An illustration of a worried studio owner holding a clipboard and a phone in the middle of a messy pottery studio: a kiln smoking, a wheel splattering slip, a tipped bucket, an overflowing sink, a member holding a cracked pot and a tall stack of papers

Electives · Behind the counter

Some of everything that can go wrong running a community pottery studio.

A community studio is a building full of water, dust, fire, breakable objects, expensive machines and several hundred people who all have their own idea of how things should be done. Given that, it is a small miracle that pots come out of the kiln at all. This page is a tour of what goes wrong, told from behind the counter, because every rule on the wall was written after one of these things happened, and rules make more sense once you have seen the thing.

This page covers the kilns, the glaze wall, the clay and the reclaim, the shelves, the dust and the drains, the building itself, and the people, with what each one costs when it goes wrong and the rule that exists because it did. Then what a studio can and cannot promise you. Five videos from potters who run their own businesses.

This is the short version: the eight things that go wrong most, and the rules that came out of them. The tour room by room, the questions and four of the five videos are in the comprehensive version.

$600The most any one piece costs to fire, however big it gets
1Chip of plaster in the reclaim is enough to blow a crater out of somebody else’s pot
x5Videos, from potters who run their own businesses
x8Things that go wrong most, and the rule each one wrote
Jump to a section
Why this page has words and video The eight things that go wrong most The kilns The glaze wall The clay and the reclaim The shelves, the tools and the stuff The dust, the water and the building The people What a studio can and cannot promise Three studio owners on the job The one video to watch How it works at The Clay Hole Questions people actually ask Related pages

The kilns, the glaze wall, the clay, the shelves, the dust, the building, the people, and five videos.

Read it, then watch it

Why this is written down and filmed, both.

This is a page of stories, and stories read well. A kiln that dies mid-firing with sixty people’s work inside it is a paragraph, and the paragraph is the point: you understand the rule about bone dry work the moment you picture the load it ruined. What reads less well is the texture of the job: what a pottery business costs to run, how one starts, a storefront, a stressful week, a day of glazing. Those film well, and the people below filmed them.

So read the tour for the rules and why they exist, then watch a few potters who run their own businesses talk you through the job. The reading gives you the reasons and the watching gives you the feel of the job, and people who do both come out the other side as better members, which is the actual purpose of this page.

Use both, in this order

Read the page first. Then the first video, which is a potter counting what it really costs to run a pottery business. Then look at the clean-up page with new eyes.

The whole idea

Eight things that go wrong most, and the rule each one wrote.

  1. 1A kiln quits mid-firingElements age, thermocouples drift, power blinks. The rule: nothing is promised until it is out of the kiln, and the firing fee is the price of the element it wore out.
  2. 2A piece explodes in the bisqueIt was not bone dry, or it still held water deep inside, and that water turned to steam. It peppers everything around it with shards. The rule: bone dry means bone dry, and the front desk gets to say no.
  3. 3A glaze runs onto a shelfToo many coats, glaze on the foot, an untested combination. The shelf is ruined or ground for an hour. The rule: nothing on the foot, a kiln cookie under every piece, and a catcher under anything that runs.
  4. 4Plaster gets into the reclaimOne chip, one crater in somebody else’s pot, weeks later. The rule: wet plaster and plaster damp boxes never come into the building.
  5. 5Glaze jars are left open, or a brush goes in the wrong oneA jar dries out or gets contaminated, and one glaze jar becomes everybody’s problem. The rule: lid on, one brush per jar, wipe the rim.
  6. 6A shelf fills with pots nobody claimsUnlabeled work is the single most common thing in the building. The rule: name and date on the bat, every time, and abandoned work goes to the lost pots.
  7. 7Dry clay gets sweptSilica dust is the most serious health risk in a studio. The rule: wet clean-up, damp rags, never a dry broom or a dry vacuum on clay, and an N95 or better for the jobs that make dust.
  8. 8Somebody does not clean upThe next person inherits it, and the studio absorbs an hour. The rule: the clean-up page, in full, every visit.

Room one

The kilns, which are the most expensive thing in the building and the least forgiving.

A kiln is a box that gets as hot as lava, on a timer, full of other people’s hopes. Here is what goes wrong inside one.

The element that dies at peak

Elements are coils of wire that wear out with every firing, and they tend to fail when they are hottest, which is the top of a glaze firing. The kiln stalls, the glaze never matures, sixty people’s pots come out underfired and matte. The fix is a new element, which is why firing is charged by the cubic inch: it is the price of the wear.

The thermocouple that lies

The probe that tells the controller how hot it is drifts as it ages, a few degrees at a time, until one day the controller says the kiln reached temperature and the work comes out underfired. Witness cones on the shelf are how anyone finds out. The fix is a new probe and a test firing with witness cones.

The piece that explodes

A pot that was not bone dry, or that is thick or closed and still holds water deep inside, turns that water to steam and comes apart, hard, spraying shards across every piece near it. One person’s impatience, twenty people’s pots. This is the whole reason bone dry is a rule and not advice.

The glaze that ran

Too many coats, an untested combination, glaze on the foot: it flows off the pot, fuses the pot to the shelf, and pools on the shelf in a puddle of glass. The shelf is ground wet for an hour or replaced for real money, and the pots on the shelf below get drips. Glaze catchers exist because of this.

The power blink

A half second outage resets some controllers, and a kiln that was climbing at midnight is cold and confused at seven. The staff re-fire the load, which is fine for bisque and a gamble for glaze. Nothing to be done except know it happens.

The overfull load

Every studio has one night when the shelves are full and one more mug goes in. Pots touching in a glaze firing fuse together. Lids fired on pots without wax fuse shut. Staff load every kiln here, and the rule is: if it does not fit, it waits.

Room two

The glaze wall, where one small mistake becomes everybody’s problem.

650+ brush-on glazes, seven dipping buckets, and every one of them shared. What goes wrong is small and it happens every night.

The lid left off

A brush-on glaze with the lid off overnight loses water, thickens, and applies unevenly for the next fifty people, until somebody notices and hands the jar to an instructor in pink. A lid takes two seconds and nobody thinks it matters. It matters.

The brush in the wrong jar

A brush that went into a dark glaze and then into a white one contaminates the white for everybody, and a contaminated glaze looks fine in the jar and wrong on every pot for a month. Pour what you need into one cup per glaze. A cup that touched more than one glaze goes in the trash, not back in the jar, and the threads get wiped before the lid goes on.

The dipping bucket nobody stirred

Dipping glaze settles. A pot dipped into an unstirred bucket gets the thin water on top, and the next one gets the sludge. Stirring is in the certification for a reason, and the certification exists because one person’s shortcut lands on everybody’s pots.

The wrong lid on the wrong jar

Two jars open, two lids swapped, and now the labels lie. The glaze finder says one thing and the pot says another for weeks. Lids back on the jar they came off.

Glaze in the sink

Glaze is glass and metal oxides in suspension. Rinsed down a drain it sets like cement in the pipe and costs a plumber. Rinsed in a bucket it settles and gets recovered. Brushes rinse in the bucket.

The home-mixed mystery

A glaze somebody mixed at home, applied to a pot, and put on the shelf without a word. Nobody knows what is in it or what it will do at cone 5½, and the shelf under it finds out. Kiln cookie, catcher, and a conversation, first.

Room three

The clay, the reclaim, and the one chip of plaster.

Clay is the cheapest thing in the building and the reclaim is free, which is exactly why what goes into it matters.

Plaster in the reclaim

A chip of plaster smaller than a lentil, from a home slump mold or a damp box, goes into the reclaim, gets wedged into somebody’s pot, and blows a crater out of it weeks after the firing, on their shelf, on a piece that was perfect. It is untraceable and it is permanent. Wet plaster, plaster dust and plaster damp boxes do not come into the building.

The wrong thing in the barrel

A sponge, a tool handle, a scrap of plastic or a glazed chip in the clay discard barrel goes through the reclaim and into somebody’s pot. At The Clay Hole the barrels hold everybody’s scraps mixed together and every clay body we sell fires in the same range, so the rule is clay and water only, and a scrap you are not sure about goes in the trash, not the barrel.

The open bag

A bag of clay cut open, a pound taken, and left unsealed on the shelf. By the weekend it is a rock. Twist the bag and tape it, or bring a container.

Glaze in the reclaim

Chips or grindings from glazed work, or a sponge rinsed in the clay discard barrel. Glaze in clay is a flux where no flux should be, and it bloats and slumps in the kiln. Only clean, unfired clay goes in.

The sludge bucket

Throwing water poured into the clay discard barrel instead of tipped off through the sieve at The Wash Pit, until the barrel is soup and takes a week to firm up. Water goes where the clean-up page says water goes.

The wedging table nobody scraped

Dried crumbs on the canvas go into the next person’s clay as hard bits that tear on the wheel. Scraped and wiped after use, every time.

Room four

The shelves, the tools, and the pot that belongs to nobody.

A studio is a shared closet. Everything on this list is somebody looking for something.

The unlabeled pot

The single most common problem in the building. A pot with no name on the bat sits until somebody decides it is abandoned, and sometimes that somebody is wrong. Name and date, on the bat, every visit, and the problem does not exist.

The abandoned shelf

A shelf full of work from a member who stopped coming in March. It cannot be fired, and it is holding a shelf somebody else is paying for. That is why shelf rules have dates on them.

The tool that walked

A hole cutter in the wrong bin, a rib in a pocket, a needle tool in the reclaim. Every tool put back where it came from is a tool the next person finds; every tool put back somewhere sensible is a treasure hunt.

The wooden bat under the wet pot

Wood pulls water out of the base at its own speed, the pot can crack, and the bat goes moldy and warps and is finished. Plastic bats for storage, always, and wooden bats stay on the wheel.

The wheel left dirty

A splash pan full of slurry, a head with dried clay on it, a bucket of throwing water left to grow things. The next person spends fifteen minutes cleaning before they can start, on their own class time. The clean-up page is long because this list is.

The three wheels one person is using

A bag on one, a bat on another, a pot on the third, on a night with fifty people. First come first served means one wheel, and moving to another means giving the first one back.

Room five

The dust, the drains, and the building itself.

This is the band with the dust hazard in it, so it is the one to read twice.

Silica dust

Dry clay contains silica, and silica dust breathed over years causes silicosis, which is permanent and serious. A studio that sweeps dry clay with a broom puts that dust in the air for everyone. The rule is wet clean-up: damp rags, damp mops, sponges, and never a dry broom or a dry vacuum on clay. For the jobs that make dust anyway, sanding bone dry work, mixing dry glaze, grinding shelves, a proper respirator fitted to your face. Fired work is only ever sanded, filed or ground wet, with safety glasses on. A paper dust mask is not one. An N95 or better, fitted properly, is the minimum; a half-face respirator with P100 cartridges is the better choice for regular dusty work.

The sink

Clay water poured down a drain settles in the pipe, the drain fills, and then the plumber comes. Rinse over a bucket and take the bucket to The Wash Pit, where the water tips off through the sieve and the slurry stays in the bucket. The all-purpose sink is for tools and rags.

The cold morning

The building cools to about fifty-five degrees overnight. Pots dry slower, glazes thicken, and a pot left by the door in January is a pot at risk. Nothing to be done about the cold except know it, and give work longer before you call it bone dry.

The summer kiln room

A kiln at cone 5½ heats the room it lives in, and a July glaze firing makes the kiln room the warmest place in the county. Staff load and unload every kiln here, in the morning for a reason.

The spill

A bucket of glaze, a barrel of slip, a splash pan of slurry, on a floor that thirty people walk across. It gets cleaned immediately, wet, and it gets reported, because a slurry floor is glass when it dries and ice when it is wet.

The thing that got dropped

Bisqueware chips, glazed ware shatters, and a broken pot on a shared table has sharp edges nobody expects. Swept up wet, wrapped, and into the trash, never the reclaim.

Room six

The people, who are the whole point, and also the whole problem.

Every one of these is somebody having a normal human evening. That is what makes them hard.

The one who did not clean up

Not malicious, just tired, or late, or sure they would be back in a minute. The next person inherits it. This is the most common conversation a studio owner has, and it is never fun.

The one who glazed the foot

A first glaze firing, a beautiful pot, and no idea that glaze on the bottom fuses to the shelf. Now it is on the fused shelf getting ground, and the certification exists so the second pot does not.

The one who is sure their piece was bone dry

It was not. It exploded. The conversation about whose pots it took with it is the second most common conversation, and the reason the front desk gets to say no.

The one who knows a better way

Sometimes they do, and the studio learns something. Sometimes the better way is why the glaze bucket is contaminated. Instructors listen to both and can usually tell which is which by the second sentence.

The one who cannot let go of the rules

The member who polices other members. Also well meant, also a problem. The front desk enforces the rules so that nobody else has to, and a quiet word to staff beats a loud one across the room.

The one who was wonderful

Most of them, most nights. The member who labels everything, cleans their wheel, puts the lid back, asks before trying something new, and brings a pot to show and tell. Every studio runs on these people, and this whole page is really a description of what they do without being asked.

The promises

What a studio can promise you, and what it cannot.

What a studio can and cannot promise.

A community studio can promise you the equipment, the glazes, the kilns, instructors who will teach you, a shelf with your name on it, and a room full of people doing the same thing. It can promise that the rules are enforced evenly and that they exist for reasons you can read about on this page. It can promise that your firing fee pays for the elements it wears out and that the reclaim is free.

It cannot promise that your pot survives the kiln. Kilns fail, pots explode, glazes run, and the piece next to yours can take yours with it. It cannot promise the wheel you like is free on the night you want it, because there are twenty-nine wheels and more people than wheels on a busy night. It cannot promise that a glaze looks like the tile, because a tile is a small pot and yours is not. And it cannot promise to keep abandoned work forever, because the shelf belongs to whoever is paying for it this month.

The trade

You accept those things, label your work, clean up, and read the rules. The studio gives you everything else. It is a good trade, and most people who make it stay.

Watch it done

Now watch three potters who run their own pottery businesses.

Watch this one, then read the clean-up page again.

None of these people work here. Between them they cover what it costs, how a pottery business starts, a storefront, a stressful week and a day of glazing. The still frames load while you read; the player and its cookies wait until you press play.

Ten minutes of a potter on what it really costs to run a pottery business. The other four videos are in the comprehensive version.

Start here: the costshow much it *really* costs to run a pottery businessNatalie Santoro Art
Ten minutes of a potter talking straight to camera about what it really costs to run a pottery business. Worth reading the firing fee card again afterwards. Watch on YouTube
Starting oneHow I Started My Pottery Business at 23Garbo Zhu
Seventeen minutes on how a pottery business began: a home studio, selling online, the money and registration side, quitting the day job, and the lessons learned. Watch on YouTube
From craft to storefrontHow I Opened A Pottery Storefront And StudioStephen Salter Pottery
Twenty-six minutes on how a ceramics business grew into its own storefront: learning the craft first, testing the market, finding the retail space, and what a shop costs to keep open. Watch on YouTube
A stressful week, filmedA Hectic Pottery Studio Vlog // Small Business LifeGarbo Zhu
Sixteen minutes of what the maker calls another stressful week covered in clay: trimming, a Saturday kiln problem, unloading, and a new studio day. Watch on YouTube
A glazing day, filmedMy Day as a Pottery Studio Owner // Studio VlogGarbo Zhu
And nine minutes of a day spent glazing, the task the maker calls a favorite: morning setup, glazing, a break, smaller pieces, then unloading the kiln. Watch on YouTube

How it works here

The rules, and the pages that carry them.

This page is written about studios everywhere. Here is where ours stands.

Three things to know here

The clean-up page is the whole list of what to do before you leave, and it is long because this page is. The four certifications, for brush-on glaze, dipping glaze, the slab rollers and slab molds, and raku, exist because of the things in this tour. And when something goes wrong, tell the front desk the same night; a spill, a broken shelf or a pot you are not sure was dry, found at seven the next morning, is a much bigger problem than one reported at nine the night before.

The clean-up page

Most of what is on it is on this tour somewhere. Read the clean-up instructions once with this page in mind and it stops being a list and starts being obvious.

The certifications

Dipping glaze, slab rollers and slab molds, brush-on glazes, raku: each one is a short course, a quiz and a signed agreement, and each exists because of the pots that were lost before it did. Nobody is being tested for fun.

Tell the desk the same night

A spill, a broken shelf, a jar with the wrong lid, a pot you are not sure was dry. Reported at nine, it is a two minute fix. Found at seven the next morning, it is a kiln load.

The firing fee

Five cents a cubic inch, a flat $4.80 for anything 125 cubic inches or under, a $600 cap, and bisque is free. It is the price of the elements, the shelves and the electricity, and the cap is there so one enormous piece cannot run away with you.

Icarus

The kiln god on the wall takes offerings before a firing. He does not actually control the kiln. He does remind people, every time they walk past, that the inside of one is out of anyone’s hands.

The wonderful ones

Label your work, clean your wheel, put the lid back, ask before trying something new, bring a pot to show and tell. That is the entire job description, and most members here already have it.

Questions people actually ask

The ones that come up at the front desk.

My pot broke in the kiln. Was it the kiln?

Usually not. Most kiln losses are a piece that still held water, a glaze that ran, or a neighbor that exploded. Kilns do fail, and when one does the studio says so, and the team decides what can be fired again.

Why is plaster such a big deal?

One chip in the reclaim goes into somebody else’s pot and blows a crater out of it weeks after the firing. It is untraceable and permanent. Plaster you pour yourself, and plaster damp boxes, live at home.

Why do I have to wet clean instead of sweep?

Dry clay dust contains silica, and silica breathed for years causes silicosis. A broom or a dry vacuum puts it in the air for everyone. Damp rags and mops keep it on the floor. For dusty jobs, a fitted N95 or better; a paper dust mask is not a respirator.

What happens to work I forget about?

Labeled work sits on your shelf as long as your membership does. Unlabeled work sits until somebody decides it is abandoned, and then it goes to the lost pots. Name and date on the bat, every visit.

Can I bring a glaze I mixed at home?

As a test tile on a catcher first, after a conversation with the studio team about what is in it, and always on a kiln cookie. A glaze nobody here has seen fired can take a shelf with it, and the shelf under yours belongs to someone else.

Why does firing cost money when membership already does?

Because elements and shelves wear out per firing, and a member who fires a lot wears them out faster than one who does not. Charging by the cubic inch is the fairest way anyone has found, and bisque is free.

What is the most common problem?

An unlabeled pot. Then a wheel not cleaned. Then a lid left off a glaze jar. None of them is dramatic and all of them are every night.

Related pages

Six pages that carry the rules this tour explains.

Three to read next.

Every rule on this page lives somewhere else on the site in full. These are the somewheres.

StudioThe Clean-Up InstructionsThe whole list of what to do before you leave, and now you know why. Firing and fixingWhat a Firing Actually DoesWhat a firing does, stage by stage, and why most failures were decided before the door closed. Firing and fixingLoading and Unloading a KilnSpacing, catchers and cookies, from the loader’s side. Our staff do the loading here. Graduation DayDipping Glaze CertificationThe shared buckets, and the course that keeps them clean for everyone. GlazingMaking a Glaze CatcherWhere a runny glaze goes so the shelf survives. Trimming, handles and dryingMaking Your Own Damp BoxThe plaster project that lives at home, and why.

That is the tour

Every rule on the wall is a story. Now you know some of them.

None of this is a complaint. Running a studio is a privilege and most nights nothing on this page happens at all. But the nights it does are why the clean-up page is long, why the glaze wall has rules, why wet plaster stays outside, and why the front desk asks what is in your home-mixed glaze. Knowing the story behind the rule is most of what it takes to be the member every studio wants.

If you want the room-by-room tour, the questions and the other four videos, switch to the comprehensive version at the top. Otherwise, go put the lid back on the glaze jar.

Back to Clay Hole University The Clean-Up Instructions

Written for potters everywhere. Where our studio does things differently, the page says so.