Every piece you make passes through four tables.
Two where you drop work off. Two where you pick it up. Knowing which is which is the difference between finding your bowl and losing it.
Nobody carries your piece from one stage to the next. You do. The tables are how a room full of strangers keeps a few hundred pots moving through four kilns without anybody losing track of whose is whose.
The loop, start to finish
A piece leaves your hands four times before you take it home. Each handoff is a table, and each table has a sign over it saying the same thing this page says.
They are not in a row, and the arrangement is deliberate: the tables are laid out around how work flows to the kilns, not around the order you use them. Two on the left, two on the right, a front pair and a back pair on each side.
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1
Bone-dry drop-off
You finish a piece and let it dry all the way through. When it is one hundred percent dry, it goes here to be bisque fired. Free.
Right side, back tables
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2
Bisqueware pick-up
It comes out of the kiln hard, pale and ready to glaze. You collect it here and glaze it. Two weeks to collect.
Left side, back tables
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3
Glazeware drop-off
Glazed, paid for, sitting on a kiln cookie. It goes here and waits for a full kiln.
Left side, front tables
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4
Final piece pick-up
Glass-hard, glossy and yours. Two weeks to collect, then go make something even more amazing.
Right side, front tables
Take a walk down the shelves
This is one continuous look along the pick-up tables on an ordinary week. Drag it, flick it, or let it drift. Every piece on these shelves belongs to somebody, and every one of them is on a clock.
Real shelves, real week. Nothing here was styled for a photograph.
Every piece has a card on it with a pick-up deadline written on the card.
Bone-dry drop-off
Where a finished, fully dry piece goes to be bisque fired. This is the one table where a mistake does not just cost you your own work.
Where it isRight side of the studio, back tables
- 1One hundred percent dry, or not at all. A piece that still holds water turns that water to steam in the kiln and explodes, destroying your piece and the pieces around it.
- 2Ask an instructor to teach you how to tell. Bone-dry has a look, a color, a temperature and a weight, and it takes about thirty seconds to learn from somebody who already knows.
- 3Put your maker’s mark on it. This is how you find your piece later and how nobody else claims it by accident. We are not responsible for pieces gone missing.
- 4Sand it now. Sanding bone-dry clay is easy. Sanding fired stoneware is a chore with a power tool.
- 5Anything thick and solid needs months. Always hollow out your pieces. A solid lump that feels dry on the outside is wet in the middle, and the middle is what explodes.
Going out of town? Hold on to it.
The two week clock starts when your piece comes out of the kiln, not when you hear about it. If you are traveling, wait and put the piece on the bone-dry table when you get back. A bone-dry piece sitting on your shelf is perfectly happy. A bisqued piece on the pick-up table is counting down.
Bisqueware pick-up
Your piece comes back hard, pale and thirsty. Bisque firing is free, and it fires to cone 05. Now it is ready to glaze.
Where it isLeft side of the studio, back tables
Two weeks, and the card says when
A card goes in or on your piece the moment the kiln is unloaded, and it carries your deadline in writing. Do not miss it. Anything still sitting there after that is tossed.
Check that it is actually yours
Two members throwing the same size cylinder in the same clay make two pieces that look identical under the kiln dust. Find your maker’s mark before you walk away with it.
Then glaze it
Follow every glaze rule. No glaze within a quarter inch of the bottom, and none on the bottom at all. Glaze on the foot welds your piece to the kiln shelf and ruins both.
If you are not certified on dipping yet, or you want to check a combination before you commit to it, the glaze finder shows you what every glaze on the wall actually does.
Glazeware drop-off
Glazed and ready for its final firing. This is the only table with a gate on it: the firing is paid for before the piece goes on the shelf.
Where it isLeft side of the studio, front tables
- 1Pay for the firing first. Glaze firings are $0.05 per cubic inch with a $4.80 minimum, paid online before the piece is set down here.
- 2No glaze within a quarter inch of the bottom, and none on the bottom itself.
- 3Every piece sits on a kiln cookie that extends three quarters of an inch out around its base.
- 4Runny glaze on the outside needs a glaze catcher. A glaze that runs onto a shelf takes the shelf, your piece, and sometimes the piece next to it.
- 5Then it waits for a full kiln. We run a glaze firing once enough pieces have accumulated to fill one, at cone 5½, which is cone 5 with a twelve minute hold.
Why the kiln waits
Firing a half-empty kiln costs the same as firing a full one and gives everybody worse results, so we wait until there is a full load. That is also why there is no fixed day for glaze firings, and why your card is the only date that matters.
Final piece pick-up
The last table. Glass-hard, glossy, and the reason anybody starts doing this.
Where it isRight side of the studio, front tables
Two weeks from the final firing
Same clock as the bisque table, same card, same consequence. Your card carries the deadline. After it, the piece is tossed.
These are the shelves in the photograph above. They fill up fast, and the only thing keeping them usable is people collecting their work.
Check the mark, every time
This is the table where mix-ups actually happen, because a glazed piece looks nothing like it did when you left it. A glaze can come out a completely different color than it went on.
Find your maker’s mark. If the mark is not yours, the piece is not yours, however much you like it.
Now go make something even more amazing
That line is on the sign over the table, and we mean it. The best thing you can do with a finished pot is get it off the shelf and start the next one.
Two weeks, and then it is gone
Once a piece is fired, bisque or final, you have two weeks to pick it up. After that it is tossed. We would rather say that plainly here than have it be a surprise in a bin.
The clock starts at the kiln, not at your visit
Two weeks from the day the kiln is unloaded. The two weeks run whether or not you are in that week, and whether or not you knew the piece was ready.
The card is the notice
There is no email and no text. A card goes in or on your piece at unloading with the deadline written on it. Checking both pick-up tables every time you are in is the whole system.
Why we are strict about it
Four tables serve hundreds of members. A shelf of work nobody collects is a shelf the next hundred pieces cannot use, and the pieces waiting behind it are somebody else’s.
If you are going to be away
Do not start the clock. Hold your bone-dry work at home or on your shelf and put it on the drop-off table when you are back. Same for a glazed piece waiting to go on the glazeware table. The only deadlines you can miss are the ones you started.
Do not touch pottery that is not yours
It is one of the Unbreakable Clay Hole Commandments, and the pick-up tables are where it gets tested: thou shalt not touch the pottery of thine classmates without permission.
- ×Do not pick a piece up to look at it. A bone-dry pot is about as strong as a cracker, and a handle takes a week of somebody’s life.
- ×Do not move somebody’s work to make room for yours. If a table is full, find one of us. Shuffling other people’s pieces around is how they get chipped and how they get lost.
- ×Do not take a piece because it looks like yours. Turn it over, find the maker’s mark, and put it back if the mark is not yours.
- ×Do not read a card as an invitation. A piece past its deadline is still not yours. We clear those tables, not members.
What to do instead
Ask. Almost everybody in this building is delighted to hand you their pot and tell you how they made it, and that conversation is most of the reason a community studio beats a garage.
If a piece is broken, moved or missing, tell one of us. Do not tidy it yourself.
Class times and open studio times only
Please collect your work during a class or an open studio, not outside those hours. We are here at other times, but we are teaching, loading kilns, mixing glaze and running the building, and a pick-up in the middle of that costs the whole room more than it looks like it does.
- Monday daytime 10:30 AM to 2 PM Instructed class
- Monday to Thursday evenings 6:30 PM to 10 PM Instructed class
- Friday evening 6:30 PM to 10 PM Open studio
- Saturday and Sunday mornings 10 AM to 1:30 PM Open studio
Two things that make a pick-up take one minute
Doors open 15 minutes before a session starts, and no earlier. Come in at the start of a session rather than at the end, when the room is cleaning.
Check the holiday closures before you make the trip, and if you are not sure whether your piece is out of the kiln yet, call us on 385-241-5528 first.
The questions these tables generate
How do I know my piece is out of the kiln?
You look. There is no notification, and that is deliberate: a kiln finishes when it finishes, and a promise about a day would be wrong more often than it was right.
Check both pick-up tables every single time you are in the building. It takes twenty seconds and it is the only thing standing between you and a missed deadline.
My piece is not on the table. Where is it?
Almost always one of three things: it is still waiting for a full kiln, it is still in a kiln that has not cooled, or it did not survive the firing. Occasionally somebody has picked it up by mistake, which is exactly what maker’s marks exist to prevent.
Ask any instructor. Do not go through the shelves looking for it yourself.
Can somebody else pick my work up for me?
Yes, if they are a member and you have asked them to. That is the permission the commandment is talking about. What is not fine is somebody deciding on your behalf that a piece looks abandoned.
What happens to pieces that are not picked up?
They are tossed. Not stored, not put aside, not sold. Once the deadline on the card has passed the piece is forfeit and the shelf space goes back to the pieces behind it.
Can I take a bisqued piece home and glaze it there?
No. Bisque firing looks free because its cost is carried by the glaze firing, so taking a bisqued piece home to avoid the glaze firing is taking a firing you have not paid for. There is more on why in the FAQs.
Why is there a card on my piece?
It is placed in or on your piece when the kiln is unloaded and it carries one thing: the date this piece has to be collected by. It is the only notice you get, and it is the date we go by.
Dry it, drop it, check the tables, take it home.
Four tables, two weeks each way, a maker’s mark on everything and your hands off everybody else’s work. That is the entire system, and it is the reason a studio this size can hold this much pottery without losing any of it.