From the owner’s camera roll

Pottery Photos

The owner has been photographing the strange, satisfying corners of pottery since 2023. Some of these are from The Clay Hole. The older ones go back to his first little studio. Kiln disasters, glaze tests, trimming spirals, a dining table that stopped being a dining table. His notes sit under each one.

New photos land here as they happen. The collection only grows.

Some people have a dining room table. This is what mine was doing that week.
A big platter that dried faster than it should have. Every one of those cracks showed up overnight. Hours of work. Pottery keeps you humble.
The muralist's hands, held up in front of her own mural at The Clay Hole. The paint matched. Of course it matched.
Getting glaze bottles ready at the kitchen island while The Clay Hole was still being built. The studio did not have tables yet. We did.
The same vase thrown over and over, each one a little bigger. The first one was smaller than a house fly. The last one took an entire bag of clay.
The day an outlet decided it was done. Nobody got hurt. The wall needed help. I have checked every plug in the building about a thousand times since.
A bowl woven from clay strips, sunning itself next to the test tiles. Weaving clay is slower than it looks, and it looks slow.
Six glazes auditioning on spoons. The drips are the interview.
Hundreds of little pinches, one at a time, in four colors. The clock in the corner says 1:44. I choose not to say which 1:44.
From my first little studio. Slab work, technically. No, that clay did not go back in the bag.
A collection I built and sold many years ago, all together on one table before it scattered to its new homes.
Trimming shavings around a fresh foot ring. This is the most satisfying mess in all of pottery and I will not be argued with.
The giant mushroom. I forgot to puncture the wheel thrown stem, the heat expanded what was trapped inside, and the whole thing exploded in the kiln. My fault, start to finish.
A loaf of marbled clay, mid twist. Cut it open and every slice is a different painting. That is the entire magic trick of agateware.
A whole table of bud vases waiting their turn. Every shape in this picture started as the same boring lump.
A pot whose glaze ran in the firing. Pulling it off the kiln shelf left this. The kiln ruins a pot and hands you something beautiful on the way out.
Same lineup, straight down the barrel. Smaller than a house fly on one end, a whole bag of clay on the other.
Old wax resist bottles getting cleaned out. The dried wax scrapes onto the plate in ribbons, and ends up prettier than it has any right to be.
Barrel cleaning day. I would like to say I drew the short straw. I took the picture instead.
Coils, laid one at a time, in three colors. Somewhere around the fortieth coil you stop counting and start listening to podcasts.
One of my giant pots, mid slump. The rib stabbed into its side was my white flag, so I would stop trying to fix something unfixable.
Unfired pottery meets concrete floor. There is a sound this makes that every potter knows. It is followed by a very long silence.
The same crowd from above, mushroom included. Looking down at a table like this is the whole reason to keep going.
Clay ropes woven over a form. It looks like a noodle disaster at this stage. That is normal. It gets a haircut later.
Every potter on earth has this exact cup. Nobody remembers filling it. Nobody will empty it.
Not drying, just showing off. We set up a fun photoshoot of bisqued pottery before we started glazing them all.
A 1,000 piece puzzle of my own bowl collection. I wanted to see if the photo would make a great puzzle. It did.
A member's hand after a session on the wheel at The Clay Hole. It washes off. The habit does not.
Colored porcelain, stacked layer on layer. This block became nerikomi bowls and platters, and every slice was a different painting.
What I found walking over to a beginner's wheel at The Clay Hole. I could not make this pattern on purpose if I tried.
Getting pots ready with tape resist and wax resist for a massive raku firing session, back at my first little studio.
Loading day. The giant vase stands more than 50 inches tall and barely cleared the lid. Everything here goes in on faith and comes out however the kiln was feeling.
I looked down into the tool jar and it had accidentally become a sculpture. So I shot it like one.
The same wax, closer. It cracks into little islands like a riverbed. Prettier than some finished pots. I do not make the rules.
A bat full of freshly thrown pieces, back when I was a beginner. I dropped the whole thing. The pieces went flying, and this is where they landed.
Tracking orders during a big pottery drop. Every vase got its order slip rolled up inside it. It looked like a tiny paper city by the end.
Throwing slip, wiped off my hands at the wheel, one session at a time. The bucket fills itself.
Another member's hands after throwing at The Clay Hole. There is a stage where your own hands become a texture study. This is that stage.
Marbled blocks, freshly cut. You never fully know what the stripes did inside until the wire comes through.
Glaze pooled into circles during a firing. No brush did this. Heat did.
An agateware bowl that exploded in the kiln and took its own shrapnel with it. All that marbling, gone in one loud moment.