the maker
Meet Abby
Abrielle Rose Sommers: potter from Michigan's Upper Peninsula, at the wheel since December 2018, making functional art you can actually use.
chapter one
It started with a face pressed against a window
Back home, there was a community center that ran art classes. The pottery ones were the ones Abby and her sisters pressed their faces against. Watching someone pull a lump of clay into a bowl, a vase, a cup you could actually drink your coffee out of felt like magic.
They never got to take them. There was never quite enough money, or there were shifts at the family business. So it stayed a someday thing. A quiet little want she carried around for years.
Then she finally signed up at the Flint Institute of Arts, and that was it. More than 21 courses and 3 instructors later, she found her lane: whimsy you can hold in your hand.
the double life
Engineer by day, potter by night
Abby works full-time as a mechanical engineer in Michigan, is finishing her master's in engineering at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and throws clay creations late into the night. Yes, all three at once. Nobody knows when she sleeps. Every piece is dreamed up, gathered from the world around her, and then coaxed out of the clay, sometimes with measurements to prove it.
a family affair
How Sommers Night Pottery was born
It became a family tradition: photos and videos landing in the group chat late at night. Abby bent over the wheel, playing with new glazes, unboxing her latest tools and decals, always showing everyone the latest thing.
Soon everyone getting the snaps kept asking how they could get one of her creations. And that is how Sommers Night Pottery was born.
the big one
206 mugs for a cozy hobbit-themed fall wedding
When their baby sister Avery got married, she had one big dream: send every guest home with something they would keep. Abby said, what if I made the mugs?
The plan: hand-throw a custom mug for every guest, hang them on a wall their dad built, and let each person pick one to take home. With three months to go she had made a grand total of 37. Then the late-night updates really started.
She made it. 206 mugs. Every clay body, every color in her palette, every technique she knows. Some plain and simple, some fully glazed, some textured, some decorated to the hilt. Something for everyone, which is exactly how she wanted it.
Each one was stamped underneath with a custom foxglove mark, silkscreen-printed as an underglaze transfer. The foxgloves came from a family trip to Scotland, where Avery's engagement photos were shot near the Glenfinnan Viaduct.
And the mugs were only half of it. Abby also grew and dried flowers for the centerpieces and baked every wedding cake from scratch.
wedding photography by cousin violet
beyond the wheel
The rest of the story
Clay is only one of Abby's languages. She bakes like she throws: from scratch, measured twice, finished with a flourish. She has perfected gluten-free baking, and every cake at the wedding, including the little hobbit door one, came out of her kitchen.
Her garden works just as hard. She grows and dries her own flowers and grasses, the same ones that show up in her photos, on her tables, and in the centerpieces she helped fill the reception with.
fig. 008 — baker, gardener, engineer, potter. pick any four.
Seven Embers
A cozy coffee house that keeps its shelves stocked with Sommers Night mugs. Abby is on her seventh series for them over the years.
You can see more of Abby's work on their Instagram. Take a scroll and follow along for new series.
A baker too
She has perfected gluten-free baking and could open her own bakery tomorrow. The wedding cakes were all hers, from scratch.
A gardener as well
Many of the dried flowers and grasses in her photos, and at the wedding, were grown in her own garden.
it runs in the family
Collaborators
identity & branding
Avery
Abby's sister Avery designed the Sommers Night Pottery identity: the pottery-trio logo, the leaf pattern, and the full brand manual this website is built on. The cozy hobbit wedding with the 206 mugs? Also hers.
fig. 009 — the designer sister
website & storytelling
Alex · RoHaus & Co
Abby's sister Alex and RoHaus & Co created this website and tell the Sommers Night tales. Up next: a RoHaus x Sommers Night Pottery mug series that will make your cup overfloweth with whimsy.
fig. 010 — the storyteller sister