A few details about our kiln opening event.
Read Morechange of plans
If you've been following along here, you may have noticed that we had a little (OK, big) change of plans for our Summer. The trailer that we take to shows is growing grass around it . . .
I must say, it seems a little counter-intuitive to announce the events that we're NOT doing, but since we've been doing them for 12 straight years, it feels like we should let you all know that we won't be there . . .
We missed you all at the Clam Festival in July. We will really miss you all at the League of NH Craftsmen's Fair, which starts this weekend. (Our year usually revolves around this show - it is so strange to not be there!) We will also be bummed to skip the Norwich Farmers' Market- our dates were in late August.
The truth is, we had some unexpected challenges following the birth of our second child in April. As a result, we needed to make some tough decisions about our working life. Ultimately, they were decisions that have proved really positive for our family's health and well-being. Thankfully, we are all doing really well now, and enjoying our first Summer as a family of four at a somewhat different pace.
As my friend Susan said, "clay keeps in a bag, small children don't." :)
What we ARE happily planning for this year is a big Fall wood-firing, and a Kiln Opening Celebration and Sale at our VT studio. We'll have a full wood-kiln freshly unloaded with hundreds of new pieces, live music, food, and general merriment under the kiln barn. Stay tuned for those dates, we'll be announcing them soon!
We also hope for a hearty update to our Etsy shop for those of you who can't make it to VT in the Fall.
Thanks, as always, for following along and supporting our handmade life!
xo
Becca (and Nathan and the kids)
in the New York Times . . .
We spied a Two Potters spoon rest in the NY Times recently . . .
. . . this photo was styled and taken by the talented Rikki Snyder, and featured in this mouth-watering recipe.
two potters in print
You can read our recent piece in Edible Green Mountains winter issue here.
fall open studio : this weekend
We're excited to be opening our studio doors to the public on October 3rd + 4th, open 10am to 5pm, as part of Vermont Open Studio Weekend! We'll be giving wood kiln + studio tours, selling pottery (firsts + seconds), and serving up some tasty food from a popular local restaurant! We're also excited to host the Kerry Rose band, acoustic trio playing americana/folksy tunes in the tractor shed behind our gallery (music is on Sunday afternoon, about 12:30-3:30), oh and fall foliage. It should be a good time. :)
Hope you can join us! Let us know if you have any questions .... nathanandbecca [at] gmail dot com
new work at the Fair
We're really looking forward to bringing our brand-new wood-fired work to "the Fair", our biggest show of the year. Join us at Mt. Sunapee Resort in Newbury, NH, August 1st - 9th, for the 82nd Annual League of NH Craftsmen's Fair. It's a fantastic - and big! - show, so look for Two Potters in the front of Tent #6. The show runs 10 am to 5pm daily, plus we're open until 8pm on Thursday, August 6th.
Here's a little preview . . .
We'll be posting new pieces to our Etsy shop in mid-August. Stay tuned!
open studio this weekend
We're opening our studio this weekend!
Saturday and Sunday May 23rd + 24th, from 10am to 5pm.
We'll have the usual fun : open kiln with tours, open pottery studio, pottery and seconds sale, most likely some food.
*** Also *** we're psyched to have live music on Sunday from 12:30-3:30! Matt Protas & The Amazing Expanding Band will be here playing music, which he fittingly describes as : "Americana forward with Delta Blues + Bluegrass notes, and a satisfying Folk finish." (Matt is also a sommelier of sorts at a local co-op ;) )
Our event is part of a fantastic larger event, the 25th year of Vermont Open Studio Tour put on by the Vermont Crafts Council, with over 200 artists' studios open statewide.
(more info and a printable map here)
We hope you can make it!
~Becca + Nathan
lately
(You may have noticed we've been a little absent here. Because, well, toddlers + home renovation + running a business. No matter. We have missed you, and where better to start than the present? :) )
Lately, we have been . . .
Making . . . yes, pottery! It might sound obvious, and I'm sure most people think we do this every day of the year (that would be so nice, eventually, we hope!) but pottery making has been the major thing missing from our working lives because we are also . . .
Renovating. We spent the bulk of the winter months purging and packing the entire contents of our 1850's farmhouse in preparation for completely gutting the upstairs. It's a huge project, brought on by the need for a little thing called insulation, and we find ourselves banging nails, running wires, and coordinating all the contractors and pieces and decisions at the same time as we try to prepare 800 pots for a firing. I assure you, this was most definitely not the plan. The renovation was supposed to happen in our "off season."
But there you have it, and so it goes . . . fortunately, we are comfortably camping out in the 600 square feet above our studio space, so we're not feeling too rushed to get the project done on a deadline (right now, anyway, check back with me at the end of the summer ;) ). For now, not feeling too rushed plus not actually living in the mess, helps tremendously.
Taking a deep breath. Apparently winter ended last week, and now it's summer. Popping leaves, birds, green growing grass, daffodils, warm sun, mixing glazes outdoors. We'll take it.
Prepping. For our big firing of the year at the very end of June/beginning of July. We are so grateful for the energetic crew of potters and volunteers who help us with the four days of the firing itself, and all the tasks that go into being ready.
We had a really fun and productive work day a couple of weeks ago, where we stacked the holes in the kiln shed full of freshly cut slab wood, and started in on grinding and cleaning the kiln shelves. We ate good food and laughed a lot. It was the BEST of reminders of why we became wood-fired potters in the first place. We can't do it all ourselves. Exactly.
(Thank you Matt, Harrison, Jill, Lexi, Patty, and David!)
Lately, we are also . . .
Testing. For Christmas, Nathan and I bought ourselves a new electric kiln. (Practical and romantic! ;) ) For various reasons since we met (as potters in separate states) it's been seven years of driving various fragile pieces to fire in other peoples kilns. (We can't thank you enough Tiffany, Stephanie, and Joan!) However, we decided we'd like to move on, and that we were ready to have everything we needed right here.
Although most of our pottery is single-fired in it's raw state in the wood kiln, the small electric kiln will allow us to bisque fire a few pieces for the wood kiln that are better glazed when not leather hard, which is how we typically slip/glaze our work.
Additionally, and most excitingly (that's a word?), we'll use the kiln the fire small batches of finished work - remember the silky white glaze with designs?! It's actually quite nice, if I do say so myself, and the good news is that the preliminary results were really good. We'll be able to finish small batches of work in between our every six-months-to-a-year wood-firings. Hooray.
Enjoying. Playing in the sand in the driveway, digging in the garden, splashing in water and moving rocks and feeding chickens and . . . oh we're having so much fun with our little one. She's 1.5 years (wait, what?!) and so talkative, funny, happy, strong-minded, and loving.
We are tired (ahem) at the end of every day, and yet sooo ready to scoop her up again come morning.
Readying. For VT Open Studio, this coming Memorial Day Weekend. Our studio - and over 200 others around the state will be open Saturday May 23rd and Sunday May 24th from 10am to 5pm. We love this event. (Can we top last year?!)
Join us for the Tour in our area, there's lots to see! downloadable and printed map request here
You guys, we hope it won't be so long before we check back in. Stay with us. :)
Fondly,
Becca (and Nathan)
these things we make
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We were so happy with our last wood-firing. I'm not sure we've yet shared the results, in photo form, in this space. Here are some of our favorites . . .
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~Becca
our first fall firing
It was honestly a bit of a scramble to decide in late August that we should try to turn over a firing in a mere eight weeks. I am happy (and, yes, a bit tired) to report that we totally. did. it.
This was by far the smallest window of time we'd given ourselves to fill all 350+ cubic feet of our large kiln. We plugged away through the month of September, and Nathan threw lots of big bowls and crocks, which helped a lot. We were also super lucky to have the contributions - in pottery as well as time!! - of several other local potters, who agree to trade labor for kiln space, an arrangement everyone seems to enjoy. The wood had been prepped well in advance, and was sheltered under our very large kiln shed, a thing of beauty for which we will no doubt be eternally grateful.
We gave ourselves a much bigger window to load the kiln - nearly two weeks - which was a nice change of pace from what has historically been a last-minute all-hours push. As they say, kids change everything, and we decided it would be a lot more sane to work the loading into our normal daily routine. And yet somehow (why, why, why???) we were still bricking up the doors late into the night before we were scheduled to begin . . . sigh.
This firing was characterized by a nearly constant rain, but thankfully, we stayed warm and dry throughout. The fourth and final day of the firing was smooth, and we pulled many very lovely clay rings from the kiln, promising the hope of many beautiful pots within.
We were not disappointed. I'm sure at some point, we'll have to stop saying "this was our best firing yet," but IT WAS. It's tough to let the kiln cool for a full week for a peek at what lies within, but it was- and always is- worth the wait.
save the date : holiday open studio
Save the date: our Holiday Open Studio and Sale : December 6th & 7th, 11am to 4pm at our place.
We'll have a great selection of new wood-fired work from our fall firing - including gift ideas like fermenting crocks, butter keepers, coffee and tea mugs, mason jars, and serving bowls for holiday get-togethers. As per usual, it'll be a chance to tour our kiln if you haven't been here before, and get some deals on discounted pottery.
See you then! And if you can't make it to Vermont, we'll be posting new work in our Etsy shop in the coming weeks. Stay tuned for an announcement on that!
~Becca and Nathan
two potters photo tour
It was a really special summer for us. Both for our young family, and for our business. (We thank you wholeheartedly for that!) But honestly, where did it go?! Life seems to have only sped up as we do the juggling act of work-at-home + stay-at-home potting + parenting - I often think about that expression "the days are long, but the years are short." So true. Our baby girl is nearly one . . . but I digress! Here are some of our favorite photos from our summer . . .
In the studio . . .
. . . at shows and markets . . .
. . . and always with the camera and our pottery . . .
. . . and on the home front . . .
A memorable one, to be sure . . . <3
We'll be OPEN next weekend for the Vermont Open Studio Tour! There are over 100 studio open around this beautiful state - here is a link to the state wide map, and here is a link to a map of our local region (Bethel/Randolph), including some of our favorite places to grab a bite. Hope to see you. Saturday and Sunday October 4th + 5th, 2014, 10am to 5pm. (current events listed here)
~Becca
our etsy shop :: preview
Back in June, we opened our Etsy shop, TwoPotters.
Birds, bikes, and flowers . . . having fun with the layered, washed look of this white slip. (It also happens to have an incredibly lovely feeling in your hand!)
And the last of the garden veggie pots for summer (and maybe for a while - if you've admired this style, snap 'em up, folks!).
Again, here's our Etsy shop. (You can follow or 'favorite' us there for future updates, or sign up for our newsletter here.)
Thanks!
~Becca
showing our best
This week, we begin setting up for our biggest, best, and longest show of the year, the annual League of New Hampshire Craftsmen's Fair held each August at Mount Sunapee in Newbury, NH. The show runs August 2nd-10th. We'll be there every day with our favorite wood-fired pieces. Here's a little sneak peak the pottery we'll have with us . . .
See you at the Fair!
(Or perhaps at our next show . . . the Norwich VT Farmers Market on August 16th.)
~Becca and Nathan
new pots!
Hey folks, we'll be posting a sampling of our new work - mostly mugs, and a few mason jars and spoon rests - in our Etsy shop (TwoPotters) - this Friday at noon.
We'll still have work for sale here on our website, and going forward, most likely in both places. Stay in touch with us on Facebook, Instagram, or by signing up for our e-newsletter at the bottom of our website.
visiting our studio
{This post features photos from one of our past Open Studio events - join us for the next one listed here}
Vermont Open Studio Weekend Two Potters
We had a wonderful weekend for the Vermont Open Studio Tour. Thank you to all who turned out to see our latest firing and enjoy some great live music (thank you Matt, Adam, and Carrie!) under the tractor shed. It felt great to have family and friends and babies soaking up the bright sun and brilliant green colors of spring.
Out at the kiln, there was much to celebrate. Our firing wrapped up last week, and had been cooling until the day before the event. Happily, it *appears* to be our BEST firing to date. (And I say 'appears' because we haven't finished unloading its vast chambers!) It was really fun to be able to show folks the inside of the kiln with freshly fired pottery still inside.
wood kiln at Two Potters Bethel Vermont
the soda chamber at two potters
unloading the wood kiln at two potters
butter keepers Two Potters
bird mugs
wood fired pottery
bowls by Nathan Webb of Two Potters
canisters, fermenting crocks Two Potters
{You can visit us at our next Open Studio event by checking the dates here.}
in the mornings
Recently, I've fallen in love with early mornings again.
When I was living in New Hampshire, and firing twice a year at my friend Jody's wood kiln in Maine, my preferred shift started at 4 am. It meant an early bedtime, and a groggy start, but I was so fond of tending that fire while the rest of the world slept. The morning light would slowly brighten, the birds would start to chirp, and I'd feel so productive so early in the day. (Admittedly, this last bit is a big part of why I love mornings!)
In the past four months, as we've been adjusting to parenthood, we've been trying to find ways to continue making pottery - and get sleep, and have quality family time.
And so we've both taken on "parents" hours, as we like to call them, with me up before dawn and Nathan in the studio after baby's (and mama's, ahem) bedtime. Nothing too extreme - sunrise isn't all that early in the winter - and baby's bedtime isn't all that late!) but enough to give us some quiet time by ourselves to collect our thoughts and prepare for, or close out, the day.
Also new for me is having regular studio time most days.
It sounds odd to say that - wouldn't a potter naturally have this?! - but our last five years were largely dedicated to building our kiln and studio. Pottery, in many ways, became something we squeezed in between the flow of more pressing projects. Now, thankfully, our pace with all that building has largely come to a halt, and studio time is once again the priority. (There's a BIG kiln to fill before spring!)
And I must say that there is nothing like regular studio time to enhance a feeling of flow and creativity. I've also chosen to focus on making one thing - mugs - for several weeks. It's been surprisingly pleasant to continue with one train of thought, so to speak, and watch my rhythms with throwing and handles get smoother and more streamlined.
{A bit of springtime while the snow falls - Nathan brought in a broken crab apple branch - and we had pink blossoms in an otherwise black and white landscape.}
Sticking with one type of piece for a while has also allowed me to develop new ideas more fully. Before this, I made maybe ten or twenty of one thing, and moved on to the next shape. Maybe I've become more patient, or perhaps this style of working makes somewhat choppy hours that I have between meals and baby feedings feel more contiguous.
And there's the fact that I personally have found myself enjoying my morning mug of tea all that much more. A mug can be a really personal, intimate thing. A quiet moment with a favorite mug can really set the tone for the day.
It's been anything but boring. In some ways, I feel as though I could keep making mugs for a while longer, although my hands have more recently begun twitching for a different form. Soon.
I've been enjoying the new bird-shaped stamps that I made. . . and figuring out fun ways to store the stamps so I can see 'which bird is which.' :)
Oh, and there have been bikes, too. New designs, or shall I say, 'new-old' ones.
And of course there's my trusty studio buddy, who, in the mornings, isn't up to his usual trouble-making tricks yet. He sits quietly on my wedging table, 'protecting' me. :)
I must say, it's been quite peaceful in these early mornings.
~Becca
this new year
It's 2014, and life could not have changed more since 2013. Since Zoe joined us, the part of my brain that finds space to write reflectively about our lives as potters seems to have been swallowed by the all-consuming duties of motherhood.
So be it. We wouldn't trade parenthood for all the studio time in the world. It's been wonderful.
So here's to a new style of sharing - photos and brief bits about where we're at - probably not all that different from what I shared before, but maybe shorter and somewhat less eloquent and slightly more random. :)
{insert gratuitous cute baby photo}
It's hard to believe that one year ago, we were hanging the siding on our studio in the snow - it had a dirt floor and zero insulation - and making a few pots in a cramped upstairs bedroom.
This year, we are happily at work inside, making pots in the warm, sunny space we dreamed of for many years before.
We're so glad we put in five years of hard work on "infrastructure" - wood kiln and studio - so that now, between naps and diaper changes - we can get a few pots thrown. (With Lego, as per usual, seeing that we pay attention to HIM. Yes, he's on my wedging table, ahem.)
I started off the year in the studio with a few new experimental hand built pieces - pears and 'trenchers' fashioned to look like primitive wood bowls. We'll see how they come out. It's nice to experiment before heading full-force into making mugs and butter keepers. (That's my next task.)
Nathan has been working away at kiln and studio maintenance to get the kiln- and kiln shed- ready for our next firing. (Yes, we are still cleaning up from Firing #3, with a new year's resolution to clean up DIRECTLY following the next firing. :) It seems we're always running off to a show or something . . .)
In any event, he's been cutting wood and installing vent hoods and washing buckets - and on a more fun note - installing a pull up bar in his studio! It's the little things that bring joy . . .
The other day, with grandparents on the premises, we had a morning to ourselves - a "date morning," if you will - and we headed enthusiastically . . . to the kiln shed. Yup, grinding shelves and cleaning up from our third firing was our job - and actually, it was quite lovely. We were together doing what we love and putting our work lives in order. (Never thought I'd use the word "love" and "kiln maintenance" in the same sentence, but having a baby does change everything!)
In other random news (I told you there would be randomness) - we have studio plumbing!
This might not seem that exciting, until you consider that these pipes translate to things like a SINK and HEAT.
It sure is handy having a sink in a pottery studio! And central heat - in this case, radiant floor heat - is sooo nice. We'd be keeping things warm with the wood-stove while we waited for delivery of a water heater, but we were plowing through our wood and it wasn't all that warm. Just before Christmas family visits, our plumber was kind enough to jury rig a temporary set-up that involves one loop of our radiant tubes to be filled with warm water. And oh, how nice. The studio is warm and the heat is even and comfortable and requires zero maintenance. The full system gets installed tomorrow!
A warm bright studio with a long winter of pottery making and hanging out with our little girl lies ahead. Sounds about perfect to me.
Hope you're all enjoying a wonderful start to 2014.
~Becca
expect the unexpected
We're just seven weeks into our new adventure - the one in parenting. :) And if we've learned anything at this point, it's that we should get rid of our expectations. (Especially the ones about sleep! In truth, though things are improving in that department. Thank goodness.)
Among the expectations we tried not to have going into this were expectations about when we would be getting back to work in the studio. We thought maybe January would be a reasonable guess, as we couldn't know what kind of baby Z would be, how we'd be feeling, and just how exactly our lives would be with our first baby.
What we did know was that having our studio here at home - situated nearby in the field between our farmhouse and the wood-kiln - would give us the best chance at continuing to be potters. (I suppose that was a lot of the impetus behind our marathon studio building last winter + spring! We're loving our new building.)
And so when I found myself wedging clay four weeks after giving birth, I took it in stride. I was pleasantly surprised, to be sure, but also I knew there would be no saying if I'd be able to get back to those balls of clay tomorrow, or next week, or . . . ?
As it turns out, we've worked up a little routine where we each have time alone with Z while the other goes off around the farm/studio/kiln to get some work done. Family togetherness resumes at meals and in the evenings when it turns cold and dark (all too early these days!).
It feels like a win win at this point. We both LOVE our time with her, and we also still really enjoy keeping up with our work and business. And we have fun taking a morning off the four of us (let's not forget Lego the canine here) for a hike or outing of some sort once a week.
And so it goes. For now. With no expectations of things remaining this way going forward . . . it's one day at a time here in new-parent-land. ('Cause I think we realize that a toddler crawling around a pottery studio is going to be, well, interesting.) :)
~Becca
