“Folks can’t eat an Apalachicola oyster anymore. The least they can do is eat off one.” — Why a 74-year-old Florida oysterman is letting his last oyster shell plates go at a special price, before his kiln goes cold for good.

Every morning at five, Duane Pickron walks down to the water behind his house with a cup of coffee. He still gets up at the same time he did for 52 years. There is just no boat to go to anymore.

Duane is 74. He lives in Eastpoint, Florida, a small oyster town across the bridge from Apalachicola. He was 16 when his father first put a pair of 12-foot oyster tongs in his hands. From then on, he pulled oysters off the bottom of the bay by hand, almost every working day of his life.

Then, in December 2020, the State of Florida closed Apalachicola Bay to wild oyster harvesting. Duane was 69. Overnight, the only job he had ever known was gone.

“Fifty-two years, I went out on that water. Then one morning they told me to stay home.”

The oyster he kept for 31 years

In 1989, out on an oyster bar called Cat Point, Duane pulled up an oyster as big as his hand. It had seven deep ridges and a little point at the hinge. He didn’t sell it. He put the shell on the dashboard of his truck. It stayed there for 31 years.

A few weeks after the bay closed, his wife June signed him up for a pottery class at the community center in Apalachicola. Duane says he only went so she’d stop worrying about him. On the first day, he brought the shell along. He pressed it into a slab of wet clay to see what would happen.

What came out of the kiln a week later was a plate shaped exactly like that oyster. Every ridge. Every wave on the rim.

“I couldn’t take oysters out of the bay anymore. So I figured I’d bring the bay home a different way.”

A net shed that still smells like salt

His workshop is the old net shed behind the house. It is 12 by 16 feet, with a tin roof and a door that stays open to the water. His wooden oyster tongs hang over the workbench, the handles worn smooth by five decades. A secondhand kiln from a church sale sits in the corner. The marine weather report plays on the radio, the same as it did on the boat.

Since 2021, Duane has made about 1,900 plates in that shed. Every single one was shaped over the same shell from Cat Point. A pair takes him most of a day: pressing, trimming the rim with his thumb, a week of drying, and two firings.

“Cat Point grew the best oysters in Florida. Now it grows plates.”

What 52 years on the bay taught him about a plate

Duane never went to art school. Everything he knows about these plates, he learned from oysters.

• “The Cat Point Press”: Each plate is shaped over that one real shell from 1989, not a factory mold. You can feel the ridges under your fingers and the little point at the hinge. “That’s a real Apalachicola oyster,” Duane says. “Not somebody’s drawing of one.”
• “The Tide-Pool Glaze”: In the kiln, the glaze runs down into the deepest part of the shell and pools there, like seawater left behind at low tide. That is why no two plates come out the same. “Same as two oysters,” he says.
• “The Half-Shell Depth”: Each plate is about 7½ inches long and 2 inches deep. It holds 10 ounces. Pecans, olives, a crab dip or a slice of pie stay right where you put them.
• “The Oyster-Weight Wall”: The walls are thick and heavy, like a real shell. They go in the microwave and the dishwasher. “It’ll outlast me,” Duane says. “That’s the whole point.”

Three colors from the bay, and one is already gone

Duane named his glazes after the water he worked. Cat Point Sand has the color of the oyster bar at low tide. Dry Bar is the blue of the bay on a clear morning. Winter Bay, white with a dark blue rim, sold out in September. He won’t mix it again.

The day his thumbs said no

What Duane will miss most are the early hours in the shed. The door open. The smell of wet clay and salt water. The first plate of the week coming out of the kiln still warm.

But 52 years of working oyster tongs have worn out both of his thumbs. The doctor calls it arthritis. Pressing the clay into the shell and pinching the wavy rim are the two things his thumbs can’t do anymore. A pair of plates used to take him two hours of work. Now it takes six, and he has to stop halfway.

“The kiln doesn’t care how old you are. My thumbs do.”

This fall, Duane fired his kiln for the last time. 148 pairs of plates are left on the shelf. When the last pair is gone, he plans to take the old shell from Cat Point back out to the bay and put it where he found it.

“A gallery wanted $120 a plate. I said no.”

Last spring, a gallery owner from Seaside drove out to Eastpoint. She offered Duane $120 for every plate he had. He thanked her and sent her home.

“Folks can’t eat an Apalachicola oyster anymore. The least they can do is eat off one.”

Duane doesn’t want his plates in a glass case. He wants them on supper tables, full of pecans and olives and pie, with people reaching across each other. That’s why his last 148 pairs are priced far below what a gallery would ask. For him, it’s a way of keeping the bay he worked for 52 years alive in a few more kitchens.

Duane doesn’t use a computer. His granddaughter Kaylee, a nursing student in Tallahassee, set up this page after a woman from Ohio asked at the Saturday market if he could ship. “Ma’am, I don’t even know how to send an email,” Duane told her. Kaylee built the page that same night. She packs every box herself, with a handwritten note saying which oyster bar the shell came from.

What people say about Duane’s oyster plates

• ★★★★★

  “Absolutely beautiful, and much heavier than I expected. You can feel every ridge of the shell. The blue pool in the middle looks like real water.”

  Deborah W., Savannah, GA
• ★★★★★

  “My dad tonged oysters in Apalachicola in the 1970s. I gave him a pair for his birthday. He held one in his hands for a long time and didn’t say a word.”

  Kevin R., Pensacola, FL
• ★★★★★

  “They’re not big, about the size of a real oyster, but deeper than they look. I use one for olives and one on the bathroom counter for my rings.”

  Susan M., Asheville, NC

Three questions people ask before ordering

Where can I buy Duane’s oyster plates?

Only through this page. Duane’s plates are not sold on Amazon, Temu or in any store.

How long will they be available?

Only while supplies last. The kiln has been fired for the last time, and there are 148 pairs left. Once a color is gone, it is gone for good.

What if they’re not right for me?

You have 30 days to try them at home. If you are not happy, just send a short email and you will get your money back. No questions, no hassle.

More from people who set the table with them

• ★★★★★

  “Thick, solid, very well made. They went straight from the box onto our Thanksgiving table with cranberry relish. Three guests asked where I got them.”

  Linda P., Charleston, SC
• ★★★★★

  “I ordered Cat Point Sand and then went back for Dry Bar. Next to each other they look like the beach and the water. The note from Kaylee was a lovely touch.”

  Nancy F., Mobile, AL
• ★★★★★

  “We used to drive to Apalachicola every summer for the oysters. Those days are over. Now there’s a little piece of the bay on our kitchen table.”

  Robert T., Macon, GA