I am starting this post with a picture of my old studio:

 
People who know me in person have often heard me refer to my studio as a "cave." Since 2002, I have been making pots in the basement of my 78-year-old house. I have always appreciated that the space was essentially free. It came with the house, and I didn't need it for anything else. It has been great for the bottom line. But it was a 78-year-old basement. It had no natural light. It was dark and grimy. There were areas that could rightfully be called "makeshift" or "weird," and other areas that could be called "gross" or "scary."

All of those issues could be tolerated. But here's what I couldn't live with: I had outgrown the capacity of the space. I wrote about this last summer. To me, the source of the bottlenecks was clear. I could only produce as much pottery as one kiln could fire. In order to make room for a second kiln, I'd have to rearrange. I did not want to add any more makeshift to the situation. I was feeling confident that the business was going to last for the long term. Did I want to live with weird and dark that long? Working as a potter gives you a lot of time to think. So after months of contemplating all of the paths I could choose, I decided that I would not just make room for a second kiln. Instead I would make a bigger investment, and create a space that would work for me all the way into retirement. 

It took me over a week to remove everything from the basement. Here's what it looked like when empty. The space in the foreground was my old studio, roughly 350 square feet. It was separated from the other half of the basement by ugly, dark wood-paneling walls.  

 
The walls are gone now. The creepy corner behind the chimney does not exist anymore. All of the exterior walls, and the staircase, were given a fresh coat of paint. The space on the far side of the stairs was not part of my studio before. I am going to use it now. As you'll see in a later photo, that space will be used to store and display the finished pots. I am visualizing boxes of clay stored under the stairs. Or maybe packing peanuts. Overall, the studio has grown to almost 600 square feet.  

 
Here and there were remnants of an old drop ceiling. Definitely gross. The ceiling tiles were older than the invention of aluminum. They were installed onto wooden strips with lots of messy leveling shims.

 
All of the ceiling tiles and wooden strips were removed. At the suggestion of my contractor, he sprayed all of the exposed rafters with a coat of white paint. This makes the entire space feel taller and brighter, and all of the pipes and conduits seem to have disappeared.

 
This was the only troublesome part of the renovation: vinyl-asbestos floor tiles. Very common in houses this age. Don't worry, this is not as hazardous as it sounds. They were generally in good condition, and I had never aggressively disturbed them. Still, it's a good idea to cover them up, so they can remain undisturbed. 

 
The new flooring is a solid vinyl product that is intended for garages. It's very different from the vinyl floor in my kitchen. There is no fabric backing, and the surface is much harder. I have dragged heavy furniture across it, and the floor doesn't seem to notice. The surface is slightly textured, it's seems to be a good balance of "easy to mop" and "non-slip." Time will tell if it holds up well in a pottery studio, but so far I am impressed. 

 
Although I've often complained about the lack of windows, the truth is my basement has four windows, which had been boarded up by a previous owner.

 
The amount of light coming in through the new windows is so bright, I had trouble photographing them. And you are not imagining, the glass has a pebbly texture that you can't see through. As much as I wanted some natural light, I did not want my studio to be visible from outside. I did not know that "privacy glass" existed until the window salesperson suggested it, at which point I heard the British-accented character from the beer commercial shouting "Brilliant!"

 
The gaps that surrounded the old door were so big, during the winter months the cold wind would just show itself in. The door opening is a non-standard size, and also slightly distorted, so whoever installed this door did their best to make an off-the-shelf door fit.

 
The new door was made to the correct size, and the weather-sealing around it was pitched as "like a refrigerator door." As an added bonus, I got another window, with more privacy glass. Brilliant!

 
You can probably guess what the blue tape, the new 60 amp circuit, and the swinging arm bracket for the vent hood mean. The new kiln has been ordered and is coming soon!

 
I love shelving. Shelving makes everything better. You can't have enough shelving.

 
I love wheels. Wheels make everything better. You can't have enough wheels.

 
Oh my goodness, shelving on wheels. My heart flutters. I can't wait to fill this up with pots. In the old studio, the shelves where the pots dried were about 15 feet from the kiln. Loading the kiln involved a lot of walking back and forth. The first time I roll this entire cart over to the kilns to begin loading, I'm going to faint from happiness. And although this cart looks fairly compact, it actually gives me almost twice as much drying space as I had before.

 
With all the additional square footage, I created a new area for storing the finished pottery, packing and shipping, and taking photographs. I used to do this in a bedroom on the first floor. Try to imagine ... every time I unloaded the kiln, I put the pots into a plastic bin and carried them up the stairs in two or three trips. Now I will unload the pots onto a new utility cart (pictured), and roll them over to here. Oh, how I love shelves on wheels. Yikes, my inventory is really low! I need to get back to work. 

 
Right after all the renovation was finished, the space looked so pretty when it was empty, I almost didn't want to fill it back up, or get anything dirty. But that didn't last long. I missed my studio. Now that I have put everything back, I think it looks amazing. And I can't wait to get it dirty.

 
I shut down the studio on April 1, and I am going back to work tomorrow, May 7. It was a long five weeks. Lots of noise. Days of high stress. Days of utter boredom. Lots of excitement, anticipation, relief, and joy.

What I really love about the new studio, aside from the newfound spaciousness and light, is that it feels like a commercial space. A place for serious work. Not at all like an old residential basement. I am looking forward to coming down the stairs to this studio everyday.

Many thanks and praise to DE Thomason Construction Company, who handled most of this project, and did a fabulous job. And thanks also for great work done by Thompson Creek Window Company, H-TWO-O Plumbing, Tatson Electric, and APRO Enterprises, Inc. 

Hibernation is not exactly the right word. I have not been unconscious, nor have I been away. I've been separated from my pottery studio since April 1. I feel dormant and unproductive. There have been days when I was consumed, dealing with the matters at hand. And there have been days, like today, when I have nothing to do. I am bored. I can't really leave the house, at least not on my own schedule. I have already spiffed up my yard and gardens so they look better than they have in years. I learned how to replace the blade in my lawnmower (thanks YouTube!), which turns out is a lot like getting a new lawnmower. I cleaned out and organized my file drawers. If I could clean my entire house, I would. But it doesn't make sense to do it right now. 

It will all be over soon, and I'll explain what's going on. It's a very very good thing. My patience and planning will be rewarded. 

Everyone's least favorite subject ... wet-pulled handles. Just mentioning them generates groans. I try to teach many approaches to handle making, but the wet-pulled handle cannot be avoided. It's really important, because it teaches you how to gracefully handle wet clay. This translates into good craft skills in all areas of pottery. I had my Level 4 students make wet-pulled handles for a teapot. We pulled the handles and set them across to cylinder to form a nice curve, then let them dry for about an hour while we worked on trimming and attaching a spout:

(photo by Jenny Adams)

When it comes to attaching a wet-pulled handle, I only have rule: DO NOT TOUCH THE OUTSIDE OF THE HANDLE. You can touch the ends of the handle, which will either become attachment points, or cut off as excess. You can touch the inside of the handle. But keep your paws off the outside. Those beautiful, liquidy, gravity-fed lines ... don't spoil them with your fingerprints. 

From left to right ... Jonathan Gordy, Kara Duffy, me, Melanie Choe, Margaret Lukomska, Jenny Adams, Judy Goldberg-Strassler, Andrea Schewe, and Jeri Holloway.

Vicki McMullin plans to use her new Heron Serving Bowl in her Easter dinner, but for now it is holding her current knitting project. Thanks for the photo Vicki!

Ugh, I caught a cold at the ACC Baltimore Show. I started feeling mildly ill on Sunday, the last day. When I woke up on Monday, there was no doubt. I've been slogging around since, generating small mountains of used tissues. I guess it's no wonder, given the super-dry air of the convention center, and the number of people there. Today is Wednesday, and I'm starting to feel better. I managed to unpack my car, and start writing this blog post. 

As many of you know, ACC Baltimore is two different shows. The first two days are for wholesale to trade buyers only, followed by three days of retail sales to the public. I did this combination show once before in 2007. Back then, I was brand new to wholesale. I set up one display and used it for both shows. In other words, I considered all of my pots to be available to wholesale buyers. Now it's six years later, since then I built up the wholesale side of my business at the Buyers Market trade show, then reached a point where I realized I needed to shrink that part of my business, before it swallowed me whole. 

Last year, I took a break from all wholesale shows, while I tried to figure out a smarter way to proceed. I wanted to make my wholesale business more efficient, but still profitable. My new ideas sprouted last August. I received several new orders that month (this is the time of year when galleries place orders for their holiday season), and one of them stood out. It was the largest order in terms of dollar amount, but as I read down the purchase order I thought "piece of cake" because the order consisted mostly of dinner plates. My dinner plates are not wheel-thrown; they are hand-built out of clay slabs, using templates and molds. They are far more efficient to produce than anything wheel-thrown. In fact, someday I ought to do an Hourly Earnings calculation comparing my hand-built dinner plates to wheel-thrown pots. I bet it would show a significant difference. So in the months that followed, my wholesale line was reconceived around this idea. It is now focused mostly on hand-built dinnerware, with very few wheel-thrown pieces. I've also included my upscale line of oversized, carved serving pieces and vases. Because as my Hourly Earnings Project revealed, this segment of my work has always been worth wholesaling. Here is my wholesale display from the ACC Show:

Pretty sparse, huh? In past years, when I was deciding what to include in my wholesale lineup, I would keep adding more and more pots, thinking "somebody might want this." But I am no longer trying to guess what everybody might want, instead I am focusing on what I know I want, what makes the most sense for me. And here's another insecurity that I've overcome ... I've known for years that my hand-built plates were more efficient to produce. I tried not to place too much emphasis on those pieces because I wanted to be known as a wheel-thrower. These days, I feel confident that everyone knows I'm an excellent thrower, and no longer feel like I need to prove it. I was very satisfied with the amount of orders I took. I am on track to increase my wholesale gross this year, but doing so with a far more efficient use of my time.

So the reason I chose the ACC wholesale show over the Buyers Market is because of the retail show that follows. While I'm trying to streamline my wholesale business, I want to grow my retail business as much as possible. In between the two shows, I added a whole lot more shelving to my display, and a whole lot more pots, including the entire spectrum of my wheel-thrown work:

If you look in the lower right corner of this photo, you'll see that I am trying to grow my dinnerware sales in my retail business too. This is by far the most stock of dinnerware I've ever prepared for a show. I'm happy to report they sold great, along with just about everything else. Of the eight boxes I packed for the show, five of them came back empty. Hell yes. Despite catching a cold, the show was totally worth it! 

Looking forward now, there are two items that I think I need before I can expand the business further: a second kiln, and a larger vehicle.

I did manage to get all of the pottery boxes in my car. My wholesale display is setup and ready to go for tomorrow. I hope you are planning to visit this great show! Find complete show details at http://shows.craftcouncil.org/baltimore. And preview the work I'll have during the retail portion of the show (Friday thru Sunday) on the Recent Work page of this website. It will include my updated Square Dinnerware (below), a few more new designs, plus lots of old favorites.

I've got eight tightly packed boxes of pottery for the ACC show. For an average two-day festival I will pack four boxes. The most I've ever packed for a show before was six boxes. Will they all fit in my car? If I truly cannot make them fit, I live close enough to Baltimore to make two trips. After all, I only need my wholesale lineup for the first days of the show, which is only two out of these eight boxes. 

My wholesale display and my retail display are going to be completely different. If you follow this blog, you know that my feelings about wholesaling are very complicated. After six years of doing it, I realize that wholesaling is vital to a solid business plan. In fact, becoming a wholesaler is what took my business over the crest of the "earning a living" climb. But I also know it's possible to overload myself with wholesale work. It's a tricky balance. Last year, my wholesale strategy was to skip all of the trade shows, focus on growing my art festival capacity, and see exactly how much wholesale income I really need. This year, I'm back at a trade show, ready to meet new galleries again. But with some major changes to my wholesale lineup, and a clearer perspective on my needs and limits. 

After the show, I'll post pictures of my wholesale and retail display, and explain what I've done. 

I made new curtain walls for my pottery booth, which I will use at the ACC Baltimore show for the first time. My existing curtain walls were just fine, except that they weren't fire retardant. There are a lot of show venues, including the Baltimore Convention Center, where all of your booth materials must meet fire code standards. The exhibitor manual for this show literally says that a fire inspector is allowed to try to set your booth on fire, just to make sure they can't. The first time I did the ACC Baltimore show, back in 2007, I bought a gallon of fire retardant chemicals and treated all the fabrics in my booth. By the end of the show, my throat was burning from the harsh smell of the chemicals, and I was pretty sure I had shortened my life span by a little. I also never caught whiff of any fire inspectors. So since then, I've been doing shows with untreated fabric curtains, and just crossing my fingers that the fire inspectors wouldn't notice me. But not anymore. I found an affordable, white fabric from Rose Brand, a company that sells theatre backdrop supplies. It is made of fibers that are inherently fire retardant, rather than chemically treated. It doesn't smell like anything, and this also means I can wash and dry it without affecting the fire retardancy. Now I'm hoping a fire inspector will visit me!

Also, notice the name I applied to the backdrop. The name of my company is still Good Elephant Pottery, but from now on I'm going to use this shorter version whenever it makes sense. Such as when someone is standing inside my booth at any show, I think the word "pottery" will go without saying. 

I think it's been about three years since I last made a major change to my web look. It was time, and the new look fits with some new directions that I am planning to take the business starting this year. I'm still using Weebly and loving it. Though right now I'm feeling grateful for my brilliant dad, who insisted on teaching me HTML back when I was starting my graphic design business years ago. This allowed me make a Weebly template look totally custom. I hope you like it!

(To catch up on, or refresh your memory about, all of the blog posts from The Hourly Earnings Project, click here)

It has been about a year since I launched my online store in December of 2011. I think I have enough information now to write about it in the context of The Hourly Earnings Project. Weirdly, right up until I sat down to calculate this, I had no idea how this would turn out. All the work and all the income was spread out in bits and pieces over 13 months, I really didn't have any sense of how well the store was doing. 

I chose BigCartel to build the store and shopping cart. I know that Etsy is a far more popular venue, but BigCartel fits my needs much better. I like that BigCartel offers a low-end free version, and that their not-free versions charge a flat monthly fee, rather than taking small percentages of my listings and sales like Etsy. I like the simplicity of that. I also like that BigCartel allows me to design my store to look like my own brand. 

But here's the real meat of why I chose BigCartel over Etsy ... I really wasn't all that comfortable (and still am not) about selling a pot to a customer who hasn't seen it in person. I had a frustrating experience a few years ago when I tried to help a customer buy a pot via email. Although I had given her the dimensions of the pot in inches, once she received it she thought it was too small, and wanted to return it. This made me realize how many factors need to be communicated, and that it's not easy across the internet. The idea that the pots I sell online might not meet the customer's expectations is not ok with me. 

Therefore, I wasn't interested in the customer base that Etsy could deliver to my store. My store is targeted only to my existing customers, who would like to purchase something when I am in between shows. The only people who receive any advertisements about the store are subscribers to my mailing list and Facebook fans. And my Store Policies page says: 

"All sales are final. No returns or exchanges. I'd much rather sell you pottery in person at one of my shows, or have you visit one of my gallery partners, where you can thoroughly appreciate and inspect all of the qualities of handmade pottery before deciding to buy. But I understand that modern times require me to sell online as well. I ask you please do not make purchases from this store unless you are really sure."

Now that I've explained that my intentions for my online store are probably different from most artist's stores, let's get to the Hourly Earnings calculation. Here are the tasks that I counted when I timed myself:

• All of the same "making pots" tasks that I counted for the other Hourly Earnings calculations
• Building the online store
• Updating the online store
• Packing and shipping the orders
• Accounting

Before too long, I was able to pack/ship/account for an order of one pot in less than 15 minutes. For orders with multiple pots, it would take a little longer, but never more than 30 minutes. It seemed like a lot of work for selling one or two pots at a time, compared to the sales volume of wholesaling and art festivals. Was it? Keep reading.

I added up the gross sales of the pottery plus the shipping fees I collected. From that, I subtracted the following expenses:

• Shipping costs
• Paypal fees
• BigCartel fees
• Clay used
• Shipping boxes used

Just like all the other Hourly Earnings calculations, I did not subtract expenses that I could not quantify, such as packing materials, glazes, equipment use and maintenance, and utilities.

I made $31.60 per hour with the online store.

In other words, the online store yielded an Hourly Earnings figure in the same range as retail art festivals. In that sense, I am pleased. The time that I spent on this was not a waste of time. But in terms of the overall importance to my pottery business, here's another perspective: my gross sales from the online store over 13 months was less than I typically make at one weekend art festival. Also, out of the 13 months that the store existed, it was empty for 6 of those months, because I was busy with shows and wanted to have all of my inventory at the shows.

So I've decided that it is worth continuing. Overall, it yielded as much income as a somewhat-below-average art festival, and the time and effort required was a good match for the yield. 

But I am going to make some changes going forward, now that I have some clearer bearings about how it works, and where it ranks on my priorities. I am going to downgrade my BigCartel account from the $9.99/month plan to the low-end free version. BigCartel allows me to upgrade and downgrade my account on a month-to-month basis, which is another reason why I chose them. I think that I only need the free version from now on. This means I will only be able to list five items for sale at a time. I'm willing to live with that. I will try to keep the store stocked all the time, not just when I'm in-between shows. And in the banner announcement that greets visitors to the store, I'll instruct customers to contact me if they are looking for a specific item they saw at a show. That's one thing that's not going to change, I'm still only targeting my existing customers who have already seen my pots in person. And finally, just during the month of December, I will upgrade my BigCartel account again, so I can list a whole bunch of items for the holiday shopping crowd. I'll leave open the possibility that I'll do that for one or two other months of the year, but for now the plan is to only do that in December. After all, more than two-thirds of my online sales so far were made during the last two Decembers. 

Here is the bar chart from the Ceramics Monthly article that shows all of the Hourly Earnings calculations, only now I've added another bar for the online store.  

 

 
 
Thanks to those of you who waited patiently for a year for me to gather enough data for this latest calculation. Again, if you want to catch up on all the previous Hourly Earnings blog posts, click here. Or, for the somewhat condensed version that was printed in Ceramics Monthly, click here.