Mt. St. Helens Box. A friend has been cleaning out her house and asked me if I wanted this piece back. Absolutely! I wish I’d kept more of the pots I made for 20 years. This is porcelain, cone ten reduction from back in the days when could still throw. I know exactly when I made this because the ash cloud in the sky is actual Mt. St. Helens ash, so it was 1980. I could sell all the Mt. St. H. pieces I could make that year, and a few in 1981, but none after that. Like every other NW potter, I got a bucket of the ash and tried it in glazes. It settled out so fast it was kind of useless. So to make the ash cloud in this scene, I glazed the landscape the way I always did, trailing on each glaze. Then I put the dry ash in a salt shaker and just piled it on top of the glazes. Looked just like an ash cloud!