Hey there! Thank you for checking out LakeCeramics, a family run business of entirely handmade items, based in upstate New York. All of our items are original, handmade, ceramic pieces, designed and created by husband and wife team Joe and Marjorie Lake. Currently we’re making an array of fishes, as well as turtle shells, and sculptures of frogs, slugs, and frog-shaped boxes.

The process of making our fish begins with Joe, the primary craftsman and fisherman of the team. When he has a good catch, Joe brings it home to make plaster molds of it facing left and right. He then presses slabs of clay into the molds, shaping and setting them, and creating the built-in hanging structure at the piece's most balanced point. Once they look cleanly crafted, he fires all the fish in a ceramics kiln before passing them to Marjorie, the primary artist of the team. From a long time love of creating art and a lifetime of practice, Marjorie has the knowledge of colors and skills with patterns to bring the stone-colored fish to life. Every type of fish requires a different set of translucent glazes in the right order of overlapping layers, and Marjorie has invented and memorized all of them. When she’s done the fishes are fired a final time, and they emerge almost as bright and beautiful as their models in nature. At long last they’re given to me, and I get to photograph them and share them with all of you, here on Etsy.

This same creative system is used for the turtle shells in the shop, except Joe shows his more artistic side with these. He finds and molds a real turtle shell, then makes a clay shell and fires it in a kiln same as he does with the fishes. The second firing however is done in a Western adaptation of traditionally Japanese raku kiln, with raku glazes. Many of our ceramics are glazed and fired in raku, as you’ll see by the smoke-black raw clay on the backs of some fish and all the shells. The intensity of raku and its capricious nature combine to create some of our most stunning pieces, and each and every one is unique and inimitable.

If you see any sculpture items in the shop, they are definitely a work of Marjorie’s! Frogs, toads, frog boxes, slugs, and every one of her sculptures are handmade and hand-glazed. These are entirely unique each time, and very difficult/scary to pack and ship, so we don’t list them online as often as other items. If you see one in the shop it is a rare and treasured find, and if you’re interested but don’t see any, shoot us a message. Maybe we have something “in the back”.

We’re so happy people love what we love doing, if you like our work please leave a review and if you have any questions please send us a message! It means a lot to us.

Signed by their daughter, photographer, and biggest fan,
Suzannah Lake