Excerpt from Deep Cut
By Glenn Adamson
It took two discoveries for Sally Silberberg’s porcelain sculptures to come to light.
The second occurred quite recently, when Silberberg, downsizing from the home that she and her husband Bob have shared in Plainfield, Massachusetts, decided it was time to show them to the world, and she invited me to visit. It was something of a reunion for us. In 1995, at the age of 21, I had briefly worked at The Clay Pot, the beloved Brooklyn craft store that Bob and Sally founded in 1969. (It is still alive and well, relocated to Hudson under the stewardship of their daughter Tara.) Back then I was just starting my own journey into art and craft history; a year away from starting grad school, I learned what I could from the items on display. Little did I know that Sally had recently completed some of the most consequential works in American ceramic history.
And that, of course, was the first discovery: Silberberg’s own. She had graduated in 1967 from Alfred University – then, as now, the most technically-oriented ceramics program in the country – and, inspired in part by an influential year in Sweden during her course of study, had established herself since as a successful production potter. Silberberg showed on the circuit, selling her wares at the Northeast Craft Fair in Rhinebeck and other venues – the same places that she and Bob sourced talent for their own shop – and did well thanks to her skilled throwing and gorgeous glazes, including a signature dusky-pink made with copper. She was, in short, a successful participant in the studio craft movement. But Silberberg was also restless. Making tableware all day, every day, had lost much of its charm. As 1985 rolled around, The Clay Pot began to make real money and her kids went off to college. She finally had the opportunity to experiment. And so she stopped going to craft fairs, and more or less sequestered herself in her studio – just a little outbuilding of the house in Plainfield - listened to opera as she worked, and dug deep.
