Slightly Off Center

Some years ago, my friend Kathy Lee started me on a new sideline. She was a potter as well, and her late husband a Lutheran minister, so she'd done a lot of altar ware over the years. Now her church, Central Lutheran, wanted a complete new set: chalices, patens, ciborium, and fairly complicated structures. The chalices were designed for intinction--dipping the host in the wine--and also needed to accommodate both wine and grape juice in the same vessel. Kathy was no longer young, didn't want to take on such a big job, and, frankly, I needed the work.

The commission led to other work, over the years, both for Central and Springfield Lutheran churches. And I recently got a call from the head of the altar guild at Central: their cleaner had had an accident with a backpack vacuum, and could I make some replacements?

As it happened, I had one spare chalice in the shed, but they needed four. Also some tiny patens, and a mini-ciborium that matched the glaze on the rest of their set.

It'd been several years since I'd last made these; I was surprised how quickly it came back to me.


Now I have to go back through my records and see what I charged for these...