Louis Mideke was a world-class Pacific Northwest potter known for his single-fire technique. Never one seeking recognition elsewhere, he valued beach-stone beauty and sturdy usefulness.
Born in 1908 to a farming family in Grandview, Washington, Louie (as he was always known) came to Bellingham in 1927, working typical Northwest jobs: sawmills, steamers and forest-fighting. Then in Alaska, homesteading and mining. He returned to Bellingham each winter, courting Jean Hibner. They married in 1938 and returned to Alaska, where she cooked for a mining camp where he was the foreman.
During WW II, Louie worked as a welder in a Bremerton shipyard and their son, Michael, was born.
Still seeking a way to earn a living and be his own boss, they returned to Bellingham where he tried wood-working, metal sculpting, and finally clay. Meanwhile, Jean taught at Meridian to provide them with a steady income.
In 1945, Bernard Leach’s description of making and firing Japanese pottery, A Potter’s Book, became available in this country and Louie used it to teach himself the basics. He began with commercial glazes and fired in a small electric kiln. Then, using local clays, he developed slip glazes to brush directly onto the raw clay — a technique called namakake, and in 1951, he won the L.T. Butler award for excellence at the Northwest Craftsmen’s Show in Portland, Oregon.
For the next 20 years, Louie sold pots out of his studio on Sunset Drive, developing new shapes and colorful glazes when he shifted to porcelain clay. In 1974, the Whatcom Museum mounted a retrospective show of his work and in 1981 he was named a “living treasure” by the Bellingham Municipal Arts Commission. Louie died at home in 1989.
What makes Mideke Pottery unique? The process of single-fire glazing is technically challenging, but the final product is a smooth and durable molecular bond between clay and glaze. Beginning with local clay as the basis for a slip glaze, Louie brushed slip onto the stiffened red-clay pots.
Middle-period. In the late 60s, with a gas kiln and a grey stoneware body, he produced a wide variety of sturdy bowls with 4 or 5 coats of brushed-on slip glazes and simple incised designs – made possible because he could cut through the glaze into the clay body.
Late Period. In the early 70s, he shifted to using a porcelain body from Westwood Ceramics in Los Angeles. Porcelain has a shorter throwing range, but when fired to cone 10 (2100 degrees), it is hard as an agate. Some of the large flat bowls were thrown into a home-made plaster form to support the weight of the flared walls until they were leather-hard and a foot could be trimmed.
Firing was a 3-day process, because he needed to heat the kiln very slowly to drive off any moisture before gradually increasing the temp in a light reduction atmosphere. He was adamant about cooling slowly as well, allowing a full 24 hours for that. I have never met anyone else who was willing to work within the discipline of single-firing pots with such attention to detail.
Truly, he was a master in a long line of classic potters.
This MUSEO collection of Mideke pots was gifted by Marjory Zoet Bankson, who studied with Louie Mideke in 1966-67 and later became a potter in Leavenworth, Kansas and at the Torpedo Factory in Washington, D.C.
