Yellow Door Pottery

A while back I was listening to a podcast with a wonderful potter Tiffany Thomas, who makes some outrageously beautiful pots. She said that she didn’t use Etsy (a market place on line where crafters and artists sell their work) to sell her wares anymore. She had several solid reasons, but the one that really resounded for me was this, “Why should I send people to a place where they can find other potters to purchase from?” This was a revelation for me. The idea of switching away from Etsy wasn’t too hard to imagine but creating an e-commerce page seemed impossible without spending a ton of money, which my business couldn’t support quite yet. I didn’t think I could ever tackle it on my own.

I looked into it several times over the next few months. I was dancing around it and sticking my toe in here and there. One morning I decided to go for it and sat down and spent the greatest part of a Sunday setting up a page…DISASTER! It was awful, my whole page was completely destroyed. It took two days for the lovely people at Blue Host to right the wrong. For awhile at least my dream of selling from Yellowdoorpottery.com was quashed.

I started analyzing my Etsy page. There was nice traffic, people often “liked” my work and therefore my page, but the overwhelming majority of my sales were driven there by me. On one hand it is good for exposure, but for me the random sales weren’t enough to rely solely on them.

Yesterday I decided to try again. It was a sunny day and the screen porch was open. Katie was in the pool, so I needed to be with her, it was the perfect time to sit down and try to make this work. By the way I am a complete novice when it comes to websites, I figured, I set this page up originally, who’s to say I can’t add the e-commerce element? After several false starts and quite a few curse words, and quite frankly a couple of pints of Guinness, I had my first item for sale on this page! I’ve got a ton of work to do to clean it up and add more products. However I am on my way, please be patient with me while I work out the kinks. I’m not completely giving up Etsy just yet, because there is some exposure, but I will no longer be directing people there, which reminds me, I now need new business cards…it’s always something. Thank you for your support, Teri.

Well it’s been quite the year. I am proud to say in my first full year of being in business, I ended the year in the black and made some bulk purchases that will keep costs down this year. In the same spirit I took a full day to rearrange (read deep-clean) my studio. Due to holidays, illness, deadlines…it was literally trashed.

I have been thinking a lot about lay out and ease of use and finding homes for every thing. I need to hit Michaels for some storage options but the majority of work is done. I broke it down into stations or work areas. I now have a glazing table for dipping, an area for hand applied glazes, a wedging area and a hand building area, drying shelving, and stock shelving plus of course my wheel. I also wanted to liven it up a bit…it is in fact an awful basement.

The folding table, will be my glazing table, the counter along the wall is for wedging/hand building and to the left is my hand applied glaze area, for brush work. I know, a carpet in the studio is rather odd. I am hoping to keep the dust at a minimum.

Then there is my wheel work space. I turned the wheel away from the wall and completely modified my method. I got rid of the splash pan in favor of a cleaner notion, using a sponge against the wheel head edge to catch any dampness and I’m throwing much drier. I also treated my self to a Wonder Bat system…so far, I love it.

Notice the popcorn bucket on the floor? That is it for my reclaim…no more huge buckets of slop, just this one, when it’s full, I reclaim. As I continue on this crazy path, I learn and strive to be better. Better analytics, smarter selling and smarter buying. Also now, when people ask to see my studio space, I am happy to show them.

2018 I am ready!

My dear lovely friend Susan is a strong woman. She has been through the Fire and came out the other side over and over again. The story of the planters I’ve been making for her have a similar story.

If you follow my blog you saw my previous posts about the three planters I was designing and making for her. I wanted them strong and feminine like she is. The first set although gorgeous, did not survive the first fire. So I adjusted the design and made three new pots.These pots dried for a very long time. I was not having a kiln disaster again. And Voila….out the came ready to glaze.

As I began to glaze these pots, I loved them, but I felt something was missing, although beautiful and fragile, I wasn’t seeing the strength I wanted to portray. Susan is above all strong and fierce and a survivor, that element felt lacking in this design. My hope was that as I glazed and only used clear glaze for most of the pot, the clay’s lightly speckled beauty would give a sense of concrete or stone. This was the hardest glazing job I have ever done. I am slipshod at best and like that haphazard end result. This needed to be done differently. I painted each pearl, and each design element painstakingly by hand. 

The next day they went into the kiln for the final fire. Oh what a long 24 hours that was. I was anxious to see if the strength came through and if I smudged anything or even were they too pristine. 

I open the lid and look at the top shelf…lovely! Oh Yay! The first two were wonderful. I lifted the shelf and found the final biggest pot…are you kidding me? A compression crack…oh my God why did this happen to Susan’s pots AGAIN. Structurally sound, but a crack none the less. I was so overwhelmed I couldn’t even think straight. I unloaded them and set them aside while I gave myself a few days to consider options.As I set them aside and walked away, a thought popped in my head “kin tsugi”. I could attempt this centuries old Japanese technique. The story is as old as time. An Emperor’s favorite bowl broke. He asked the ceramic masters to fix it. Instead of a traditional fix, the masters used gold to bind the parts together. The Emperor loved the bowl more because it wasn’t perfect, yet in some way it was more beautiful because of what it went through.

I read up on various methods of kin tsugi and gave it a shot. I bought gold powder and epoxy, I mixed them together and filled the crack. It was strong and secure, yet the gold wasn’t coming through as I had hoped. I had gold glaze I purchased and never used. I did a final fill of the crack with that, it emphasized the repair in the way I envisioned. 

I stepped back and looked at the pots and realized the pearls looked too white, it was almost jarring. I decided to sponge gold lightly across all the pearls to make them look antiqued. I am completely pleased with the results. 

While the dilemma with the crack was happening, I had planned weeks earlier to see Susan, my original plan was to bring the pots to her. Susan had to back out of the get together to deal with a personal, horribly sad situation. Yet again Susan being tested. 

I finished the pots today. I love the kin tsugi addition, it is actually the element that was missing. Sue girl-These are for you, in all your amazing, loving, kind fierce, beautiful glory. Never forget how much you are loved. You amaze me, I count myself luck to know you.

Remember those 3 large fabulous pots for my friend?  I had a complete and devastating loss of all of them. Remarkably nothing else in the kiln was effected. It looks as though those beautiful reinforced feet weren’t quite dry. I posted about this in a wonderfully supportive FB page called Clay Buddies. I had done everything right, yet still deep in those feet there was just enough residual moisture to explode when the water turned to steam. I was heartbroken when I opened the kiln for many reasons. One…ALL THAT WORK! There was hours of work invested in those pots. Two…I loved the design and now I fear it. Three I now had to back up completion time on this item. Four…UGH cleaning the kiln. I seriously lost my mojo for a few days. I couldn’t even go into my studio and even though about 10 pother pieces came out wonderfully, the loss was hard to bear. I didn’t clean my kiln out for more than a week.

Fast forward two weeks. I cleaned out the kiln and started on the new pots. I adjusted the design elements a bit. I found it difficult to throw them at first, I really struggled. As mentioned in an earlier post, I like to throw live. I love the interaction with people. And then something ridiculous happened….my phone fell INTO the pot I was throwing live. It was funny and just the laughing at myself made it all better. I was back in the groove. So the design changed a bit. I still need to decorate the bigger pot, but this is what I have so far. Still on feet, still have drainage holes all those practical design elements. Similar, but different.

Trust me, these suckers will be drying for a few weeks before they go in the kiln! I’ll post the results…good or bad. If you want to see the silliness of dropping the phone in, head to my Yellow Door Pottery Facebook page. The word disaster is in the title!

Often people ask me to make something especially for them. This is perhaps the most difficult thing asked of an artist/craftsperson. Many pottters will not do commission work because of all the pitfalls involved. What if the client doesn’t  like it and you’ve spent hours, sweat equity and materials into this work? Often people are demanding and want the impossible or don’t want to pay the increased  price for a specialized piece. More often your vision and theirs are completely different, even though you are sure you are both on the same page and that has disaster written all over it.

I actually like to do commissioned work, but with a caveat, I like to do commissioned work for  people I know. If I make something for a friend and they really don’t like it, I want them to tell me. Our friendship is too valuable and I can typically sell the work to someone else. I usually learn something along the way because I am forced out of my comfort zone and that has significant value to me. I try to live by the motto, “take ego out of it”.

A friend asked me to design flower pots for her. I thought about her qualities that I admire, she is strong, STRONG and would take a bullet for anyone and keep charging. Yet she is delicate and likes filigree earrings and has a classic sense to her, a real style that is all her own. She is as unique as can be. How do I design for that and still come up with a pot that doesn’t over power the flowers? I thought about it for days and kept scribbling designs. I am a doodler and scribble all over everything. A co-worker next to me at a recent training must have thought I’d lost my mind, because all of the sudden the ideas bubbled up and I was drawing like mad. Thank goodness I can multitask and still gained benefit from the training.

This is my final design. This is early stages yet, but I am thrilled with these pots.​ I threw three large pots, between 13-15 lbs each. If you’d like to see the throw it is on the Yellow Door Pottery FB page. After they set up I trimmed them and added feet and drainage holes…all very typical for a flower pot. Next I designed a “reinforcement” for the feet and the top rims. I made a template for both sizes and cut 9 each of them from a slab of clay. I wrapped the bottom ones over the feet so the pots stood taller and to add to that look of strength and then mirrored that along the top edge. I carved out the center of each so they were halved. Earlier I made a sprig mold of some beads and made many, many “pearls” and attached the line between the upper and lower portions and also around the rim. Finally I added a small filigree design to the center of the three divisions on the pots.

I am mad for these pots! I have some thoughts about glazing, and am anxious to see where we end up. I love them, and hope my friend does too, but if she doesn’t, that is ok, disappointing because I want to please, but ok too.  I will add a final picture when they have been glazed, we have a way to go yet.

Teri

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I have this odd dichotomy where I love very simple things like a berry bowl with clear glaze allowing the beauty of the natural speckled clay to shine through and hold its own as a design element. Then there is the other part, where I love over the top, intricate detailed work. 

I started making sprig mold a few months back. A spring mold is when you take an object and push it into a slab of clay and fire it, just one time…a bisque fire. This leaves it porus. When you want to add a design to your pots, you fill the indent with clay, and then pop it out and attach the molded piece to your work. I learned about this while geeking out and watching an historical clip from Wedgwood Potteries. Here is the link if you are oddly curious. 

This looked like fun so, I started creating different sprig molds and playing a little bit. Hey if it works for Wedgwood it’s good enough for me. I started with a thrown vase. I loved the results so I then rescued a birdhouse that was bound for the reclaim bin, again I saw real possibilities. This is very time consuming, and will need to be priced accordingly, but oh so much fun. I will be laying out designs some times, but other times just playing with a vessel to see what happens. Am I changing my whole ascetic, no, but I am adding some real detailed work to my production schedule. I am still finding my “voice” as a potter so this too will evolve, but what a wonderful branch off so far.

Finished product!

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The calendar says March, but the snow last night and the frigid temperature says January. None the less, Spring is actually on her way. In preparation I’ve been producing flower pots and planters. I’ve been approached by a few people about designing pots for them. Here are a few of the pots I’ve been creating. I’ve been trying to come up with a “signature” flower pot. I think this tapered pot with the fluted rim may be what I am looking for. I like the overall design. I like that it takes the basic pot and with just a few adjustments creates a completely unique pot.  I have a feeling I will be throwing this fluted pot for many years to come.

I am always looking for ways to increase visibility. I love watching potters throw and follow many on Periscope and You Tube. I prefer the more interactive “live” feeds that then can be viewed later. I did a short Periscope at a support Planned Parenthood event, but then decided to bite the bullet and do a live pottery throw on Periscope. I get it all set up and then I have technical problems. Here I am, clay all wedged and tools out, ready to take the plunge and throw myself off the cliff and see how well I land and I can’t go live. I don’t want to waste this moment so I decide to throw live on Face Book. At first I started on my personal page, but soon realized (just a few minutes in) that it made more sense to do it from the Yellow Door Page. I quickly pop over and turn it on. I have to say I loved it for many reasons. It was fun, interactive, it allowed me to talk about my work and process, something artisans don’t get a chance to do often. Because FB live is still very new, it surprised people when I acknowledged them as a viewer. My sister, shared the live event and others started to follow. When I was done, I realized you could then post it on your page…great, let’s see what happens. So it’s not just live, but you can also preserve it so others can see it later. Amazing.

The next day, I do it again, but this time I announce it on my personal FB page and invite people to watch it on Yellow Door. Even more live viewers this time and people I never would have guessed would be remotely interested. The feeds take a life of their own on. People viewed and shared and soon I have a couple of hundred viewers for each live feed I do, most of them after the fact, on play back, but viewers none the less, who can spread the word.

I don’t do anything special, I just decide ahead what I am working on that day and turn on the feed and talk…or not sometimes…and do my thing. I have been doing this about a week, and not everyday as I still have that pesky full time job, but the total viewership of my 5 videos is over one thousand hits. 

People are fascinated by something they think they can’t do and most like to watch other people work. I like to talk and I love to talk about pottery, it’s a perfect blend. There is still so much to explore in this area, but so far I would rate this new adventure a huge success.

I’ll drop a link to one of my first so you can get an idea. My technique, both throwing and as a video presenter is far from flawless, but it is just me with all my bumps and warts. The added bonus, which I didn’t expect, is I can watch it back later and critique my throwing technique.

Best…Teri