Animated potter in a green sweater and paint-flecked apron grinning at a This Piece Is INCREDIBLE card she found in her glazed blue bowl

On the pick-up tables

The cards you might find in your pottery

Every piece that comes out of our kilns goes back to the pick-up tables with a small printed card in it. Most of the time it is the pick-up deadline. Now and then it is one of three others, and each of those asks something a little different of you.

A fanned stack of colorful pick-up deadline cards from The Clay Hole, each printed with the date pottery must go home by

In every piece

The pick-up deadline card

Every load that comes out of the kilns gets one pick-up date. It is printed on a card that goes into every piece from that load.

The date is the 8th, the 15th, the 22nd or the last day of the month (the 14th and the 28th in February), whichever comes first after at least two full weeks on the tables. Your pottery needs to go home by closing time that day. When the studio is closed on the card’s date, the last pick-up is closing time on the open day before it.

So much pottery moves through the studio that pieces left past their deadline get tossed. It keeps room on the tables for the loads coming out behind them.

If you know you will be traveling or tied up, hold on to your pottery and drop it off once you are back, so its time on the tables lines up with your schedule.

Every load, its unload date and its deadline card are on the kiln updates page, with a countdown to closing on the deadline day.

The This Piece Is INCREDIBLE card, a pastel rainbow card asking the maker to bring the piece in for a Show and Tell photo

In about 7 to 10 percent of pieces

This piece is INCREDIBLE

When a load comes out of the kiln, we go through it, and the truly beautiful, creative pieces get this card.

Only about 7 to 10 percent of pieces earn one. Find one in yours, and it means your piece stood out in a kiln full of pottery.

Bring the piece to the owner or an instructor. We would love to take a picture of you with it for the member Show & Tell and for the studio’s social channels, where around 3 million people follow along.

Only if you like.

The We Have Questions or Advice card, pink and deep red, asking the member to come talk to management

When a piece needs a conversation

We have questions or advice

This card goes in a piece we could not fire, or in one we need to talk over before it goes any further.

The usual reasons:

  • It went on the tables in a state that cannot be fired.
  • The cookie under it is not sufficient.
  • The wrong price was paid for its firing.
  • Something about it damaged another member’s piece.
  • Anything else we would rather go over in person.

Bring the piece and the card to management, and we will go over it together.

We all make mistakes. We just want to help keep this one from happening again.

The Ooooops card, hot pink, telling the member the studio damaged their pottery and will give clay and an extra class

Rare, and on us

Ooooops. We messed up your pottery.

It happens rarely, but it happens. A piece gets damaged while a load goes in, or it gets picked up the wrong way.

When it is our mistake, we own it. There is usually no way to fix a damaged piece, so we give you enough clay to make it again and an extra class that month. Come talk to management to get both.

It does not undo the damage. We hope it helps.

And thank you for understanding that we are not perfect.