And as far as I know about Alix's [MacKenzie] work, I don't believe she ever did any sculptural work at all. It was always pottery.

We both [with Alixandra Kolesky MacKenzie] got into ceramics, you might say, by the back door. Looking back on it, I think this was a very good thing.

Bernard's [Leach] drawings delineated every little accent on the pot, every subtle curve and change of angle and proportion and all.

Those two teachers [Kathleen Blackshear and Robert von Neumann] were just fantastic, I thought. They never directed you in a single direction, but they just encouraged you to think for yourself.

This is something which I think I have been able to communicate to both people I have taught and people that have purchased our work since that time, that they all say, it's so nice to have these pots with us all the time and to eat out of them and be in direct contact with them in our homes.

In looking at these pots at the Field Museum, Alix [MacKenzie] and I both came to a conclusion individually but also collectively that the pots that really interested us were the pots that people had used in their everyday life, and we began to think - I mean, whether it was ancient Greece or Africa or Europe or wherever, the pots that people had used in their homes were the ones that excited us.

We'll be potters, we'll be painters, we'll be textile designers, we'll be jewelers, we'll be a little this, a little of that. We were going to be the renaissance people [when we were young].