Sixth Street
A Madison pottery that became a Missouri ocarina workshop, tuned to A-440 with a computer-controlled air valve, and sold sets to schools.
Chris Heuer and Amy Lake made pottery, and ocarinas, first in Madison, Wisconsin and then in Columbia, Missouri — as Sixth Street Pottery and later Sixth Street Ocarina.
Chris Heuer and Amy Lake are living and have not been asked about this page. Nothing from their sites is reproduced here beyond short quotations; the chronology below is built from their own pages and from the Internet Archive’s capture index, and every row names where it came from.
The name is literal, and it records an address they had left
Heuer answered it himself, in a signed FAQ post of September 21, 2009:
Our original Ocarina Studio was on Sixth street in Madison, Wisconsin. It was started in 1992. We moved our studio in 2004 to … Columbia, Missouri.
So the street is in Madison, the business kept the name after leaving it, and the move — which the Archive could only bracket between July 2004 and April 2006 — is dated by the maker to 2004.
What they made
Sweet potato ocarinas in soprano, alto and tenor, individually tuned “so it will play an accurate musical scale in the key of C or F”. Pendant whistles. Chirping birds. Reproductions of historical instruments. Wheel thrown, hand built, slab worked and moulded, with non-toxic glazes.
On the 2001 site Chris is “the Master Ocarina-Maker, with 25 years experience as a ceramic artist”; Amy Lake is “the Business Manager and Production Potter”.
How they tuned, and why it matters
From the same day’s FAQ:
All our Ocarina are checked and tuned many times during the making process. The size of all the holes are adjusted to make sure the tuning is to A-440 concert pitch. We have a computer controlled air pressure valve that can be used to check the tuning and each ocarina is given a final play using an electronic tuner… We will not sell an out of tune Ocarina.
A computer-controlled air pressure valve is a real piece of workshop engineering, and nothing else the museum holds describes anything like it.
Two other American workshops of the same decades did the opposite, and said so on their own pages. Karen Dunster tuned each ocarina to itself, let kiln shrinkage put it in whatever key it landed in, and shipped a chart saying which. The North Country Workshop’s order pages read: “Each instrument varies slightly but is tuned to itself.” Of the three, Sixth Street is the only one that tuned to a fixed pitch.
They offered sets to schools
Four FAQ entries from June 2008 are signed Paul Boomer, who appears nowhere else in anything the museum holds — staff, family, or the person who built the site is not established. His posts are the ones about playing rather than making, and one of them puts Sixth Street into the teaching story:
Ocarinas are a fantastic alternative instrument for the class… Sixth Street Ocarina is happy to help any school who wants to start using Ocarinas in the classroom. Additionally, sets and discounts are available.
Whether any school took it up is not recorded anywhere the museum can see. What survives is the offer.
Even so, the offer is worth having. With Ocarina Arena’s lesson plans, and Charles Hind’s pentatonic patent for an instrument on which a beginner cannot play a wrong note, that is three separate American workshops aiming at the classroom — three approaches to the same market, and the museum had not connected them.
Boomer also leaves a rule of thumb worth recording: “a 5 hole plays 15 note[s], a 9 hole plays 17 notes, a 10 hole plays 18 notes, a 12 hole plays 21 notes. These are chromatic notes.”
When did he start? An inference, marked as one
Nobody says when he began. Two independent pages give his experience as a ceramic artist: 25 years on a page captured in 2001, and 30 years on a page first captured in April 2006. Both point to about 1976, and they agree with each other five years apart.
That is arithmetic, not testimony. It is also a different claim from the 1992 founding of the ocarina studio, and both can be true: a potter from about 1976, an ocarina studio from 1992.
Chronology
Dates the museum has been able to establish, and where each comes from. “The Archive” means the capture index, which dates when a page existed rather than what it said.
| c. 1976 | Chris Heuer begins working as a ceramic artist | inferred from “25 years” (2001) and “30 years” (2006) |
| 1992 | The Ocarina Studio is started, on Sixth Street in Madison, Wisconsin | Heuer’s own FAQ post, September 21, 2009 |
| by Aug 2001 | sixthstreetpottery.com is running from Madison. Chris is “the Master Ocarina-Maker, with 25 years experience”; Amy Lake is “the Business Manager and Production Potter” | their site, captured April and June 2001 |
| 2004 | They move from Madison to Columbia, Missouri — bracketed by the Archive between July 2004 and April 2006, and dated by Heuer himself to 2004 | Heuer’s FAQ post; the Archive |
| 2005 | A frames-based redesign between the two known addresses | the Archive |
| Jan 2006 | “Please see our listing of 10 hole ocarinas, Zelda reproductions, and other unique ocarinas on Ebay starting January 2006” | their site |
| 2010–2018 | sixthstreetocarina.com takes over, captured every year | the Archive |
| 2018 | The last year with real captures of their own content | the Archive |
| by Dec 2020 | The domain is no longer theirs. Pages appear under an author called secure_admin, the first titled “Dummy Text”, then kitchen-remodeling filler |
the mirror |
What the museum holds of their two sites, and on what terms: Sixth Street Pottery.