What's in a name?

Welcome to Bridgetown Sparrow Ceramics! A one woman show run out of Portland, Oregon created by Aby Henry.

I got bitten by the clay bug way back in the day when you were lucky to have more than 5 or 10 people in a ceramics class, and people still looked at you like you were crazy when you said that was what you were majoring in. My sister actually signed my up for my first ceramics class at the community college I was attending way back in…2005 I believe it was. I had been an avid photographer since 2002 and was about to do a semester abroad when I got sick and couldn’t go. So I was scrambling to sign up for classes last minute and my sister helped me put my schedule together. The rest as they say is history!

The name Bridgetown is a pretty obvious link to Portland itself ~ also nicknamed Bridgetown due to the many bridges crisscrossing our beautiful Willamette River. I moved to Portland back in 2008 to start a farming business with my sister Jen Henry. Talk about adventures!

And I used the bird Sparrow for two reasons. One, is that I was fortunate to spend almost all of my time with my grandparents growing up. And one of my most fond memories was spending loads of time in their amazing garden investigating plants and watching the animals that came through. This included birds that would periodically nest outside their bedroom window. So the use of Sparrow is a nod to my adored Grandparents, Domenica (Dot for short) and Giovanni (John in english).

I also used sparrow as the spiritual meaning of a sparrow is thought to be vigilance and fastidiousness! And seeing my work, it’s pretty obvious I like things clean and crisp!

The logo was created by me as well. It’s a play on my initials AMH (Aby May Henry) The center lines that make the M between the A and the H is also a nod to how my grandfather taught me to draw birds when we were painting together!

A M H - with the M acting as the bird!

So there you have it! A nod to my roots and a nod to my chosen home!