The collapse of our market only illustrates this more conclusively — this is the death blow. I’m excited!
— Careen Stoll, a potter from Portland, Oregon on a new role for small artisans, feeling needed, and firing a kiln fueled with vegetable oil.
Trent Gilliss, Online Editor
Iranian Potter’s “40 Angels”
by Colleen Scheck, producer
Fatemeh Keshavarz, our guest in “The Ecstatic Faith of Rumi,” periodically distributes a personal newsletter sharing her thoughts and opinions on Iranian news, culture, and US-Iranian relations and politics. What I enjoy most about these newsletters are the visual elements she includes that highlight photography, art, and multimedia features that you wouldn’t find in U.S. media.
Recently she included a link to a slideshow of Iranian women potters describing their art. One potter, Maryam Kouhestani, talks about her striking piece of figures worshiping behind 40 angels:
“…My angels are children who were born old. They all look rough. They have not experienced the tenderness of childhood, but deep down they are still children. One of my angels is trying to tell her fortune. I got this idea from the children there. Their lives are so much at the mercy of fate and random events that they are always trying to find out what will happen to them next.”
