with explorations of its chemistry, materials, and processes.  The discoveries they make together provide them a “treasure trove” of clay and glaze vocabulary. The fruits of these material explorations feed their personal visions, and offer further glimpses into unknown destinations and possibilities with clay.

 
Their studio is a collaborative environment that provides both Samantha and Bruce with support to express themselves as individuals, more than they could achieve singularly.  They brainstorm for ideas by formulating and testing clays, glazes, surface treatments, and playing off of one another’s intuition about the materials and processes.

Bulldog Pottery produces work that is an eclectic mix of form, imagery, texture, and pattern. The forms and imagery of their pieces are evocative of memories and interests from their past and present lives.  In her book The Remarkable Potters of Seagrove, Charlotte Brown writes of Bruce and Samantha,  “Their aesthetic is contemporary, American, and personal.  They are captivated by their adopted home place.  They find inspiration for their work in the landscape, in arrowheads they find by the hundreds, in the insects that swarm in summer months, and in the imagined fossils of this verdant land.” 1

Bruce grew up in Stillwater, Oklahoma, where he was first introduced to clay at Oklahoma State University.  Some years later he graduated with a BFA from University of Georgia in Athens.  After working as a professional potter for 13 years he received his ceramics MFA from the highly esteemed Alfred University. Samantha grew up in Blacksburg, Virginia, and was introduced to clay while attending college there at Virginia Tech.  After four years at Virginia Tech she transferred to the ceramics program at Alfred University and received her BFA cum laude.   Between the two of them, their artwork is included in museum collections across the country.  Some of these are the Mint Museum, (Charlotte, North Carolina), The Smithsonian Collection, Washington, D.C. (presently in the White House private quarters of the Obama First Family), Mobile Museum of Art, (Alabama), Gregg Museum, (Raleigh, North Carolina), Schein-Joseph International Museum of Ceramic Art, (Alfred, NY), Nelson Fine Arts Museum, (Tempe, AZ) New Orleans Art Museum, (Lousiana).

When visiting Bruce and Samantha at Bulldog Pottery you will find a variety of their personal interpretations of pottery from which to choose.  They will have their everyday sophisticated functional pottery glazed with their Moka glaze.  Moka glaze has soft reddish brown tones, and is decorated with different fun patterns of dots, swirls, stripes, and color fields on a variety of forms, such as mugs, various sized bowls, platters, pitchers, and serving pieces.  Together they have formulated unique molybdenum crystalline glazes that skin the surface of elegantly thrown vases.  The character of molybdenum crystalline glaze is diamond or star shaped crystals, with iridescent refractive rainbow colors that blend in subtly with the background color.  There may be agate pottery comprised of two or more clays that are thrown together resulting in a rich marble effect surface.   Sometimes Samantha glazes with her pastel lime green, shell pink, or canary yellow happy pottery colors.  Other works you may find there are porcelain-glazed paintings that hang on the wall.  These porcelain paintings may be of insects and foliage blown out of scale drawn by Samantha, or Bruce’s fossil fish imagery, delicately hand drawn in slip on the ceramic canvas and pottery forms.  Bruce and Samantha love their profession and welcome visitors to their shop.  Whether you meet Samantha, Bruce, Ed, or Gloria at Bulldog Pottery, they all look forward to sharing their excitement of ceramics with you.

1Brown, Charlotte Vestal, The Remarkable Potters of Seagrove, The Folk Pottery of a Legendary North Carolina Community, Lark Books, Sterling Pub. Co., New York, 2006, page 116

Bulldog Pottery
Bruce Gholson and Samantha Henneke
3306 US Hwy 220 Alt.
Seagrove, NC 27341
www.bulldogpottery.com
www.bulldogpottery.blogspot.com
bulldog@bulldogpottery.com
336-302-3469
Hours: Tuesday- Saturday 10:00-5:00 or call