Lewis Snyder and Lewis Paul Snyder of Studio S Pottery. Photos by Josh Rish.

With a soft, tempered voice and a warm smile, Lewis Snyder has run his family business in Murfreesboro for almost 50 years, fine-tuning his craft and passing artistic wisdom onto the next generation of the city.

Snyder began working in pottery and sculpture as a fluke but wound up discovering a hidden passion.

“In undergraduate school, I majored in social and political science. I had to have some electives, and I took an art class and ended up taking all the art courses they had. I went on to graduate school in clay and sculpture and haven’t looked back since,” Snyder said.

As one quickly discovers when conversing with Snyder, he’s as much of an educator as he is an artist, and this shows when examining the foundation of Studio S Pottery, the business he’s run for decades.

In 1962, Snyder moved to Murfreesboro to establish the three-dimensional art department at Middle Tennessee State University. Once the program was established, Snyder wished to have a place where he could perfect his own work. He sought out property and came across the Murfreesboro dairy barn that now houses the Studio S gallery and workshop. It took 10 years for Snyder and his family to develop the barn into Studio S.

Snyder was also appointed as the state crafts director of Tennessee by Gov. Winfield Dunn, who served as the state’s governor from 1971 to 1975. While serving in that position, Snyder developed several statewide art programs. In 1977, he quit and returned to working on his own projects.

Snyder’s specializes in form and color; he develops his own glazes and clays and builds his own equipment.

Under Snyder’s direction, Studio S provides four to six classes per session for those who want to learn the craft of clay, with four sessions per year. The current session is focused on raku firing, a Japanese pottery firing technique, and pit firing, the oldest known method for pottery firing.

“I have [students] from 8 years old to 90,” Snyder said. “. . . I normally have a lot more students in clay than the university does.”

It’s not just Snyder running the show, however. Studio S is a family business and has stayed in business for all these years with the help of Snyder’s sons, Lewis Paul Snyder and Eric Snyder.

When asked why he decided to become involved in the business, Lewis Paul Snyder chuckled.

“I was here and available,” he said. “It’s just what we did.”

Eric, who received a broadcast degree from MTSU, is now the gallery coordinator for the MTSU Department of Art and Design. Before that, Eric worked with his father at Studio S full-time for 20 years and still contributes art to the gallery.

Lewis Paul Snyder, who worked in marketing for years, moved back to Murfreesboro about five years ago and has been running much of the operations side of the business for his father.

Lewis Snyder said that, while the climate for art appreciation in the city has improved, much work has been put in to build up the art community in Murfreesboro since Studio S’s establishment.

“When we came to Murfreesboro, you couldn’t give a piece of art away on the square,” Snyder said. “Every time we went out anywhere we can show, we had to take the potter’s wheel out and demonstrate. And, as a result, we’ve built up a strong following, not just in Tennessee. I have interns all over the United States that I’ve trained.”

“When you’re in an environment with art all around you, it’s just a richer, more pleasant way of living,” he added. “It inspires you, it gives you new ideas and it makes things more pleasant.”

Sydner’s work has had a long reach through his years at Studio S. Snyder said he’s been creating pieces for every sitting president, give or take a couple, since Nixon, and he has pieces that have been shown all over the world.

Snyder recalled crafting dinnerware for former U.S. President Jimmy Carter as being one of the most daunting tasks he’s undertaken.

“They called and asked us to do the dinnerware,” he recalled. “I had this intern that put the wrong coating on the kiln shelf, and the first load stuck to the shelves. We had to redo it, and we didn’t have much time.”

Lewis Paul Snyder attributes the studio’s success to the fact that it is, through and through, a family business.

“My brother, myself and my mother all worked in and supported the studio across time,” he said. “All of those efforts were valuable in making the studio work. It’s been a family venture, led by my father.”

While Snyder has been working in pottery for a long time, he’s still looking at the work with a pair of fresh eyes, and he’s still experimenting.

“I’d like to experiment more with color atmospheres because it’s truly my belief that there’s a spectrum of color that man has not seen yet. I’m not physicist enough to keep from blowing myself up trying, but I think it’s possible.”

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Studio S Pottery is located at 1426 Avon Rd., Murfreesboro. The gallery is open to the public Monday–Friday, 10 a.m.–5 p.m. For more information on classes, visit studiospottery.com.