An awkward ask, made as nicely as I know how
Please Don’t Drop By Unannounced
I am so glad you want to see the place. I have to ask you not to come see the place. Give me four paragraphs before you throw your phone.
By Dan Pearce, founder of The Clay Hole. This one started life as a script for a video. It got longer.
Here’s a sentence I never once imagined typing.
Please stop showing up at my pottery studio.
Ugh. Reading that back makes me want to delete the whole thing and go post a video of a bowl instead.
Let me back up.
When I sketched this place out, I made a list of problems I’d have to solve someday. Kiln repairs. Clay deliveries. What happens when eleven people all want the same wheel on a Thursday night. Where on earth to put a hundred and fifty slab molds.
Not once, in any version of that list, did I write down: what do I do when four lovely strangers from Ohio walk through the door on a random Tuesday expecting a tour.
And yet.
First, the true part, because I need you to have this one before you get the rest.
I’m thankful I built a thing you’d drive out of your way to see.
I’m thankful you care enough to want to stop in.
I’m thankful you’d like to shake my hand and shoot the shit for twenty minutes.
That’s the potter’s spirit. It’s the whole reason clay people are the best people. You meet a stranger at a wheel and forty minutes later you know about their divorce and their dog.
I love that about us. I’m not being cute. I really do.
So this next part is hard to write, and I don’t want to land as bitter or ungrateful, because I’m neither one. I get it. I’d want to stop by too.
But I’ve got to be real with you.
I work weeks that do not have enough days in them.
Outside of class hours I’m neck deep in admin, or filming, or editing, or fixing something that broke, or writing whatever page you happen to be reading right now. My staff are on specific tasks every single minute they’re on the clock. That is the only reason a place this size is still standing.
And when somebody walks in unannounced, all of that stops.
Not for a minute, either. Flow is not a light switch. You don’t get interrupted for four minutes and then pick back up at minute five. You get interrupted for four minutes and then lose the next forty finding your way back to where you were.
Multiply that by a steady stream of well-meaning humans and it stops being a cute problem.
It’s hurting the business. It’s hurting my team’s morale. It’s hurting a whole pile of things I never saw coming.
So here it is, and there’s no smooth way to land it.
The Clay Hole is not a tourist attraction. And knowing where to find me is not the same thing as being invited.
I feel like an absolute douche typing that. I have reread it nine times.
But I would sincerely appreciate it if all the well-intentioned, wonderful humans who just want to see the place... didn’t?
Is that okay to ask?
Here’s what I can give you instead, and I built both of these on purpose.
There’s a virtual tour on the site. It shows nearly everything in here. You can walk the entire building from your couch, in your underwear, with a snack. Honestly a better experience than the real one, where I’d be sweating and apologizing about the state of the glaze room.
And I’ll keep posting. Constantly. Obsessively. Probably too much.
So that’s the deal I’m offering. Let’s stay tight on social media, and only on social media.
Deal?
Don’t resent me too much for this one. I know a lot of you had this place penciled onto a Utah road trip, somewhere between the arches and the salt flats, and I hate being the guy who erases it.
I wish I could hire somebody whose entire job was meeting people and handing out tours. I wish I could clone myself and park one of me out front all day, getting to know every single person who wanted to say hello.
I can’t. Not yet, anyway.
Thanks for having my back on this.
And hey. If you actually live here in Utah, and you’re not looking for a tour so much as a place to make things and find your people, that’s a completely different conversation. That door is wide open. Signing up online takes about four minutes and you can start right away.
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.