Penobscot man carries on the Rowantrees tradition

Geoff Miller learned to make one of the Blue Hill’s Peninsula’s most iconic pottery styles 45 years ago. Now he keeps the flame alive.

Aug. 19, 2026

By Steele Hays

Geoff Miller in his Penobscot studio. Photo by Steele Hays.

PENOBSCOT—For more than 70 years, Blue Hill’s Rowantrees Pottery created popular pottery, appreciated by collectors for its craftsmanship, design and colorful glazes. The company shut down in 2008, but one man is still carrying on the Rowantrees tradition, making and selling reproductions of Rowantrees’ most popular designs.

“It’s a little poignant knowing I’m the only one doing it,” said Geoff Miller, owner and sole employee of Lowell Hill Pottery in Penobscot. “I’m 67 and I’m going to do it for as long as I humanly can.” 

Miller works alone in a 24-by-36-foot studio next to his 1850s farmhouse atop Lowell Hill in North Penobscot along Route 15.

His studio is filled to the brim with pottery production equipment and materials, including two kilns. A small space closest to the front door serves as the retail display shop, featuring finished reproductions of Rowantrees pieces – mugs, jam jars, teapots, pitchers, bean pots, plates and bowls. The bottom of each piece is stamped “Rowantrees by Lowell Hill.” 

Miller’s first pottery job was working with Rowantrees owner Sheila Varnum, starting in 1981. He worked there until 1989.

“She agreed to hire me and she put me up in the house,” Miller said. “I learned 90 percent of what I know from Sheila.” 

During those years, Miller reformulated Rowantrees’ glazes to create formulas that replicated the original colors, but without using any ingredients containing lead. 

When Rowantrees Pottery ceased operations in 2008, Miller approached Varnum with a request: He wanted to produce and sell Rowantrees reproductions.

“Sheila gave it her blessing,” he said. Miller set up his production studio in the old Rowantrees buildings on Union Street after Varnum sold the property to another owner. He worked there until 2014 when the property was put on the market again. He built his Penobscot studio in 2016 and has been there ever since. 

Today, most online searches for “Rowantrees Pottery” bring up Lowell Hill Pottery as the first organic result. And Miller holds the Maine state trademark for “Rowantrees” in the handmade pottery classification. His Lowell Hill Pottery logo features a stylized rowan tree, another name for the mountain ash tree. 

Miller said he feels fortunate to have been successful as a potter for four and a half decades. 

A bowl in the Rowantrees design, stamped with Miller’s imprint from his Penobscot studio. Photo by Steele Hays.

“Pottery’s not a very big money-making business,” he said. “I consider it a minor miracle that this little studio pays its own way.” 

He enjoys the freedom his career as an artist allows him, choosing when to work and what to do each day. He also works part-time providing bookkeeping services for several local small businesses.

Noted local artist Frank Hamabe, whose work is currently featured in two local exhibitions, worked as a part-time artist at Rowantrees for a number of years, including during the 1980s when Miller was one of the only potters. Hamabe’s contribution was in doing brushwork, creating designs on the pottery rather than designing or “throwing” the pottery vessels and forms themselves, Miller said.  Hamabe, who died in 2002, would sign each individual piece he decorated with his initials: FH. 

“Everything he did was one of a kind,” Miller said of Hamabe’s work at Rowantrees. “I liked Frank a lot and he liked me. He gave me several of his paintings.”

Most of Lowell Hill Pottery’s sales are generated by walk-in customers who find the studio online or by word of mouth, Miller said. He has a website that enables online ordering and his pieces are carried by a number of giftshops, including Handworks Gallery in Blue Hill. 

Miller creates a few custom pottery pieces of his own design, such as tankards that were commissioned by a Bangor pub and ceramic decorative pieces sold at Blue Hill’s Humblebee Café, a design featuring the restaurant’s bumblebee logo, crafted in clay and painted by Miller. 

“I call it the humble bumble,” he said.

To learn more about Miller’s work, visit the Lowell Hill Pottery website.

Miller first learned the Rowantrees style in the 1980s. Photo by Steele Hays.