To the other studios in this valley
A Rising Tide Lifts the Lids on All Kilns
Utah pottery has gone a little bonkers since we opened. Some of it looks awfully familiar. I am not mad about it, and here is why.
By Dan Pearce, founder of The Clay Hole. This one started life as a script for a video. It got longer.
Okay, candid moment.
It has been genuinely wild watching what has happened in the local pottery world since The Clay Hole opened its doors.
A lot of energy. A lot of chatter. A lot of new studios. A lot of older studios trying new things.
And a lot of what I’ll politely call creative borrowing.
Look, I noticed. Of course I noticed. We put out a signup deal that was, frankly, a little bit insane, and within a blink it turned up down the road. Not something similar to it. It. Exactly it, right down to the fine print.
And honestly? That tells me something in here is working.
Nobody copies the stuff that doesn’t work.
Here’s the thing, though.
This valley is big enough for every kind of pottery experience there is. And I mean that. All of it should exist here.
Not everybody wants what we do.
Some people want a tiny studio tucked into a basement with six regulars who know each other’s birthdays.
Some people want a place that hands them a key and then leaves them completely alone.
Some people want a loud, buzzing, chaotic creative hub with a hundred and fifty slab molds and a dog wandering through it.
That last one is us. And that is very much not for everyone.
Which is the whole beauty of it. When a studio leans hard into its own thing, the entire community wins.
If everybody runs the same playbook, this gets boring fast. Clay deserves better than boring, because clay is the least boring thing I have ever put my hands on.
When somebody walks in here and it’s clearly not their fit, I tell them so.
And then I point them at other studios, other class models, other ways of doing this.
I’m not trying to hoard pottery people. What a strange, small ambition that would be. I’m trying to grow the number of humans in this state who have their hands in mud on a Tuesday night.
The more studios thriving around here, the louder pottery’s heartbeat gets in this valley.
A rising tide lifts the lids on all kilns.
I’m sorry. I’ve been sitting on that one for months and I was not going to waste it.
So if you run another Utah studio and you’re reading this, here’s what I actually want to say to you.
Do your thing. Loudly. Unapologetically. Obnoxiously, if that’s your flavor.
Don’t try to be us.
That one’s already taken. And honestly, being us is exhausting. You’d hate it.
I didn’t build this place to be the only studio around. I built my dream studio and then went looking for my people. That’s the whole plan. It is not the studio for everyone and I am definitely not everyone’s cup of tea. Ask around.
And that trial deal everybody copied? It was never about competing with anyone. It was about giving a nervous person the cheapest possible way to get their hands in clay one time and find out what they think of it.
If somebody tries it here and ends up finding their fit down the road instead? Good. Great, even.
More hands in mud. I’ll take that win every day of the week.
We don’t have to dim each other’s kilns to burn bright.
Let’s make pottery in Utah something the rest of the country can’t ignore.
And not because it’s good for my business, though I’m not going to sit here and pretend that it isn’t.
Because somewhere out there right now is a person having a rough year who has no idea that a lump of dirt and a spinning wheel is about to hand them a hobby, a room full of friends, and two hours a week where their brain finally shuts up.
They don’t care whose building they find that in.
Neither do I.
Dan Pearce
Founder of The Clay Hole, Fellow Human
About the author
Dan Pearce
Founder of The Clay Hole · Draper, Utah
Dan Pearce is an author, artist, and the founder of The Clay Hole in Draper, Utah. Before pottery, he spent a decade as one of the most-read bloggers in the world. His blog, Single Dad Laughing, ranked #2 among personal blogs worldwide and drew more than a billion reads before he retired it in 2020. He has published six books, including the memoir The All-Important, Well-Fed, Giant White Man, and built an audience of more than three million followers. He has also worked professionally as an animal artist, illustrator, body painter, and poker player. Not in that order, and yes, all of those are real.
In 2022 he launched Dan Pearce Ceramics, known for one-of-a-kind pieces he has never once duplicated, and every sale went toward building The Clay Hole: 10,000 square feet, more than a million dollars invested, and a community of hundreds of members built from the ground up to put people first. Of everything he has made in twenty-five years of chasing creative work, he considers the community the best of it.