Jordan King, Jordan King Clay

Interview with Katie Bonadies, March 2026

Pictured: Jordan King. Photo credit: Michael S.S of Blueprint Lens.

Jordan King, owner of Jordan King Clay, is a ceramic artist who explores material skill in clay with a practice of joy through play, discipline, and curiosity. King has worked in clay since 2014 and completed her bachelor's degree at Maine College of Art & Design in 2019. She joined RWS right after graduation and stayed until 2022, when she had to leave due to personal reasons. She returned in April 2024 after spending the previous two years healing her mental and physical health.

King’s functional ceramics are thrown on the wheel and hand altered. This process gives her work an organic, sculptural feel and creates a cohesive series of unique pieces. “Crafting an object is a conversation between myself and the end user. Some people care about the concept; some care about the aesthetics and feel. Most people fall somewhere in between." King is exploring different ways to meet those needs and says the next phase of her practice is to expand her variety of everyday objects while retaining that handmade feel.

In her beginnings with clay, King was much more focused on play and experimentation, but that had its shortcomings when she was looking to turn her craft into a living. She has learned to balance projects that allow her freedom to play with projects that begin with a straightforward plan. She often works on multiple projects at once and bounces between these modalities depending on factors like upcoming exhibitions and markets. She is always trying new things and can switch gears to achieve a specific vision quickly. 

"The Fire Guardians" by Jordan King. Photos courtesy of the artist.

Her dragon teapots, called “The Fire Guardians”, are an excellent example of her intentional merging of trial and error with a strong foundation in craft. The teapots were inspired by a four-second clip in the T.V. show, Avatar: The Last Airbender. King dug through the three-season series to find every quick visual reference, of which there are only several. She had the vision and knew the steps to see it through. 

King holds herself to a high standard of craft, creating clean, intentional attachments that interact harmoniously with the form. She leaves room on the surface of the clay for layering or sweeping gestural lines that follow the form of the pots– details that happen in the moment.Her favorite patterns include spirals and a radial dot formation that adorn her bowls, steins, and cups. The motif represents a seed and its exponential growth. This theme is conceptually recurring in her work as well as for King personally. “My work is a reflection of myself and a response to the world around me. I believe strongly in personal growth and self-liberation. I practice discipline by building habits that grow into a visible pattern over time. I reflect on these patterns as they expand outward, which in turn inform my creative pursuits. It’s like an ongoing conversation with my past and present self to shape the future me." 

Working with her hands has always been a meditative way to process things outside of King’s control. Growing up, making was like learning another language for King, and she spent a large portion of her childhood working with her grandmother on varied projects, from Halloween costumes, dioramas, and an edible scale model of the Globe Theater made from lebkuchen, a cookie dough similar to gingerbread. She tried many of the media enthusiastically and quickly lost interest for one reason or another. 

Experimentations in fiber as a teenager led her to seek higher education in the arts, and she enrolled at Community College of Baltimore County (CCBC) where she first discovered ceramics and earned her associates degree. She integrated herself into the studio there as a work study student. “It was my home.” She stayed for four years, polishing her skills before applying to transfer.

Seloura Frosted Earth cups by Jordan King Clay. 

Gold Luster Mug by Jordan King Clay.

King had some experience with craft clays as a child, but this was her first time in a studio with a wheel and clay from the earth. “I was interested in clay, and as soon as I got in the studio I thought, ‘This is it. I’ll never be bored.’” There are endless things for her to try, and she likes the process of starting with a formless substance and developing the skill to work with it. She can make anything she imagines within the practical confines of the material. “I was determined to get good at the wheel and build up that skill set.” As instant gratification driven as she was, King enjoyed having to see through the clay process from beginning to end. She felt it was a skill she needed to learn. 

Making ceramics is a humbling experience because no matter how much time goes into something, if one thing goes wrong it’s back to step one. King applied the perseverance she learned in ceramics to dig through her personal experiences. She kept her studio access at RWS from 2019-2022, even when she wasn’t coming in. “I felt like, if I didn’t have this place, I would truly feel lost.” She eventually let the studio go because she wasn’t using the space and was unable to afford the membership. It was a time of deep personal transformation and an incredibly hard decision for her to make. She was grateful to know she was welcome back at any time. 

Clay is a way for King to give voice to the things within herself that she cannot express otherwise, and her return to the studio had felt inevitable. “I’m taking in all of this information and synthesizing it into this object or creation or phrase that says what I want to say.” She returned to RWS in 2024 when she conquered the habits that had held her back. “I had a really profound mindset shift and healed a lot of those things.” She saved up the money and decided to commit to a year and paid in advance. King worked to remember the skills she had set aside and made milestone markers for herself. Creating “The Fire Guardians” was one of them. She had lived with the idea in her head for four years. Making the teapots was a way for her to play and have fun while remembering her ceramic skills. 

The Fire Guardians tea set by Jordan King Clay.

At the heart of it, King’s work is about creating pieces that challenge her intellectually and expand her technical skills. She hopes her ceramics encourage others to do the same for themselves. “I am learning that fulfillment is a combination of play, strategy, and cultivation of skill.” She feels that mastering skills and using them to have fun is an essential part of meeting the more subtle needs we push to the side, like creation and wonder. 

King hopes that her work inspires others to seek out tools to express themselves, expand their toolkit, and share that information with their community. “I think it’s inherently human. Tools were the first things humans created. Developing skills to craft objects that serve a necessary function is a deeply rooted and unspoken human language. Art and adornment are very interwoven with that. That’s the seed of culture. That’s the seed of evolution.” King feels like she is participating in a lineage of millennia-long practice that’s foundational to the human experience. 

One of King’s teapots is currently on display in the “Imagine That! Wit, Wonder and Whimsy” exhibition at The View Arts Center in Old Forge, NY, through March 7, 2026. She has an upcoming exhibition in April for “SIP: A Ceramic Cup Show” at the Savannah Clay Community in Savannah, GA. 

Contact Jordan King via email jordan@jordankingclay.com. Check out her Instagram page @jordan.king.clay to see more of her process, and her website Jordankingclay.com to see her portfolio and works for sale.