Karen Dunster’s ocarinas

A maker who worked in series rather than a catalog, and who shipped every instrument with a chart naming the key it had actually turned out to be.

Karen Dunster makes ocarinas by hand in whimsical animal shapes, and she was doing it by the 1990s. Her work was described on dunster.com.

Karen Dunster is living and has not been asked about this page. Nothing from her site is reproduced here beyond short quotations; the chronology below is the museum’s own compilation, and every row names where it came from.

What her page records is a maker with series rather than a catalog.

The Fish series was her most popular, and it began as a pun — the Catfish — then grew outward into animal-fish hybrids: Sea Horse, an early addition, then Harefish and Dogfish.

The Lentil series started from a shape rather than a joke: “an ocarina in the shape of a rather fat lentil, and then adds some sort of surface decoration.” The Snake Ocarina, four inches across, is one of these.

Two more were made as jokes, each with a story she plainly enjoyed telling. The Bazoomarina “evolved from a nice mermaid sculpture she did”. My Fiancé was inspired by a lapel pin found at a truck stop in Barstow, California — “a picture of a happy, grinning, cyclops mohawk guy”. Both are pendants, worn on a cord.

The ocarinas were stoneware and earthenware, most with a range of an octave, and in 1998 they ran from twenty to sixty dollars.

She told the truth about shrinkage

The most interesting paragraph on her page is one that clay makers rarely put in writing. Clay shrinks in the kiln by an amount nobody can fully predict, so an instrument tuned wet does not come out in the key it went in:

Each ocarina is carefully tuned with the help of an electronic tuner. They are in tune with themselves. They may not be in the key of a perfect middle C, for instance, because the arbitrary shrinking of clay in the kiln alters the key that the ocarina was in when it was made out of the moist clay.

Rather than pretend otherwise, she tuned each ocarina to itself, let it land where it landed, and shipped every one with a chart naming the key it had actually turned out to be. If any of those charts survive, they are documentation of a kind that almost never does.

Five finger-holes, not four

Her own page states her method plainly:

K. uses a five finger-hole octave method for her clay whistles, rather than the more widely-used four finger hole octave, because this allows her to use smaller finger holes in her work, which she prefers for design reasons.

Smaller holes, chosen for how the instrument looks — a design decision driving a fingering decision, which is the reverse of the usual order.

She was part of a circle

ClayZ linked to her, Sixth Street linked to her, and Barry Jennings listed her on his artists page — and she linked back to ClayZ in turn. That web of links between a dozen American potters, most of whose sites are now dead, is much of what this museum is trying to keep.

Chronology

Dates the museum has been able to establish, and where each comes from.

c. 1984 or earlier	She and another member of the family take pottery classes at Glendale Community College, southern California, under Rob Kibler — “over 15 years” before a page written in May 1999	their GeoCities pottery page
before 1999	Her animal ocarinas are shown at the Ansel Adams Gallery, Yosemite National Park, and the Frog design begins there	their GeoCities pottery page
by 1998	Making ocarinas, with an established Fish series and a Lentil series, at twenty to sixty dollars	ocarinas.htm on dunster.com
Oct 28, 1998	The date stamp on the ocarina page as the museum holds it	its own date stamp
Jan 1, 1999	The site’s pottery pages are last updated	their date stamps
by 1999	Listed on ClayZ’s links page and on Sixth Street’s, and by Barry Jennings as “Art USA-Dunster”	those sites’ own link pages
May 18, 1999	The GeoCities pottery page is last updated	its own date stamp
Dec 1998 – Mar 2026	The Internet Archive’s captures of dunster.com	the Archive’s capture index
by Sep 2026	dunster.com no longer answers	checked

What the museum holds of dunster.com, and on what terms: Karen Dunster.