Flower pots are not like that. But even though Stephen Procter's large stoneware garden container stands 5 feet tall and contains 250 pounds of clay, it is functional pottery even without soil and plants.
He said that in the clay world, we always talk about functional and non-functional pottery and try to draw a line between the two. But Mr. Vermont-based potter. Procter has seen his and other large garden sculptures in action.
“Objects that evoke contemplation, that inspire, that provide this mystical sustenance function in deep and important ways,” he said. “It’s not functional enough to drink coffee with, but this piece has a high purpose in the landscape and in the world.”
Substantial sculptural elements can perform a variety of garden design tasks, he adds, and can enhance the structure of a landscape by calling attention to “points of contact – entry points, turning points or destinations”.
Mr. Proctor has observed the power of ceramics to transform space in his work for nearly 20 years, ever since his first installation in a client's garden, and has observed audience reactions at outdoor shows of his work in public gardens such as Blithewold in Rhode Island. I did. Edith Wharton's home in Berkshire, Massachusetts, Mount.
Like Wallace Stevens' poem 'Anecdote of the Jar', he talks about a round jar placed on a hill in Tennessee and what happens on the scene in response.
“The wilderness rose up there,” the poet wrote. “And it’s spread out so that it’s no longer wild.”
Inspired by seed pods, hives and cocoons
Lesson for gardeners: An impressive piece of pottery can play a pivotal role in your landscape design, just like a well-placed plant. This would be especially true if they were winter-hardy, like Mr. Proctor's high-fired clay bowls, which consistently perform in the garden each season.
In his eyes, sculptures with organic shapes fulfill this role especially well. He describes his form aesthetic as “a fusion of the classic Mediterranean flower pot language with forms inspired by nature (seed pods, honeycombs, cocoons).”
It's the shape and scale of the flower pot that does the job. He leaves the surface simple, without fancy glazes or decorations.
“I find that decoration tends to narrow down what a pot can be for someone,” Mr. Procter said. “It specifies a style or specifies an era or a culture. I'm much more interested in a Rorschach inkblot, an object that someone can take with them wherever they want.”
He said the vessels have a “living presence” with customers and garden visitors interacting intimately, including touching them and even talking or singing.
“They approach them as if they are friendly ponies,” he said. “They will pet them, they will hug them and they will always look into them.”
A couple who own a garden containing Mr. Proctor's work find its vitality so strong that they refer to the flower pots by personal pronouns.
“She brought a breathing focus to the garden and fused it with the surrounding woods and mountains,” Ingrid and Jim Miller of Dublin, N.H., wrote in an email to Mr. Procter.
It's like writing music, but with clay.
Unlike their figurative counterparts, the organically shaped sculptures “do not call attention to themselves, but rather blend in,” Mr. Procter said, using an expression from his previous music career.
After earning a master's degree in classical guitar, he worked as a professional musician. He said it wasn't until his mid-30s that he “got into clay.” The youngest of his three children was enrolled in her pottery classes, and he remembers seeing her holding her steering wheel.
“I was very intrigued by the meditation bubble that forms around someone hard at work on a potter’s wheel, as well as the magic that transforms this inert lump of clay into something that embodies intelligence,” he said. “It centers on many levels.”
Inspired by that, I took a class at a community clay studio. Unlike most other students, he said he wanted to explore large ships that felt like “some kind of mystical entity.” (It's no wonder I heard he used more clay in that beginner class than any of his decades of students.)
Now 68, he works as a teacher, offering classes and weekend workshops for people who want to build his signature tall ships.
Perhaps the best compliment he ever received came from a friend who knew him during his music days. “These look like crystallized music.” The man told him.
In fact, Mr. Procter said: “The same elements come into play when interpreting or composing music as when making a pot. “You’re looking at harmony and contrast, balance and flow, rhythm and expression.”
He added: “The transition from music to clay was strangely seamless. I felt like this was just a visual analogue of what I was doing in sound and time, and now doing in space and matter.”
Garden role of sculptural elements
There are many different roles these sculptural elements can play in your garden. Sometimes placing two pots in a garden space starts a double glazing. Even when one of them is not of heroic proportions.
“A much smaller pot that seems lost in itself may be quite a distance away, but somehow it belongs to that larger pot,” Mr. Procter said. “And people draw very strong imaginary lines between the blood vessels. The mind and the eyes want to connect them.”
Elsewhere, a large bowl can create a focal point from which other elements in the garden appear to radiate. As in Wallace Stevens' poem, Mr. Proctor said it was as if “the flowerpot were reshaping everything around it.”
He said that when used to mark a transition between garden areas, the vessel “becomes the greeter to this new part of the garden you are moving to, if you will,” or marks a change of direction or branching point.
“When placed carefully, they bring a sense of wonder and serenity to your journey down the garden path,” Michael Gordon, a garden designer in Peterborough, N.H., told Mr. Proctor.
Several customers have used one of his flower pots in a way that fascinates him. That is, it was placed next to a very large rock. “It somehow tames the rock,” he said. “It doesn’t diminish it in any way, but it adds another element and starts a dialogue between the wild and the artificial that I find mysterious and interesting.”
Some outdoor sculptural elements may beckon loudly from afar. This is the case, for example, when showcasing formal planters in a formally designed garden placed on a plinth. But Mr. Proctor is often happier when the lines are a bit blurrier.
“More organic and wild flower pots are sometimes more fascinating when partially obscured by foliage, sparking the curiosity of ‘what is this?’ What about the rest? How do I understand that?’” he said. “And in some ways that can be a more fascinating and fascinating attraction than appears all at once.”
In an email to Mr. Procter, Bess Haire and Chris Gunner of Jaffrey, NH wrote: “More than mere decoration, flower pots are for us barometers, mirrors, companions and sentinels.”
Into the kiln and into the garden
Just like building a garden, building a large container cannot be rushed. From start to finish, the process takes approximately 3 weeks.
“The faster pots are made, they’re not as good,” Mr. Procter said. “There are several benefits to taking a step back and letting the ideas settle down a bit, then coming back and revisiting them and working on them incrementally.”
Even after all these years, he admits it sometimes seems absurd.
After about a week of hands-on production time, he lets the pieces air dry for a week or so before they are ready to be fired.
Just seeing Mr. Proctor's assistant loading the kiln in a recent Instagram video is enough to make viewers anxious. With the help of a gantry crane, much like when an engine is lifted in an auto shop, the kiln floor is spread out to meet the incoming vessel. After several days of gradual warm-up, the pieces inside a 6-by-6-foot box on a brick foundation burn to 2,340 degrees in 14-hour cycles. It is then cooled slowly over two days.
Each pot has a lid, which is used to seal out moisture that could cause damage by melting and refreezing inside during the winter.
However, the lid is closed for the rest of the year. Or at least that's what Mr. Proctor prefers.
“It feels like they are breathing the same air and participating as the trees and plants,” he said. “When I close the lid, I somehow feel more introverted and pregnant.”
Margaret Roach is the founder of the website and podcast. road to the gardenAnd a book of the same name.
If you have questions about gardening, email Margaret Roach at gardenqanda@nytimes.com. She may answer this in her future column.