Paul Eilert, RIP

[offcntr]

I'm not entirely sure we ever met. I think he came to my Saturday Market booth once, visiting with friends in Eugene. It's also possible that friends in Eugene sent him that first, fateful pot without him ever visiting in person. In any event, that pot started something.

The next I knew, I got a phone call from this fellow in California, who collected animal art, specifically fishing bears, and could I make a table setting for him? All the same pattern: black bear with a salmon in its mouth.

I said, Sure, and that was the start of my long relationship with Paul Eilert.

I made him oh-so-many bear pots over the years: that initial set, with dinner and dessert plates, soup bowls and mugs. Later, servers, toddler bowls (I added a bear cub behind the mama, in keeping with my "baby animals" theme), smaller plates, stews and dinner salads too, I think. A couple of sculpture bears sized to fit over the necks of wine bottles. The occasional order of replacements for dishes that hadn't survived his grand-kids. He once sent me a picture of his table set up for a big family gathering, with all the dishes, service wear, and carved wooden sculptures of black bears with dangling wooden salmon on chains. I saw it on my desk not that long ago; if I find it, I want to scan it and share it.

I took his last order this spring--more mugs, bowls, dessert plates. Unbeknownst to me, he was building up his table service to the point that he could divide it into two complete settings for his daughters to inherit; family heirlooms, in a word. When I shipped them off to California last month, I got a phone call from his daughter, Leslie. He'd died of cancer just a week before.

I'm still a little stunned. It's hard to believe I won't hear that dry, twangy voice anymore. I've taken one last commission for him, through his daughter: a set of three funerary urns in which his kids will share his ashes. I just glazed them yesterday.

Fishing bear pattern, of course.