Have you ever looked down at your meal – past the food itself – to the plate? Maybe it’s a vibrant salad set within a shallow, matte black bowl, or delicate sashimi arranged on a speckled platter that shows off the clay’s texture. These types of tableware are only a few examples of Jeremy Segel-Moss’ ever-evolving style and body of work.
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The musician and ceramicist, who operates out of his home studio in Benton Park West, is the founder of Cherokee Street Ceramics, and he supplies some of St. Louis’ best restaurants with dishware. You’ve probably admired his pieces while dining at Akar, Sado, Rated Test Kitchen and others, but you may not have known they were local and made by human hands. It wasn’t always this way. “In the 20 years leading up to COVID, I was a professional musician in St. Louis,” Segel-Moss explains. “I was playing a couple hundred gigs a year and running the St. Louis Blues Society and the Big Muddy Blues Festival. There was a lot going on.” Segel-Moss’ dad played guitar, but his mom worked with clay, exposing him to her craft at a young age. He became talented in both worlds. Amid the chaos of the pandemic – and the pressure that comes with managing large groups of people and events – he set up a wheel in his basement to quietly get back to his roots. “It’s hard starting out as a ceramic artist, having been a musician,” says Segel-Moss, whose partner Leslie Sanazaro is also a professional musician.
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“There’s no ceramic open mic – like, how am I going to go build that community? A lot of our work is private, whereas a lot of music work is public. But this led to that, and suddenly a few restaurants were interested.”
Once the orders started coming in, they didn’t stop. Segel-Moss says he made and sold about 3,000 pieces last year, whether it was through art fairs, farmers markets, private orders from individuals or specific orders from chefs. “It’s word of mouth,” he says of the latter. He knows Colleen Clawson, chef-owner of Milque Toast Bar, because she ran the kitchen at Venice Café (when it served food), and he played music there. He knew a bartender at Indo who introduced him to chef-owner Nick Bognar. And so on. When creating vessels for restaurants, Segel-Moss wants his dishes to be just that: vessels. “I still want to have a voice there, but I would never want that voice to overpower what they’re putting on the plate,” he explains. In early spring, for example, he crafted dramatic black plates that make Rated Test Kitchen’s precisely assembled dishes pop.
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All the impressive food and tableware aside, these partnerships demonstrate how St. Louis artisans are willing to bring others into the fold – whether they’re changing careers or just getting started. “The restaurants are great because they’ve pushed me to be consistent and to make quality pieces,” Segel-Moss adds. “There’s going to be slight variation in color and size, but it’s slight. Each batch makes me a better potter, just like with music: As long as you embrace the process, you’re okay on the bad nights. You’ll do better tomorrow.”
Segel-Moss’ work is often in flux: A chef might request a new glaze color to match the season, just like they would change the ingredients in a seasonally based menu. Someone might want a lid on a cup, which means Segel-Moss has an opportunity to learn something new. Although he went to school for ceramics in Washington, he’ll be the first to tell you his method is based more on feeling things out than on anything overly technical.
He’s also a proponent of making his work affordable, even though the process is time-consuming. “Because my thing is about making affordable pieces in large batches, doing things like feet and handles adds more steps,” he says. He usually takes measurements to stay consistent, but he also loves sitting down to throw something on the wheel without any constraints. Just like in music, this freedom produces something completely different. “I’m interested to see what happens if I spend 20 years on this like I spent 20 years on music,” SegelMoss says. “How many 20 years do you get in your life? If you’re lucky, you find something you like to do, and I have multiple things I like to do.”
You can find Segel-Moss’ work in the wild at Akar, Indo, Ivy Cafe, Milque Toast Bar, Rated Test Kitchen, Sado and Teatopia.
Cherokee Street Ceramics, St. Louis, cherokeestreetceramics.com