Why Stripes?
On rhythm, rebellion, and the line that emerges from a spinning wheel.
I have always loved stripes. On clothes, on vessels, on candy wrappers and towels. I own several Saint James shirts, the classic Breton ones with boat necks and horizontal lines, and they have become a summer uniform. I was drawn to stripes in almost everything, without really knowing why.
That changed when I read The Devil’s Cloth by Michel Pastoureau.
The book traces the history of stripes and how their meaning shifted over centuries. In medieval Europe, stripes marked outsiders: prisoners, jesters, heretics. Striped cloth was chaotic, disruptive, socially dangerous. Only later, in the 18th and 19th centuries, did stripes migrate to children’s clothing, mattress ticking, sailor uniforms. It was the sailors that rehabilitated them entirely. Stripes became nautical, summery, clean. They became French.
Pastoureau gave language to something I was already sensing in the studio. Stripes carry structure and rebellion at once. A solid color disappears into form. A stripe declares itself. And yet stripes invite play: they can waver, wrap around curves, misalign slightly and still hold. They repeat, but never quite the same way.
In the studio, it started without a plan. I painted stripes on thrown vessels first, then began
carving them, especially on cupcake stands. Carving introduced something new: not just a
visual interruption but a physical one, embedded in the clay. Something you feel in the hand as
much as you see. From there, stripes moved into match strikers, where the raised texture is
functional too, into rings, where vertical lines cut against the logic of a circular form, and into
espresso cups. Once I tried cuerda seca, a wax-resist technique that left the stripes with a
stained, almost outlined quality. I liked what it did. I am still not sure why I stopped.
On thrown pieces, the stripe is born from a particular kind of collaboration. Your tool stands still. The clay spins. The line emerges from that relationship, from stillness and momentum meeting at the surface. It is deeply satisfying, every time.
Stripes let me interrupt form without cluttering it. They add rhythm and structure, with room for variation—different colors, different depths, different finishes. Even small mistakes become part of their energy that make pieces feel alive. Once, I experimented with cuerda seca, a wax-resist technique that gave the stripes a stained, almost outlined quality. I liked the results, I'm not sure why I stopped.
Stripes have been misunderstood for centuries, worn by the wrong people, on the wrong side of every room. Maybe that is part of what keeps drawing me back. They can be bold or quiet, serious or playful. They impose order and then undermine it. They never try to disappear, and they never quite mean only one thing.
