GEP

These are the most “successful Instagram users.” Not to be confused with “successful potters.” You can’t deposit instagram likes in the bank. What looks shiny and pretty on social media can be 100% a facade. 
I know successful potters from my real life, because doing lots of high-level shows allows you to meet the real deals. Some of them are great with social media, some are bad at it, and some of them don’t do social media at all. There is no correlation. 
My advice to anyone who wants to be a serious pro: don’t place any value on social media popularity. Do it for fun, if you want, but that’s all. 

I’m not disputing that his happens. But how many pots were in that online sale? Sometimes I look at those sold out stores and see that they sold 50 or 70 pots. Maybe 100. That’s really not that many pots. And how many times per year do these potters open their shops? 3 or 4 times per year? It’s important to look at these businesses as an overall annual format, and whether it can be sustained as a means to earn a living over time, not just one sale that sells out in a flash.

Totally agree. The platforms are all floating the idea of charging us a monthly fee. If it happens, we shouldn’t be surprised. 

Meta has already started rolling out a subscription based verification service in New Zealand and Australia, and will expand out this year. It may or may not fly well on a long term basis. Twitter is NOT doing well right now by any metric.  But it depends on how they change it. The first iteration won’t be the last. 
 The broader content creator community is agitating for more stable ways of generating income for themselves, so another thing to watch in coming years will be if they choose to organize somehow. They say that if you’re using a service for free, you are the product being sold. When you’re consuming the content, they’re feeding you ads based on your behaviour. When you’re the one creating content, you’re being one of the reasons people go to social media in the first place. Platforms are currently making billions from free labour. 
 

These are the most “successful Instagram users.” Not to be confused with “successful potters.” You can’t deposit instagram likes in the bank. What looks shiny and pretty on social media can be 100% a facade. 
I know successful potters from my real life, because doing lots of high-level shows allows you to meet the real deals. Some of them are great with social media, some are bad at it, and some of them don’t do social media at all. There is no correlation. 
My advice to anyone who wants to be a serious pro: don’t place any value on social media popularity. Do it for fun, if you want, but that’s all. 

The best advice comes from people with years of first hand experience with selling. I have seen lots of second hand advice being peddled, and it always come across to me as "this person has clearly never tried the advice their peddling." Second hand advice is always over-simplified, as if the person thinks there are formulas and paved roads to follow. Those don't exist! 

These are the most “successful Instagram users.” Not to be confused with “successful potters.” You can’t deposit instagram likes in the bank. What looks shiny and pretty on social media can be 100% a facade. 
I know successful potters from my real life, because doing lots of high-level shows allows you to meet the real deals. Some of them are great with social media, some are bad at it, and some of them don’t do social media at all. There is no correlation. 
My advice to anyone who wants to be a serious pro: don’t place any value on social media popularity. Do it for fun, if you want, but that’s all. 

The best advice comes from people with years of first hand experience with selling. I have seen lots of second hand advice being peddled, and it always come across to me as "this person has clearly never tried the advice their peddling." Second hand advice is always over-simplified, as if the person thinks there are formulas and paved roads to follow. Those don't exist! 

The best advice comes from people with years of first hand experience with selling. I have seen lots of second hand advice being peddled, and it always come across to me as "this person has clearly never tried the advice their peddling." Second hand advice is always over-simplified, as if the person thinks there are formulas and paved roads to follow. Those don't exist! 

The best advice comes from people with years of first hand experience with selling. I have seen lots of second hand advice being peddled, and it always come across to me as "this person has clearly never tried the advice their peddling." Second hand advice is always over-simplified, as if the person thinks there are formulas and paved roads to follow. Those don't exist! 

I LOVE MY MINIVAN!!!!!!!! It is so functional, not just for a pottery business. Some people thought I was strange for wanting to get one, but I was like “look at that cargo space sign me up!!!!!” 
It helps that most of my friends are either potters or art fair artists, and in this subculture a minivan is considered sexy. 

I LOVE MY MINIVAN!!!!!!!! It is so functional, not just for a pottery business. Some people thought I was strange for wanting to get one, but I was like “look at that cargo space sign me up!!!!!” 
It helps that most of my friends are either potters or art fair artists, and in this subculture a minivan is considered sexy. 

I LOVE MY MINIVAN!!!!!!!! It is so functional, not just for a pottery business. Some people thought I was strange for wanting to get one, but I was like “look at that cargo space sign me up!!!!!” 
It helps that most of my friends are either potters or art fair artists, and in this subculture a minivan is considered sexy. 

No new questions in the pool for the QotW, so I will pose a new one.
I have been amazed lately of the distances that some of you cover when doing wholesale/retail and shows in general. It would be interesting to know how far you travel for these sales. If you have any stories about these travels, please include them also. 
QotW: How much area/distance do you cover when selling your ceramics?
My history of sales is pretty simple. For years I sold at festivals and other venues in Blair and Center county in PA. I was frequent enough that folks returned to my booth after buying in previous years just to buy from me. At the same time though, I had and ongoing sales outlet with a religious group that needed chalices for meeting and ceremonies. Later they came to need patens also as they created an award in honor of one of their founders that led to me selling @20 communion sets a year and sending them to seminary schools all over the nation. Lots of work, and lots of shipping/ handling problems to be solved and I continue to do so. I have now created these for over 40 years. I have also sent some as far as Europe, Australia, and South Korea. 
best,
Pres

At one time about 1,100 mile each way to a show twice a year for 24 years straight. It was one of my best shows. Gave it up 6 years ago. I did AZ,NV,UT,Wa,CO, shows for many years. A few where two days trips to get to show and two days back and one was always 3 days to Denver. I did that for 5 straight years to Denver.  Last August I did my last Anacortes art show after about 30 years of them (retired from show which was my best)-that was 800 miles each way. I began a few years ago spliting into a two day drive up and and two back .Gave it all up last year no more traveling shows for me. I still have a twice a year wholesale order (20 boxes) I drive 4.5 hours each way to drop off. Its less than 1/2 the distance to the gallery it goes to. (its the gallery owners brothers house) They get it the rest of the way. Its one Forester full of pottery stuffed to the gills. At one time I drove over 20,000 a year on my old van doing art shops in the western states.In the last decade it was under 10,000 . Now its under 2k dropping off local orders. I do not miss it except for the large amounts of cash returning home with. That was always a nice feeling after slaying the Dragon at a big show.I was smart and saved much of it for later in life.Love my Roth 

Update, and thanks for all the suggestions and insights. We won. Sorta, we hope. They have agreed to consider approving purchase orders for the 4 kilns. Some minor grit in the gears is recent price increases since I first submitted the proposal, but hopefully they will continue forward. One other "change" is instead of asking for the upgrade to the quad elements in the two e28s, I am going to shoot the moon and ask for Advancer shelves instead of the standard furniture kits. Wish me luck, and thanks again.
dw

Make sure to explain that the official name for kiln brick is “ceramic refractory brick” or “fire brick” and often called “soft brick” and is nothing similar to the masonry bricks that houses are built with. I would refer to it as “soft brick” as much as possible (hehe) and explain that it can be cut with a hand saw. 
In fact, I think this is a winning argument for why the Skutts should be replaced with L&Ls, by explaining and showing that the hard ceramic element holders have protected the soft brick in your existing L&Ls, and thus the L&L kilns are a much longer term investment that will not need to be replaced for another generation. If this means you can get the Skutts replaced but not the older L&Ls, that’s still a win for your program!
(Edit to add: one of my L&L E23Ts is also 20 years old, and gets fired about 70 times/year. I have zero interest in replacing it, because “Dr. Evil” is still in impeccable shape. The outside is a bit corroded, but the inside is pristine.)

Make sure to explain that the official name for kiln brick is “ceramic refractory brick” or “fire brick” and often called “soft brick” and is nothing similar to the masonry bricks that houses are built with. I would refer to it as “soft brick” as much as possible (hehe) and explain that it can be cut with a hand saw. 
In fact, I think this is a winning argument for why the Skutts should be replaced with L&Ls, by explaining and showing that the hard ceramic element holders have protected the soft brick in your existing L&Ls, and thus the L&L kilns are a much longer term investment that will not need to be replaced for another generation. If this means you can get the Skutts replaced but not the older L&Ls, that’s still a win for your program!
(Edit to add: one of my L&L E23Ts is also 20 years old, and gets fired about 70 times/year. I have zero interest in replacing it, because “Dr. Evil” is still in impeccable shape. The outside is a bit corroded, but the inside is pristine.)

In my experience, teaching is not a good way to supplement your income as a potter. Teachers get paid very little! Even if you are a star who can teach weekend workshops that command a high fee, the ceiling on income is very low compared to how much you can earn for making/selling pots at a good quality art fair or craft show. Teaching is also very time-consuming, if you care about a doing a good job that is. I did one workshop near the end of the pandemic, only because there were no shows to do at the time. I enjoyed it, just to be around people again. But the amount of work and the pay involved is not something I would choose over doing shows. 
The pay for teaching weekly classes to recreational potters is even worse! When I reached a point in my pottery business where I could no longer teach weekly classes AND keep up with demand for my pots, it was a no brainer to drop the classes. I can see how it might be worth it if you OWN the classroom studio and also teach the classes, but not if you are just an employee.
These days I produce video lessons and sell them online. Once a video is finished, the income is almost totally passive. It’s the only way it makes sense for me to do it within my schedule. 
I don’t have experience teaching college level ceramics. I can see that the income/benefits/stability would actually provide a meaningful living. But I suspect that this is more about being an academic than a potter. Not better or worse per se, just not the same. I taught college level graphics courses a long time ago, and I found the academic environment to be very unpleasant. And the amount I was being paid to teach those classes was much less than I was making for my design work. 

No regrets about this! I’m at at the point where I’ve made so many, I just don’t have physical space to keep them.  I do dislike it when there’s voids in a display, but that just means I have to make something else to fill it. I love knowing that pieces have new lives in other homes. Usually my “space filler” pieces are ones that I’m pretty proud of, and I want someone else to like it too.

One of my undergrad profs used to say 'If you can't center your life, you can't center your clay'. I think there is some truth to that. I see my students struggle on the wheel when they're having a bad day. They have to put aside their troubles for a couple of hours and just focus on the task at hand.
They often refer to pottery class as therapy, because they know that the other students will listen to them if they need to vent about something that's troubling them. It's nice to see, all of the them supporting and helping each other. They come to class as much for the friendships as they do for the pottery.

I mentioned a couple of months ago that I was working on this blog post. This is my response to those artists who express confusion or bother when they see my nearly (or completely) empty booth at the end of a show. I am happy to explain exactly what I’m doing. I also point out common mistakes I see other artists making. Buckle in, this is a long post. I tried to be as thorough and honest as possible. This went up yesterday and I’m getting tons of traffic and lots of good reaction to it.
https://www.goodelephant.com/blog/ill-tell-you-exactly-how-i-did-it

As clay reaches its maturation temperature (becomes vitreous, changes from bisque ware to stoneware/porcelain ) it becomes “pyroplastic.” Soft from the heat, in other words. I feel that has a significant bearing on your problem.
People solve this in various ways. One is to adjust the form to compensate for the sag, another is to add structure in the design to support wide flat areas. Still another is to calculate thin and thick areas for greater support. One very direct way would be to use a clay that matures a little higher than you’re firing it, or, better still, a clay known to keep its structure at maturity. I suppose even some kind of supports could be fashioned to make it work. 
Porcelain and highly vitrified clays are notoriously pyroplastic. The weight of a handle will pull a mug into an oval shape. 
Some peoples favorite ceramic word is eutectic. Mine is pyroplastic. 

Every Year I push hard at Xmas season all  of November and the 24 days of Dec keeping the galleries and stores stocked and selling at my own booth full of wares as well. I stop sending any mail order out before thanksgiving. Then I pack it up and take at least 6 weeks off from Xmas day to mid to early Feb. Tax prep and tree pruning, clean studio etc.
The start of the new new sales year for me is Dec 26th really that’s when it can either stay sleepy or pick up with mail orders via email
Every year its different. I like the sleepy years-a Hundred-dollar minimum slowed orders a lot 2021 which was the idea.
They seem to always show a theme-from sleepy to busy and now this year-space cadets
So, this year I have had 4 emails asking about pottery in past week and only one follow thru
It’s what I call the new space cadets. I broke a fish plate can I get another as asap. Yes, I have some but you will have to come out to studio, ok no problem, so I send him a photo of 7 choices of what he wants-and 3 days later no response. Packed them up and moved on today. The next two where a bit like the 1st one. It’s the new  world order of I want it but not really .
Wholesale is a bit more work but no space cadets. I'm starting to like the separation from the cadets
Today’s order is looking solid ,4 huge mugs to Ma. I do not want to count these chickens before they hatch
Wens update  Mugs got paid  for and shipped today of to MD
I hope this ends the space cadet run

We had a xmas pair of chipmunks around the kiln for a spell this year.They liked the warmth of the chimney area where I have lots of  English dry pressed shelves stacked up from long ago