About

I’m Chad Cates, and I make one-of-a-kind ceramic lamps and objects by hand in my studio in Chatham, NY.

Everything starts on the wheel. Throwing is a practice in variation — no two pulls of clay behave exactly the same way, and I’ve come to treat that unpredictability as the whole point rather than something to control. Timing, pressure, glaze chemistry, kiln placement — small shifts at any stage change the outcome, which is why every piece that comes out of the kiln is genuinely singular.

I first fell for ceramics during my BFA in photography — one year of ceramics was enough to know I was hooked. It took 22 years to find my way back to it. When I finally did, lamps became the center of my practice, for reasons that trace back further than the studio. My father was an electrician, and I spent summers working alongside him — never imagining that decades later I’d be wiring my own lamps by hand. Now that instinct for how things are built and how they work shows up in the work itself: I hand-build even the dimmer switches, so the way a piece controls light is as considered as the way it holds it. A lamp isn’t just a vessel with a bulb in it — it’s a sculptural object you live with every day, that happens to also light your room.

I make in small batches, glaze by feel, and don’t repeat shape combinations. If a piece speaks to you, that’s likely the only chance you’ll get at it.

Every object is meant for daily use — not a shelf piece. Beauty and character belong in the rooms you actually live in.