Rachel B Jones, stoneware potter extraordinaire and beloved mom, left this world peacefully in her sleep very early in the morning of Dec 30, 2019 at the age of 92 years and 4 months. Only a year previous, she had told her daughter, Bronwyn, not to worry about a difficult passing; when the time came she would go, "Pfffft, just like that." And so she did.
While our hearts ache with this immense loss, her wonderful, independent, creative spirit lives on in all who knew her and the gorgeous pots and vessels shaped by her amazing hands and forged in the fire of her kilns.
Born Aug 21, 1927 in Detroit, she was the second child of Joseph "Joe" and Elizabeth "Betty" Buegeleisen. Her father was the founder of Buco, at its peak one of the largest manufacturers of motorcycle accessories in the country, including leather jackets and innovative helmets.
Drawn to clay and sculpting in elementary school, Rachel majored in jewelry making at Cass Technical High School and Russian literature at Highland Park Junior College (now Highland Park Community College). But it was at Cranbrook Arts Academy where her prodigious talent for ceramics bloomed under the tutelage of the great Finnish potter and teacher, Maija Grotell, head of the Cranbrook Ceramics Department until 1966.
In 1947 and again in 1948, Rachel won awards in the prestigious Syracuse Museum of Fine Arts Ceramic National competition, her prize winning pots submitted at the request of curators to the permanent collection in the Smithsonian National Museum.
Two scrappy artists and recently returned WWII veterans, JT Abernathy and Paul Haller Jones "Hal," also students in the Cranbrook Ceramics Department, courted her. While J.T. became a lifelong friend, Rachel fell in love with and married Hal in Aug of 1950, and in 1955 the couple migrated east to New York City so Hal could pursue a promising career as an abstract expressionist landscape artist. While their marriage ended in divorce in 1967, it produced two children, Bronwyn and Sam, who Rachel always called her "two best pots."
She loved working in her pot shop in the basement of the home she and Hal purchased on Crescent Avenue in Leonia, NJ, in 1956. She often said how much she loved creating with clay and then coming up in to the kitchen to create with dough. Her yeasted stollen, poppy seed coffee cake, sticky cinnamon rolls and Zwieback crusted farmer's cheesecake were legendary.
Rachel could fix almost anything and knew best how most things should be done; woe to the carpenter, house painter or plumber who fudged a job and was then subject to her withering critique.
Yet, she never scolded when a pot was accidentally broken or cracked by a pet, her children, or their friends. Rather, she said it simply meant the spirit within the vessel was ready to break free and depart.
Her functional stoneware bowls, colanders and teapots were in the Japanese tradition and heavily influenced by Shoji Hamada and Bernard Leach. She believed in the Buddhist idea of beauty, the quiet eloquence of a brush stroke, the inky pour of a blue black glaze over porcelain. She admired the centuries old aesthetic of Eastern art, the humble elegance of handcrafted ceramics from Japan, Korea and China, and she worked in that tradition.
Rachel exhibited and sold her work at shows throughout New Jersey, New York, and Michigan, and from her homes.
And she supported her children in all their artistic and educational endeavors with all her heart. Though she forbade a television in the house while her kids were growing up, once they were out on their own, she bought a set and promptly fell in love with Starsky and Hutch. She adored her many dogs and cats, and her son, Sam, attributes his affinity as a dog trainer to her special rapport with Ming, the pug, Lila and Goliath, the Great Pyrenees, and Jesse, her beloved yellow Lab.
In 2002, she sold the house in Leonia and moved to Traverse City to be closer to Bronwyn and Sam and their spouses. She joined the Northwest Potters and Sculptor's Guild, set up another pot shop in the basement of her new house and donated her gorgeous bowls to the annual Empty Bowls Benefit in support of the Fresh Food Partnership. She loved playing chess with Alma, Marge, and Sam at the Senior Center, was a regular attendee of the Traverse City Film Festival and the National Writers Series. She loved the Great Lakes Bioneers Conference, the local group Mid East Just Peace, the Inuit Art collection at the Dennos Museum Center, lunch at Trattoria Stella and the drive west on M-72 out to Empire. She loved Bronwyn and Joe, Sam and Joan so very much, and all her family and friends. She appreciated her kind neighbors, Jerry and Joan, Ed and Joanne. Her bright smile lit up her face.
In the last years of her life, when Bronwyn or Sam asked how she was doing, she invariably replied, "Everything is good here; I'm super deluxe." And indeed, she truly was.
Rachel is survived by her children, Bronwyn Jones (Joe VanderMeulen) and Sam Jones; her former daughter in law, Joan Rizzolo; her nieces, Mimi Buegeleisen (Matt Jedla) and Judy Morris; nephew, Dan Buegeleisen (Janice Bird); and her beloved cat, Benjamin.
She was predeceased by her parents and her brother, David Buegeleisen.
Rachel asked that when the time came, we send her back into the fire from which her pots came. Consequently, cremation has taken place and her family will host a celebration of her life on Sat, May 30, 2020.
