For the person sitting there quietly
What to Say at the Pottery Table When You Don’t Know Anyone
You walked in, you sat down, and now you’re wondering if it’s weird to just... not talk. It isn’t. But here’s how to start if you want to.
By Dan Pearce, founder of The Clay Hole. Written for everybody who has ever sat down at a full table and gone quiet.
Here’s a thing I watch happen almost every single night.
Somebody new walks in. They find their seat. They lay their tools out in a neat little row like they’re about to perform surgery. They get their clay.
And then they go completely silent for two hours.
Not because they’re rude. Not because they don’t want to talk. Because the room is already going, everybody seems to know everybody, and there is no obvious door to walk through.
I know that feeling.
I want you to know that I know that feeling, because I’m the loud guy in the beanie and nobody believes me when I say it. I have walked into rooms and immediately started rearranging things that did not need rearranging, just so I’d look like I had a purpose.
You know what I’m talking about.
So first, the boring true thing.
Everybody in that room was new once.
That person next to you who knows all the glaze names and where the good ribs are hiding? Six months ago they were sitting exactly where you’re sitting, wondering if they were allowed to get up and get water.
The one who seems like the mayor of the whole studio? Same.
Pottery mostly attracts people who wanted a room to be in. That’s the actual reason we’re all here. Not one of us signed up because we desperately needed another bowl.
Okay. You want something to actually say.
Here are the ones that work, and they all work for the same reason. Every single one of them is a question about them.
What are you working on?
The easiest one on earth and it has never failed anybody. People at a pottery table are dying to tell you about the thing in front of them. You just handed them a microphone.
What glaze is that? I love it.
Dangerous. You may lose forty minutes. Potters have opinions about glaze the way other people have opinions about politics, and they have been waiting all week for somebody to ask.
Have you been coming here long?
Opens the door to their whole story. How they found the place, what they came in for, and what they ended up staying for.
I’m new. Any tips?
The best one, and the one people are most scared to use. Here’s the secret: asking somebody for help is not an imposition. It’s a gift. Everybody likes being the person who knows a thing.
Wow. How did you do that?
The actual cheat code. Say it to somebody about a pot they made and you have a friend for the rest of the year.
That’s the whole list. You do not need a better one.
Now the other half of this, which matters just as much.
It is completely fine to say nothing.
I mean it. There’s a particular kind of comfort in a room where six people are working quietly and the only sounds are wheels and water and somebody’s tool hitting the table. Some of the best nights in this building are the quiet ones.
You are not failing at pottery class if you don’t make a friend on day one. You’re not failing at it on day thirty either.
Some people come here to be alone in a room with other people. That’s a real and good reason to be here and nobody is going to make you socialize.
But if you do want in, the clay hands you something no other room does.
You never have to make eye contact. You never have to hold a conversation you don’t want to be in. You can say your one sentence, then look down at your pot and let the silence happen, and it isn’t awkward at all, because you’re both already busy.
Pottery is the greatest excuse in the world to talk to a stranger, because you are both already doing something else.
The friendships in here didn’t start with anything clever.
They started over a shared rib. Over somebody’s piece collapsing and the whole table groaning at once. Over a glaze that came out of the kiln looking like something nobody planned and everybody wanted.
They started over can you hand me that, and oh my gosh what happened, and no seriously, how did you do that?
So take a breath. Say one thing. Then go back to your pot.
That’s it. That’s the whole strategy.
I’ve watched it work a few hundred times now, and I have never once seen anybody regret it.
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.