Last Page - Becky Lloyd

Becky Lloyd started carving designs into her porcelain pieces on a whim, at the off-hand suggestion of her late husband, Steve. The two met in college studying wood-fired pottery—where ash leaves a decoration, but one the artist has little control over. She didn’t know the term for it then, sgraffito (Italian for “to scratch”), but has embraced and used this centuries-old technique since to create the elaborate natural designs for which she’s now known. Many of her patterns are inspired by the prairie land and grasses of her youth living in the Midwest; she’s called WNC home since 2006. “I’ve taken sgraffito to the kind of extreme, where things are very, very intricate,” she says, adding that she finds the challenge of condensing her patterns as much as possible to be soothing. That’s also how she wants others to perceive her work, hoping when they see or hold a pot that it’s “a quiet place they can go to and contemplate something different.” lloydpottery.com