The potter
About Cate
Ceramic artist, wife, mother, and maker, working in porcelain from a home studio in Front Royal, Virginia.
Cate Ranieri is a ceramic artist working in porcelain from her home studio in Front Royal, Virginia. She began showing and selling in local exhibits, formed Cate Ranieri Ceramics as a Front Royal business in 2015, and has been a fixture at Shenandoah Valley markets and fairs ever since, from the River Valley Festival to the R Cellars Christmas Market.
Her signature work is devotional: crucifixes, crosses, and holy water fonts she has made for years. In 2021 she began sculpting full crucifixes, each corpus shaped individually by hand. Alongside the devotional line she makes mugs, plates, bowls, candlesticks, vases, and porcelain jewelry, all in small one-off batches between family life and kiln schedules.
How a piece gets made
Thrown or built
Most pieces start on the wheel; jewelry and sculptural work is built and cut by hand. Handles are pulled and attached one mug at a time.
Trimmed and carved
Once leather-hard, forms are trimmed on the wheel and many are carved: candlesticks, bowls, and detailed devotional pieces.
Glazed with wax resist
Details are glazed first, then protected with hand-painted wax resist before the covering glazes go on, so the fine work survives the dip.
Fired
Everything is kiln-fired at home. Glazes move in the fire; the piece that comes out exists exactly once, and that is the point.