Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is know for thrown wood fired pottery. One of Bennett's specialties is table settings, each of which include a dinner plate, salad plate, soup bowl, teacup and saucer. His work is influenced the the many years he lived and studied inJapan. ToshiFukuma, his Japanese mentor, came to Massachusetts to supervise construction of the first noborigama, hill climbing, kiln in the United States. In addition, it was the first Japanese wood-burning kiln ever built in the Western Hemisphere and only the second built outside Japan.

Bennett developed many glazes that run the gamut from bluish celadon greens, purples, what he calls peach blossom, to mauve. He alsoproduced blues using glazes made from the ash of Japanese rice straw, whites from the wood ash of the kiln, and a range of reds, oranges, and ambers derived from Japanese Feldspar.

In terms of art history, Bennett locates his work in the line of the unknown craftspeople of 10th-century China and later in Korea and Japan.