Although introduced to clay as an undergraduate, Anne Dickinson went on to get a graduate degree in business and spent the next twenty years wandering around on the corporate ladder. In the mid-90’s she returned to school to seriously study clay, and also discovered an enthusiasm for woodworking and the enticing potential that comes from combining wood and ceramics. In 2003, Dickinson co-founded The Fire Works (www.thefireworksinc.net), a ceramic studio in an old sprinkler factory in Worcester, Massachusetts and started Dickinson Designs the same year. In the studio, she develops and creates lamps and other unique, distinctive ceramic works.

A fierce lover of nature and a curious world traveler with camera always ready in hand, it is apparent from her photographs that Dickinson is a keen observer of textures, patterns and details: the essential components that compose a form as a whole. The formal characteristics that attract her, in turn, directly impact and influence her work. Fundamental simplicity and the possibilities that present themselves from using one or two elemental or geometric forms in repetition, are driving forces and themes she explores and elaborates. Dickinson’s lamps, developed from slip cast porcelain sections and wood components handcrafted in her home-based woodshop, are reminiscent of Brancusi’s Endless Column in terms of the rhythm of geometric parts and an inherent expressive, robust materiality.