Pottery
Photo by Anna Nguyen

These Made-in-SWFL Ceramics Define Pure Elegance

Estero-based ceramicist Jordan Blankenship melds functionality and design for thoughtful, everyday essentials.

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Inside Jordan Blankenship’s Estero studio, sunlight pours over rulers, metal ribs, calipers and porcelain cups packed with wooden tools. With the sound of the wheel humming in the background, the artist spends her days making handcrafted, functional pottery for the home.

Long before founding her line, JordanBCeramics, the Florida native grew up moving across the state for her dad’s career as a soccer coach. She became attuned to the things she and her family carried along the way. Jordan remembers her grandmother’s heirloom plates and mugs carefully wrapped from move to move, only to be unwrapped and stored for safekeeping in the back of a shadowed cabinet in the new home. “Eventually, we realized that we valued them too much just to use them for the holidays,” she says. “Why keep the good stuff locked away?”

As a freshman at Florida Gulf Coast University, Jordan enrolled in her first ceramics class. Though she had no prior experience, she’d heard rumors around the arts complex that wheel throwing was the best course. Students would spend lots of time together practicing after class, sharing equipment and building community. “It was like this light bulb went off,” she remembers. “It was a really good energy, and I knew I wanted to be there.”

The budding artist spent the rest of her collegiate career sharpening her skills and developing her craft. “The second I touched clay,” she says, “I realized the more time I put into it, the better everything became.” Following graduation, she worked as the art director at a ceramic studio in Naples while launching her first collection on the side.

Determined to turn her passion into a profession, Jordan pursued a master’s degree in fine arts at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. The further she dove into the craft, the more she understood pottery could be a thing to treasure and enjoy at the same time. “I wanted to show people how functional ceramics can both be an art form and something you use every day,” she says. “When you elevate that and notice that it’s art, you get this new perception of how important the little things in your life can become.”

In the meantime, she unveiled a second ceramics collection founded on a series of stacking pieces such as jars, coffee pour-overs, mugs and teapots, all of which allowed people to mix and match slowly while customizing around their daily routines. “People are thinking about ceramics, but subconsciously, not intentionally,” she explains. “I’m trying to reimagine something familiar, so they get excited to start their day with something as simple as a mug.”

Like many artists, Jordan finds fulfillment in the creative process and physical demands of her work. “You have to completely reimagine how you’re positioning your body to throw a piece,” she shares. “I always think of people when they do meditation and center themselves. The same thing happens when I’m throwing on the wheel—it’s this great balance.”

Jordan opts for neutral hues to emphasize the functionality of her ceramics, which include tablewares and planters. 

Be it a speckled match striker or a mug glazed in black matte, every piece of work starts on the wheel with pre-measured clay to ensure consistent sizing and dimensions. After they’re shaped, the pieces are put on shelves to dry before being fired, glazed and fired again. From start to finish, it is a 100 percent handmade process. Since stoneware is the gold standard for durability, the artworks can be used every day and are dishwasher, oven and microwave safe. Each new piece feels like a gift to herself—and the future owner. “It’s like Christmas every time you open the kiln,” she says. “When you see something, and it works exactly how you envisioned it, that’s the magic moment.”

Jordan describes her aesthetic as simplistic, with a focus on form and neutral colors. “I’ve embraced the fact that I like to keep everything minimal, though I’ll focus on changing the shape, form, or subtle lines and curves,” she shares. “That’s where I find my joy.”

Despite making roughly 1,000 pieces of pottery a month, the ceramicist takes pride in still being a one-woman operation. Recently, she solicited her mother to help with packing and mailing orders to her roughly 60 standalone retailers across the country. “I call her the shipping and handling department,” Jordan jokes.

Jordan’s house in Estero has been retrofitted into a studio, with wheel-throwing in the office, kiln firing and glazing in the garage and packaging and storage in the dining room. Eventually, she’ll have to move into a larger building as she expands her business. “I want to become a big studio where I have other potters working with me to create home decor and dinnerware lines,” she says. She also envisions a space where people can watch the creation process before picking out the pieces they want to go home with. “I like the idea of adapting and changing … as long as it’s always going to be handmade, and it’s a great group of people working together and having fun, that’s the goal.”

While JordanBCeramics grows and evolves, Jordan’s work continues to focus on elevating the slow, daily rituals in life. Her best-selling mugs make the morning cup of coffee a little sweeter; her popular candleholders are bright spots on dinner tables. Recently, she started cross-selling her ceramics with other makers’ goods—a pair of Bluecorn beeswax candles go well with Jordan’s tall candle tapers for a lovely gift. She’s also been playing with cork, fashioning coasters and lids combined with ceramic to make the pieces more functional.

Whether she’s throwing a cereal bowl, a juicer or a dinner plate, Jordan aims to bring joy to the day-to-day. “Ceramics have the potential to change the way we view our relationship with objects,” she says. “I make the piece and that’s my relationship with it, but once someone takes it, they create their own memories.”