Handmade in Alabama is a box set of image books that featureAlabamians who spend their lives producing handmade treasures.
Miller Pottery Since 1865, Book One of the set, is a hardcover pamphlet binding printed on my handmade bleached abaca paper. The cover images are printed on faux vellum. All of the photographs are my original photography and were taken with a Pentax K1000 (35mm). 
In December of 2004, Randy Arnold and I traveled to Brent, Alabama to interview and photograph Eric Miller of Miller Pottery. Eric, a fifth generation Alabama potter, welcomed us into his studio, an old brick structure with few interior walls. At one end of the building, there is a walk-in sunken kiln that is big enough to fire over a ton of clay. During the first afternoon that we spent with Eric, he shared many stories about what it was like growing up in the oldest pottery family in Alabama. Eric’s distinctive raspy laugh peppered his stories of traveling around the southeast in the 1960s with his father, selling stoneware pottery to Mom and Pop shops. Although the family owned and operated shops that once sold Miller pottery have been boarded up in favor of big box stores, the Millers still dig their own Alabama clay. Their craft is one of Alabama’s treasures. 
The Artist's Handmade Bleached Abaca was crafted in the Lost Arch Papermill in Tuscaloosa, Alabama in December 2007. Binding for Miller Pottery Since 1865 was completed in April 2008. Other materials include faux vellum, linen thread and binder's board.The complete box set Handmade in Alabama is currently under construction.
