Yesterday was the 110th anniversary of my grandfather Brad Keeler’s birth. Brad was my mother’s father, and his wife Catherine, my grandmother who I am named after and who I knew and loved. Brad died when my mom was four years old. Her memory of him is fragmented at best.
For the past ten years, I have been working--slowly--toward a book about him and his father before him, Rufus Keeler. It is my way of my excavating the family history, and examining it in the light.
The year 2022 saw an acceleration of this project, so now I am confident (knock on clay) that 2023 will be the year that I will finish the book, entitled Clay Bodies: The Brief Lives and Lasting Legacies of Rufus B. Keeler and Brad Keeler, Father and Son Ceramicists.
Periodically, I will be posting excerpts from the book. I invite my readers and Keeler ceramics collectors to share their thoughts and ask questions.
Click here to read today's excerpt, "Taking the Long Way Home," on Everyone the Same Soup.
