The youngest of ten children, Jered grew up in the small cattle-town of Fort Pierre, South Dakota. He spent his childhood close to the natural world, growing up on ranches tucked in amongst the rolling farmland of the South Dakota hill country. His father was a farrier, leather worker, traveling cowboy, and poet. Jered developed his artist’s eye for detail while watching his father at work. After a stint in the US Navy, Jered completed his academic studies in the art and process of ceramics at university in Minnesota. In 2000 he returned to the Black Hills of South Dakota and began throwing pots in an old dairy barn, firing them in a wood-burning kiln that he built himself and fed with scrap from the local sawmill. For four years Jered honed his craft in this self-imposed isolation, before ultimately moving his studio to the SF Bay Area in 2004. There, Jered developed his skills as a prototyper and problem solver while hand-throwing vessels at the iconic Heath Ceramics for nearly a decade. His work there with Chez Panisse, Dwell and House Industries drew him to the creative collaboration of custom work with local chefs. Since then, he has been the top choice for hand-crafted custom dinnerware for some of the world's top chefs and designers.