MORRISVILLE, Vt. (WCAX) – Some people come into this world naturally gifted. Elaine Diamond is one of those people.
“I was an artist from the day I was born,” says Diamond. “That’s all I ever wanted to do, was draw and paint and make pictures.”
Illustration was her calling for some 30 years. That is — before adopting her son.
“I decided I needed a mommy’s night out, like it was a lot more intense than I had imagined it would be,” Diamond laughs. “And, so I started pottery.”
That’s when she found out that she was pretty keen for clay.
“It’s challenging, it’s therapeutic, it’s everything,” she says. And, as her passion for pottery grew stronger, she started using rolling pins made overseas to add texture to her pieces.
“Clay loves texture, and these rolling pins work really great on clay,” explains Diamond.
But in 2019, Diamond got sick of shelling out cash for new patterned pins, and realized with a background in illustration, she could make them herself. She bought 100 plain rolling pins to put her own designs on. Then, she listed them for sale.
“And they were gone. They were gone like, in minutes,” she says.
That’s how she wound up launching Vermont Pottery Works. With a workshop full of laser printing machines and pottery equipment, Diamond is molding all of her passions together. The process begins starts with a design.
“I’ve always been drawn to very technical illustrations. When I make my designs, I just add a lot of detail to them and I try to tell stories with them,” she says. Before they’re put on the pins, Diamond measures them out down to the ten-thousandth of an inch for a perfect fit. The drawings are adjusted before being sent to machines that laser engrave the designs into the wood. And, to keep up her love of pottery, Diamond tests out each new pattern on a hand-built piece of her own.
“It’s so much personality. I mean, it just changes the whole dynamic of a piece. You add so much flair when you’re adding in texture,” says Diamond.
Lately, pottery has taken the back seat, as these popular pins are ordered from all around the world. And Diamond is essentially a one-woman show, designing, engraving, assembling and shipping around 200 pieces a week. But, for this artist, the labor of love is well worth it.
“It’s a really cool feeling to know that your designs are being put in clay, which is going to be fired to stone, and could be on this planet for thousands of years,” she says.