Handmade pottery gift guide 2026: what to buy and for whom
A potter's honest advice on giving pots: the right piece for the coffee drinker, the cook, the person who has everything, and the one who brings flowers home.
Throwing a custom mug order for the Summers family, part 1
A set of matching mugs starts at the scale, not the wheel. The throwing day for the Summers family order, frame by frame.
What’s Available Right Now
Fresh from the last cone 10 firing: mugs, a few bowls and vases, built for daily use. Here's what's in this batch.
The Day the Kiln Became Real
The salt kiln lived in notebooks for years. Pouring the concrete pad in the backyard made it real.
Advice I’d Give My Younger Self in the Studio
The advice I'd give my younger self in the studio: slow down, master the basics, and treat failure as part of the apprenticeship.
What Failure Has Actually Cost Me
Failure in clay is quiet. It costs time and confidence more than clay, and it pays you back in discipline.
The Limits of Utah Wild Clay
Digging your own clay is romantic. Firing it to cone 10 isn't. What Utah wild clay has taught me about its limits.
Electric vs Gas Kiln Firing: What Changes in the Pot
Electric firing taught me control. Gas taught me humility. A plain comparison from a potter still learning both.
Why I Don’t Make Bright, Colorful Pottery
Bright glazes are impressive, but they never felt like mine. Why I make quiet, earthy, high-fire pots instead.
What Matters Most Isn’t the Surface
Surface photographs well, but weight, balance and form are what people feel first. Why the glaze can never save a weak pot.
The Pots You’ll Never See
Not every pot that survives the kiln leaves my studio. Why I hold back the almosts, and what letting them go has taught me.
Making Pottery in a Small Mountain Town
What it is really like to make pottery in a small mountain town like Logan, Utah: the isolation, the logistics, and the clarity.
What Kind of Potter I’m Trying to Become
On choosing steadiness over trends: earth tones, high fire, a salt kiln, and refining the same forms instead of reinventing them.
The Real Reason I Fire to Cone 10
Cone 6 is easier. I fire to cone 10 anyway, because high fire glazes mature into the clay instead of sitting on top of it.
What Happens When an Electric Cone 10 Firing Fails
What happens when an electric cone 10 firing fails, how it shows up in the glaze and clay, and what I changed to fire smarter.
Why Logan, Utah Shapes the Way I Make Pots
Long winters, dry air and the colors of Cache Valley: how living in Logan, Utah shapes the way I make pots.
Can You Make Functional Pottery From Utah Wild Clay?
Can you make functional pottery from Utah wild clay? Sometimes. What testing, blending and failing have taught me so far.
Why Handmade Pottery Costs More Than You Think
Wedging, throwing, trimming, firing, losses: why handmade pottery costs more than a store-bought mug, from a Logan potter.
What Makes a Good Mug? (From a Potter’s Perspective)
Weight, rim, handle, surface and foot: what makes a good handmade mug, from a potter who has thrown hundreds of them.
Why I Choose Functional Pottery Over Decorative Work
Why I make cups, bowls, plates and pitchers instead of sculpture, and why function keeps my work honest.