A peek into Bill van Gilder’s creative career
When you meet Bill van Gilder, you can’t help but want to shake his hand--and no, he’s not a politician. Van Gilder’s hands are the creators of the art he’s molded his life around. As a renowned potter with a successful business in Gapland, as well as the founder and owner of a pottery school in Frederick, van Gilder has followed the path of a dream that was first formed nearly 35 years ago.

His passion for pottery began as a freshman in the ceramics department at Thomas Johnson High School in Frederick. “When I saw my first pot being made at the potter’s wheel,” he recalls, “I knew it was something I wanted to do for the rest of my life if I could learn how to do it.”

Van Gilder developed his skills over the next three years and was accepted for an apprenticeship with British-trained potter Byron Temple in New Hope, Pennsylvania. When not in school, he spent “every waking moment” with Temple, who recommended that van Gilder train in England. Van Gilder followed that advice and studied for a year in Ireland and for the following year in Yorkshire, England.

Despite his extensive apprenticeship experience, van Gilder says he knew he needed more education to accomplish his dream of opening his own pottery shop. He attended the Harrow School of Art in London for two years, studying chemistry and minoring in engineering before earning his degree in 1972. Pottery then took him thousands of miles from England; he spent six years in Swaziland and Lesotho in southern Africa, setting up pottery training centers for the World Bank, a United Nations agency that funds projects in developing countries.

By the end of the 1970s, with multiple apprenticeships and higher education under his belt, van Gilder decided it was time to return to the United States to open his own studio. Although he had a small one in Pennsylvania for a couple of years, he became homesick for the region where he first discovered pottery. “I’ve always loved the Frederick area,” he says. “I’ve lived in some very beautiful places, but Frederick is still home—it’s a very comfortable place for me to live and work.”

Van Gilder opened his studio and gallery in Gapland in 1986. “There’s a good market here in the countryside, so close to Baltimore and Washington,” he says. Van Gilder found a small wooden barn and equally diminutive nearby house abandoned (he now lives in the house, which used to be the tollhouse at Crampton’s Gap in Burkittsville in the late 1800s). He tracked down the property’s owner, who said he had wanted the barn to become an artist’s studio. “It was a perfect match,” van Gilder says.

But creating a successful pottery business wasn’t easy. “If you want to survive as an artist, you have to know how to work hard,” he says.

In addition to the difficult physical labor involved--van Gilder processes over six tons of clay a year--he spent years developing a market for his pots, which involved shipping his crafts across the country. ”A potter becomes a carpenter, a chemist, a bookkeeper, a salesman, a shipper--on top of being an artist,” he says.

Despite the long hours and hard work, though, van Gilder adds that making pottery for a living “is a job I love. I don’t know what else I’d ever do.”

And who wouldn’t want a job they enjoy so much?

“When I sit down at the pottery wheel, everything stops; the most important thing to me then is what my hands are working on. It’s a very peaceful, centered place to be,” he says.

Van Gilder’s nearly 35 years of experience making pottery have not only made him a master of his craft, but also an excellent teacher, a role he may not have anticipated as a high school freshman. “Now, as I hit my fiftieth year, I¹m finding I need to pass on techniques I’ve learned from others to students,” he says.

Van Gilder began teaching pottery at Art League Studios, Torpedo Factory in Alexandria, Virginia, five years ago. “I discovered I was good at teaching, and I enjoyed it,” he says. He is best known locally, however, as the owner of Frederick Pottery School, which he founded three years ago after many requests for lessons. “I wanted to provide a place for budding potters, whether 8-years-old or 80-years-old, to learn,” he says.

The artist also conducts one- to four-day workshops across the country, and writes a monthly article for Clay Times magazine in Northern Virginia. Further, he’s developing a television program on making pottery for the cable network DIY, part of Home and Garden Television.

Van Gilder’s business and frequent teaching may make his schedule look impossible, but he says he’s glad to have found this profession and craft, which he’s loved for over three decades.

“When my life is over, it’ll probably end at the potter’s wheel,” he says. “And that would be fine by me.”

From the Student’s Seat
I watched potter Maggie Creshkoff make several pots this summer, and the ease with which she did it made me realize that it looks deceptively simple--after all, she’s been a potter for more than two decades, and it wouldn’t take years to perfect a craft that anyone could learn in 10 minutes.

So, when given the opportunity to take a six-week class at Bill van Gilder’s Frederick Pottery School, I jumped at the chance to put my artistic skills--or lack thereof--to the test.

The first day of class, I watched my instructor, Ann Roberts, demonstrate how to put a dry mound of clay on the pottery wheel, coax it with plenty of water up into a cone, and center the spinning mass. While the clay continued to spin, propelled by the electric wheel, she pushed her fingers into it and pulled it into a cylinder, which, she said, is the basic shape from which all pots are made.

It looked easy enough.

Then I tried it.

I struggled just to keep the clay in its original round shape while centrifugal force pulled it in the opposite direction of where I wanted it to go. When it came to pulling the spinning clay into a cone, my naïve, gentle attempts proved futile--I became frustrated and confused by the amount of sheer strength required to perform this simple task (why did it look so easy when Ann did it?).

She constantly reminded me to keep my elbows in close to my body, to prevent my arms and hands from bouncing up and down with the force of the wheel. Only with a lot of upper-body strength can one keep her hands steady, and only with steady hands can one make pottery.

The first day of class--okay, I admit, the first three classes--I was only able to make small bowls, each no more than two inches high, which my sister classified as stereotypical beginning potters’ ashtrays. The technique of raising the clay higher into a cylinder just wasn’t working for me--try as I might, each attempt only resulted in a wide, weak bowl that collapsed after I pried it off the wheel head.

I practiced making cylinders several times each week and finally, in the fourth week, I succeeded. With Ann’s help making a sturdy handle, I turned it into a mug. My dozens of misshapen ashtrays now had a functional and, if I do say so myself, impressive-looking companion.

Since that class, I haven’t been able to master more than making cylinders, and my ratio of attractive mugs to uneven little bowls leaves much to be desired. But coming into the class, I didn’t expect to become a master potter--I didn’t even know if I’d like making pottery. As someone who¹s most artistically advanced work was a cute drawing of a horse in the fourth grade, however, I was pretty proud of myself for getting over the hump and moving beyond ashtrays.

I took away from the class not just a bunch of small bowls and a few mugs, but also a huge appreciation for the difficulty involved in making pottery. I’ll never have as much skill and experience as Bill or Ann, but I can cross “making pottery” off my list of things to try at least once--and add it to the list of things I¹ve done that I really enjoyed.

Alison Walker