Daphne Roehr Hatcher

Daphne Roehr Hatcher – core artist

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Forty-seven years ago, after receiving a BFA degree in Art from The University of North Texas School of Visual Arts, followed by three years of apprenticeship training in Devon, England, in the studios of David Leach and his brother, Michael Leach, sons of the studio potter icon Bernard Leach, Daphne Hatcher and her husband, Gary Hatcher, bought a historic farmhouse and barn in the scenic woodlands of rural east Texas near the town of Mineola and built a pottery studio modeled after the Leach potteries in Bovey Tracey and Yelland, in Devon, and the Leach Pottery in St. Ives Cornwall. They operated their studio and gallery, Pine Mills Pottery, creating handmade functional woodfired stoneware together, until the sorrowful passing of Gary in March, 2025. After a two-year pause as she cared for Gary in his final years, Daphne has returned to the studio they shared and began making pots again, redefining her continuing journey with clay. Daphne has received many awards for her work in the ceramic field, including the UNT 1999 President’s Citation for exceptional work by an alumnus in her field and an extended travel award in Australia as a Rotary Scholar.

 

Daphne has exhibited widely during her 50-year career in invitational and juried exhibitions, both nationally and internationally.  In recent years she has exhibited her ceramic art in the San Angelo Museum of Fine Art, The University of Iowa Museum of Art, and the Houston Museum of Contemporary Craft. 

 

Daphne has work on permanent display in the American Airlines Corporate Collection, the Ceramics Monthly Collection, the Rosenfield Collection, the San Angelo Museum of Art, and the personal collection of Garth Clark and Mark Del Vecchio and others.  Images of her work have appeared in numerous books and periodicals, most recently in the October 2021 and November 2021 issues of Studio Potter Magazine, “Gary and Daphne Hatcher: Formed in Place, Part I and Part II”.

 

She makes a point of cultivating deep relationships with colleagues throughout the world and shares her unique perceptions of life and art through her daily adventures in her studio, through photography and commentary on living the life of an artist in her social media forums. Daphne has always maintained a rigorous and prolific production of ceramic works that are widely sought after by collectors.

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“Control, surrender, the integration of surface and form: these are considerations I have focused on for the last fifty years as a potter.  Where to exert control and when to surrender to the flow?  That is the primary question.” After Gary, my husband and studio partner’s death, these considerations seemed to apply to my current situation, as well, as I returned to the empty studio without my partner of 51 years. At 72, what did I want to create? For now, I’m creating familiar forms and focusing on the platters and vessels that feel comforting and are still compelling to me. I wondered if, after the two-year hiatus caring for Gary at the end of his 8-year illness, it would be difficult to find my way, but it has been seamless.  My hands and body remember everything, surrendering to the flow of creating my vessels as I have for all of these years.  It’s been a centering mediation for me, the clay responding to my touch, the shapes growing under my hands, forms emerging, as they always have. While some things change dramatically, what remains is my relationship to clay, glaze, form, surface and the rhythm of the studio, peacefully turning out pots. Life goes on. Pots are eternal."

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daphnehatcher@gmail.com

pinemillsstudio

Mineola, Texas