Happy Summer Solstice! This is my favorite time of the year, when the days are as long as possible. I realized I need to post some updates as I head into the summer season.

Firstly, a report on how the book bindery sale went back in February. I went into it hoping to sell about 30 books, and I ended up selling 89! It was very different from a pottery sale on many fronts. I did not need to stock up on inventory in advance, because books can be made on demand, one at a time. Unlike pottery where it takes a few weeks to finish a pot, and it takes a kilnful of pots to make the kiln worth firing. The books were made to order, without needing to anticipate in advance which items would be popular or not. Whereas the pottery business involves so much analysis to predict inventory needs before every sale. My stated goal was to ship every order within 2 days, but that proved to be impossible. As soon as the store opened I got flooded with orders, and it took me four days to finish the initial rush of orders. After the first day, the pace of new orders slowed down, to a point where I could definitely ship everything in two days. But now I know I need to plan for a big rush at first. 

The process of making books is also different from pottery. After spending those first four days making books for 8 hours per day, I did not have a single sore muscle or body ache. I did learn, however, that I cannot listen to audiobooks while making books. I needed my concentration to avoid mistakes with measuring, cutting, or sewing. Hopefully that will change as I gain more experience with it. 

My plans for this summer is to do one more book bindery sale in late July or early August. I was really happy with the designs I sold in February, and some of them will get small upgrades for the next sale. I'm hoping to develop a design for a weekly planner later this year, which will be available around the holidays. It will be based on the weekly planners I used when I was a graphic designer. I don't really need them anymore as a potter, but they will be well-suited for anyone with a desk job. 
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And now for a solstice update on the pottery studio. After the book bindery sale, I went back to making pottery. I had a list of requests to follow up on after the Holiday Sale. I am blessed to have customers who were willing to wait 3 months for their pots. Then I held another "Small Pots Only" online sale in April, and one more "Free Home Delivery" sale for local customers in May. I admit that I am shocked that this format still worked after a whole year! Pottery customers are an exceptional class of people.

Going forward, I will do another "Free Home Delivery" sale for the State College, PA region, in conjunction with the Virtual Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts, from July 8-11. (I will write a separate blog post with more details.) I'm preparing a large inventory for this show. When I get home from making these deliveries, I will put any remaining pots for sale online, for customers anywhere in the US. That's right, I will mark the end of the pandemic by doing one last big online sale, and not just with small pots. (I'll make a separate blog post about this as well, with all the details, when it gets closer.) As much as I hate to ship pottery, I do need to show gratitude for those who bought my pots online when art festivals were not available. Just to be clear, this will be the last time I ship pottery. Of course, I reserve the right the eat my words if the pandemic takes a different turn. But right now, it looks like art festivals and craft shows will be back in the fall, and I will return to my "no shipping" policy. 

As for the fall, I have been accepted into two nice shows, though still waiting for confirmation that these events will be allowed to take place. Things look optimistic. I have applied for two more shows. So I am hoping to have four shows total on the schedule. And I am planning a Holiday Open Studio, just like the ones from before the pandemic. Details will be posted on this website as soon as they are confirmed!

​Again, I hope you enjoy the warmth and the long hours of daylight! It's been a very strange year, and we should be proud of ourselves for making it through. Let's keep our fingers crossed that things continue to go smoothly. Oh by the way, keep your fingers crossed for me, because tomorrow I am belatedly celebrating my 50th birthday by doing something exciting and scary. I'll report back when it's over. 

Excuse me for indulging in a little pride. Finished pottery in my studio is usually stored on shelves, organized by item, and stacked tightly to be as space efficient as possible. These are the pots that have already been reserved for my upcoming sale, on tables, and organized by how customers are choosing to put them together. It doesn't look like an inventory monolith today. I can see the pots, as individuals and small groups. As I walked up to these tables this morning, it struck me that my work looks really good! Even when there is this much in one place, it doesn't make my head hurt from over-design or noisiness. I am recalling all of the thought and trial that went into each of these designs. These designs are about concept and function, not noise. And I love how the pieces work together. I am being true to my values. Again, sorry for the pride. This arrangement of the pottery is also making me say to myself "dang, girl, you've been productive!" For those who are waiting to shop the sale when it goes live, don't worry! This is only about one-third of the pots I made for the sale. Lots of nice pots will be in the shop!

The pandemic is partially responsible for these new platter designs. When shutdowns first began, I was watching a lot of Netflix and got hooked on a charming Japanese show called Midnight Diner. The title artwork for this show included pretty patterns that I knew were somehow related to fabric art, but I didn't know much else about them. I tried carving these patterns on some vases earlier this year, and when I posted them to facebook, some of my facebook followers (who are fabric artists) gave me the right term: Sashiko. It is a traditional form of Japanese embroidery that was initially developed to strengthen fabric and make it last longer. Carving these patterns is extremely time consuming! So I tried to develop a method that would be more productive and consistent. I ended up making stencils, cut from roofing felt. The cutting of the stencils was even more time consuming, but now that they're done, hopefully I can use these stencils for a long time.

​I embed the stencil into a slab of clay, then brush over them with porcelain slip.

I also needed to make a new styrofoam mold for this 12 inch round platter. (If you are interested in learning this technique, Handbuilding with StyroFoam/Plaster Molds is available in my online pottery school.)

And here's how the finished platters have turned out. (Note: the one on the right is already sold). I am selling them now for an introductory price of $85 each. I'm hoping to sell them for $95 or $100 in the new year. 

This next new design is something I've been hoping to develop for several years: a storage jar with a lid that holds a silicone gasket, making the jar airtight. Maybe not 100% airtight, given that the gasket is not being held down with pressure, but it's a lot more airtight than a typical ceramic jar. My intention is for these to be used for loose tea leaves, coffee beans, or spices. I like this design so much that I am keeping one for myself (if you know me, you know that mine is full of coffee beans now). These are being offered now for an introductory price of $48 each. 

 
This last item is not really a new item, just a new variation on an existing form. The 4.5 x 10 inch rectangular trays now come in a "lily of the valley" design, in addition to the existing "cherry blossom" and "ginkgo leaves" designs. They are $38 each. Expect to see lily of the valley carvings on other forms in the coming year. 

The holiday sale opens tomorrow, Wednesday December 9, at 12 noon. All of the photos will become visible at 9am, so shoppers have 3 hours to browse and make decisions before the selling begins. The store's URL is https://goodelephantpottery.square.site. Have fun shopping!

Thank you for visiting my website during the 2020 Virtual PMA Craft Show! Please read this quick blog post, or watch the video below, before entering my web store. I will only be taking orders from the Philadelphia area, and your pottery will be hand delivered to your home, with no charge for the delivery. Shipping to other areas is not available during this event. 

The following counties are included in my delivery zone:
In Pennsylvania: Philadelphia, Bucks, Montgomery, Delaware, Chester
In New Jersey: Mercer, Burlington, Camden, Gloucester

My store will be open for the Preview Night on November 5, from 4pm to 8pm. Click here to buy tickets for Preview Night. The store will open again on November 6 at 9am, and stay open until 9pm on November 8, or until the store sells out, whichever comes first. Shopping on Nov 6-8 is free, but a suggested gift of $10 to the museum is requested. Deliveries will begin on November 10.

​Click here to enter my store!

I mentioned this on my blog once before, that whenever I am engaged in DIY home improvement projects, I refer to myself in the third person as "Harriet Homeowner." This summer, I have been working on my house more than I have been making pots. Partly because I am not traveling for shows, and have not needed as many pots. And partly because this is how I deal with chaos, by trying to put my environment into perfect order. 

Whenever I complete a project successfully, especially if it's something I wasn't sure I could do by myself, I like to raise both arms in the air and declare "I AM HARRIET." 

I'll start with the biggest and most impactful project, though technically does not count as a Harriet project, though she still managed and oversaw the whole thing. I now have what I am unabashedly calling "real f*cking air conditioning." I got a mini-split heat pump system for my whole house. I had been living with window units for 20+ years. The difference in incredible. We've had some prolonged heat waves this summer, and I sailed through them. I plan to keep using my boiler and hot water radiators for heat, but now I have a backup heat system in case the boiler ever needs work.

This was a project I had saved up for last year, and was just waiting for the spring to do it. Then came the pandemic, and I decided to put it on hold, thinking I might need my savings account for other things. As I've been writing about on the blog this summer, I have found other ways to keep my pottery income flowing. So I went ahead with the mini-split.

I had to move everything out of the way for the mini-split contractors to work. Before I put everything back into place, Harriet decided to tackle a project that she had put off for way too long. There was one last room in my house, the smallest bedroom, that had never been painted. 

Although it is the smallest bedroom, it gets the best natural light in the house, at all hours of the day. So it is where I take photographs of my pottery. It also gets used to store miscellany. Before I put everything back, I purged out a bunch of the stored stuff. 

The paint for the above room was free, because I had a whole can leftover from when I painted my office a few years ago, which is right next to the above room. When I was done, I had a quarter can left, and I started thinking about the guest room, which is on the other side of this room. I had painted the guest room yellow about ten years ago, and I was tired of the color. So I went out a bought another gallon of this paint, and painted the guest room too. 

The walls in the guest room went from yellow to gray, which means I did not need to replace the yellow and gray curtains. Harriet was pleased with that. Now all three rooms in this area of the house (office, photo room, guest room) are all the same color. 

My house was full of bad light fixtures. Old, worn-out looking, and builder grade. I spent a lot of time shopping for new ones. I tend to prefer modern designs, but my house is 85 years old. I tried to walk the line between "clean and simple" and "1930s appropriate."

All of the light switch and outlet cover plates on the first floor of my house had been painted over many times. I swear I wasn't the first one to do it! But I admit I did it too during previous painting projects. Harriet said "enough!" The switches and outlets themselves were so dingy, and many of the outlets were so loose, plugs would fall out of them.

They have all been replaced, with new components that match the ones on the second floor of my house, which was completely renovated last fall. I even installed a nifty dimmer switch for the dining room (which can now accommodate either a sewing project or a fancy dinner) and a combination GFCI outlet/light switch for the bathroom. All of the old outlets were two-prong outlets. I learned that these can be replaced with grounded three-prong outlets as long as you have metal outlet boxes and armored (or BX) wiring. This is common in old houses like mine. A grounding wire can be attached to the metal outlet box. For those who are surprised that I did all this electrical work myself, anyone who can maintain an electric kiln can easily learn how to replace light fixtures, switches, and outlets. 

While I was touching up the paint around the new light fixtures and switches in the downstairs bathroom, I discovered that the paint in the can no longer matched the paint on the wall. I stirred and stirred and stirred, but it was off by a shade and a half. It looked terrible. So I repainted the whole bathroom.

Now that it's done, I don't mind that this happened, because I'm really into this new color. While I was in here painting, I decided to replace the sink faucet as well. The old one had a "chrome" finish that was corroding away. My memories are fuzzy, but I'm pretty sure it was a cheap model. This new one wasn't terribly expensive either, I chose it because it was the closest match design-wise to the tub's faucet. I hope it holds up better than the last one. I had always regarded the medicine cabinet and exhaust fan as "things that must be replaced eventually, because they are so old." I've had a change of heart. During this project, I scrubbed and shined up the outside of the medicine cabinet, and gave the inside a fresh coat of paint. The exhaust fan's cover plate had been painted over many times. I took it down and scrubbed off all the layers of paint, back to bare metal. Now it's feels nice to keep things that are original to the house, "because they are so old." 

Harriet is done. For now. I can't think of a single thing that needs to be worked on right now. 

Some of you might be thinking, "it looks like she's getting her house ready to sell it." My answer is that the plan is not imminent, but you're not wrong. I would like to enjoy the air conditioning for at least a while. 

Putting together an online sale is actually very time consuming. All the check marks ensure that I don't skip a step.

I think it’s important to mention that I really don’t have a big social media following. I don’t have 50K Instagram followers. I have about 8K Instagram followers, and 1.2K Facebook followers. I like to use both platforms, but do not view them as sales generators. I have no interest in playing those games that drive up your follower numbers. Nor will I try to make my pottery studio look “pretty” all the time, because that’s not real. I’ve advocated for many years on this blog that a mailing list is far more valuable than a big social media following. My online sales are coming from the following sources: 1) customers in cities where I travelled once for a show but haven’t returned, 2) customers who used to live in the DC area but have moved away, 3) fans of my blog, which is a very niche audience but those who get it really get it, and 4) students of my online pottery school. My mailing list currently has about 1400 contacts (after recently purging a bunch of contacts so I can continue to use MailChimp for free). So although my following isn’t huge, the connections are more meaningful than the average social media follower. Having spent many years developing an audience of this depth has proven to be invaluable during this crisis. I’ve had to totally reinvent the way I sell my work, and this audience has responded amazingly, both for the “home delivery” sales and for the “small pots only” online sales.

Even though I got a few unhappy notes after the first online sale, on balance I got so many more nice notes! They were thanking me for making my pots available to them. Although I am still shipping pots on a “grudgingly” basis, I admit that it makes me feel good to discover that people in far off places have been waiting for a chance to buy my work.

​It took some experience to get my bearings, and correct some mistakes, but I think I’ve made peace with all of my misgivings. The narrow parameters make it work for me. My “home delivery” sales are my main source of income right now, but these online sales are a worthwhile supplement. I’m willing to do it on a regular basis, until we can put this pandemic behind us.

Let’s talk numbers. While I was cooking up this plan in my head, I was thinking "it would be great to make $3000." After I sent out my email announcement, I got over $3000 in reservations alone. I had also been thinking that I wanted to make about 40 deliveries tops. But the reservations only involved 20 addresses. I realized that the deliveries-to-sales ratio was more favorable than I was expecting. So I raised my goals, and decided to offer a greater amount of pots in the online store. 

The total sales from the MSDFHDPS ended being only $30 less than my 2019 average gross sales per show. Sales at shows vary a lot, between $2700 and $12500. And so do the expenses, between $200 and $2000. My expenses for the MSDFHDPS included 47 shopping bags ($0.60 ea = $28.20), and 1 tank of gas ($30). This means the MSDFHDPS came out ahead, given how low the expenses were. I am really stoked at how well it turned out. 

How does this compare to selling online? In the past several years, my use of online selling has been limited to once a year. In December, when my annual Open Studio was over, I would offer the remaining pots for sale online. So I have never tried to sell a full-show-size inventory online. The largest online sale I ever had involved 35 pots, for a total dollar value of $2550. It took me about 10 hours to pack all the pots for shipping, spread over 2 days. And remember, this is labor that I hate so much, I felt like a zombie when I was done. There were also some substantial expenses. I spent $264 on shipping supplies (boxes, peanuts). I collected $315 in flat rate shipping fees from my customers, but ended up spending $441 on UPS that year (net loss of $126). 

So it took me 10 hours to pack 35 pots into shipping cartons for an online sale. It took me 14 hours to deliver 154 pots for the MSDFHDPS. 

Do you see how inefficient online selling is for a potter? Financially, materially, and time-wise? This is true for any artist who sells fragile, bulky, heavy items. And given the choice between spending my time packing boxes, or driving around in my car, it’s a no brainer. Especially when driving can yield so much  more net profit. Driving is part of being a full-time festival artist anyways. If you don't like driving, your available choices for shows will be severely limited. When I had dropped off my last delivery, I felt sad that it was over, not like a zombie. And now more than ever, I needed a reason to get out of the house, in a safe fashion. 

Does this mean I think the MSDFHDPS is better than shows? No way. As much as I enjoyed it, the MSDFHDPS was missing a very critical component, which was the opportunity to meet NEW customers. To survive for the long term, a pottery business needs a steady influx of new fans. This past week, I reached out to my existing customer base, but did not grow it. I won’t be able to do this too many times. If all of the summer shows get cancelled, I’ll probably do this again in late summer. And if all of the fall shows get cancelled too, I will hold my December open studio in this fashion. But I don’t think it would be wise to do it every month, and hopefully not into 2021. And in the coming weeks, I need to figure out places to store more inventory in my house.

On the plus side, though, the interactions I had with my best fans this week were overwhelmingly positive. They are all stuck at home too, and feeling unhappy. Some of them seemed genuinely tickled that pottery was arriving at their door. Everybody could use a bright spot right now, and I’m glad I could provide a small one. Although I did not grow my customer base with this sale, I do think I built stronger ties with my existing base.

This brings me to one last point, which I have been preaching about for years on this blog … the importance of building and using an email list. It is the best way to stay in touch with people who actually want to buy your work. The ratio of serious customers within an email subscriber base is very high. The ratio of serious customers within a social media following is very low. And even if social media fans buy, chances are you have to ship their purchase to them, which is a real bummer, as far as I’m concerned. And the best way to build an email list is to do shows, because that’s where the right people are. It’s a slow process to build a list, one person at a time. But when you have done it consistently for many years, it can provide immeasurable value, at times when the world has been turned upside down..

(This is pretty much the exact same concept I wrote about in my recent blog post about financial preparedness. Think and plan for the long-term. Practicing consistent good habits over many years will pay you back when you need it.)

Many, many thanks to all the wonderful people who made this event work! And once again, to all the artists out there whose shows have been cancelled, please feel free to copy this idea. My friend Nan Rothwell has already created the Charlottesville, VA Area MSDFHDPS, which goes live this Saturday 4/25. If you are in her area, lucky you!