meet the maker
In 2017, Tanya Lee, a full time middle school humanities teacher, learned that her school was putting some pottery wheels into storage due to space constraints. She had taken a pottery course through a local recreation centre a number of years previous and asked if she could borrow one for a few months to develop her skills further. Several months, and hundreds of small pots later, she began to gift her pieces to friends and family. She would give her pots in sets of 3, one for salt, one for pepper, and one for a small succulent. She found it tricky to transport the pots and came up with the idea to make flights out of driftwood using the tools from her father’s workshop. The driftwood idea began as a means to an end; to transport the pots as a set. However, the reaction to the overall aesthetic of the ceramics set in driftwood received such a positive reaction that Driftwood Pinch Pots was born.
Each piece is either thrown on the wheel or hand-built and hand-painted. The colour palette is inspired by the beaches of Vancouver Island; soft blues, subtle sands, and seagreens. The driftwood is gathered above the tideline from local beaches. Favourite spots include Willows and Gonzales Beach. Driftwood is carefully selected based on size and look. Finding cedar is like striking gold for the aroma it releases when it’s being sanded and drilled and for being so iconically west coast. Family friends often drop off interesting pieces of wood they have found on their travels. Occasionally, work will be commissioned by a client that wants to turn a foraged piece of driftwood from a memorable trip, into something beautiful and unique.
Tanya has always had an affinity for art. After receiving her Bachelor of Education in 1998, she travelled extensively throughout Europe and visited some of the world’s most famous galleries. She loved the art world so much, while living abroad in 1999, she worked as a life model for an art college, just to be a part of the creative process while pursuing her teaching career. After trying various forms of art herself, she discovered a passion for working with clay. This passion, paired with her entrepreneurial spirit, led her to enter her first market in the summer of 2018 and has since become a successful small business. “I still get giddy knowing that my pieces sit in the homes of hundreds of people, both locally and internationally. There is nothing quite as satisfying as making. As a middle school teacher, I work with kids in their interim years. I love my job as a teacher; however, I don’t get to see the “final product”. With pottery, you start with something raw, and make it into something beautiful. The fact that others love it enough to want it in their homes is just the best feeling.”