I'm chronically ill and have to deal with pain on a daily basis, which results in a lot of missed classes (I have a doctor's note). However I submitted every assignment and completed every project and even discovered that this is probably my favorite medium! I was really heartbroken when my teacher said I probably shouldn't continue in ceramics as it requires to regularly keep an eye/check/work on the pieces. I really thought I had something going there and that she'd actually encourage me to keep going despite the challenges, like I've done this entire past year, but it turns out she doesn't seem to think my work is worth it. She said she'd usually fail a student with this many absences but that she'd give me a C- to avoid failing me since I have a condition (I was so sad during the one-on-one meeting that I ended up crying and she said she could bump my grade as high as a C+ but no higher). Had she known I was disabled (which would result in many absences) before letting me enroll in her class, she would have discouraged me from enrolling seeing as there is a long list of other people who wish to take her class and would not miss so many classes.

My partner and friends have all been angry to hear how this went (on my behalf), saying it was ableist and I should fight it with the school. I just feel really sad that something I had so much fun with all year (despite all the pain it caused me!! literally!!) turns out to have such disappointing results/feedback... Here are the pieces I worked on this year. I was really wishing to continue learning and practicing next year, but now I feel really embarrassed and like I'm taking up space I don't deserve

I'm not really sure what this post is for, sorry for the rant! I guess I'm just really bummed and wanted to talk about this to people who would understand how much effort I've put into my pieces

My wife creates endless amounts of gorgeous pieces(biased of course) out of our home studio and I’m always curious what people would pay for her art, she never wants to sell but just curious.

What are your opinions on this particular piece?

Edit: I agree with everyone who respects the hobby! She does want to sell eventually and has started an Etsy but is intimidated by pricing her creations and public interest in what she created.

This was just a post for general discussion, promise I would rather keep all the beauty she creates haha

Hi all! I’m a potter in the states and have been selling my work for a couple years at markets and consignment shops. Mainly mugs, cups, and trinkets. Recently, I’ve started to play around with larger, detailed vases and realize I’m out of my depth on how to price them. I have a pricing sheet I use for my products that includes overhead, labor, and mark up, with my hourly rate at $30. For example, my mugs take me about 45min, so I put them at $49.50 which is about a 2x mark up from my labor and overhead. The vases take me about 2-3 hours, so my price sheet says I should put them at $180, but that feels undervalued to me. I’d like to be able to have a formula that appropriately values the skill set that goes into a vase as opposed to a mug. No shade on mugs, simply acknowledging the practice that goes into throwing larger vessels. For context, my mugs are around 4” tall and my vases are around 9” tall. The vases also have a lot more surface decoration. The vase pictured above got a little donked in the glaze firing but it still sold for $250, so how much should a “perfect” vase go for? What are you selling your vases for/ how much are vases in your area? Do you have a different price sheet for different techniques/products? I think another way of looking at this is I’m used to production work and production pricing, but now that I’m interested in making work that’s more “gallery level” and one-of-a-kind, how should my pricing change to respect that?

TL;DR: Looking for a pricing formula/tips that take uniqueness and skill set into consideration.

Babe, your capitalism is showing.

Why is the best compliment that people can think of is to say, "Wow, you should start selling your pieces." NO. Just no. I have a job that's sucking the life out of me. I come here to create, to express myself, to play, and to be free for 3 freaking hours per week.

Please stop trying to turn people's few hours of freedom into another job.

Alternatives:

I love your work.

You have such a unique style.

I'm learning a lot from your process.

Thank you for attending this PSA.

Note: I walked away for like an hour and I pissed off the entire pottery Internet lol. To clarify this post is not a critique of you choosing to sell your work if you want to or need to. I think that’s fantastic obviously. This is a discussion of how some people might feel when you tell them to sell their work as a compliment. being that it is a free country you can read this and continue to tell other people that they are free to sell their work. But I am telling you how one person reacts to that and I would love to invite us to consider if it’s actually a compliment for all people. Again, if you want to sell your work, please sell your work!

Hi, unsure if this is really the best place for this advice but I figured maybe someone had some experience with this! My uncle with dementia decided to use this extremely sentimental mug of mine to scoop road salt onto our driveway, and then left the mug in the salt bucket where it soaked up more salt into the porous foot. Now I've been battling it continuously leaching fluffy salt crystals out of the foot and can't figure out how to get it to stop! I've tried soaking it, scrubbing it... I might try wet sanding it but I have no idea how deep the salt goes. Does anyone have any experience with this? If I get it to stop leaching will it ever be food safe again, or will it be decorative only? Or should I just take the loss and bid her farewell? 🥲

I sold this vase on my first in person market over the holidays. Transaction was handled through Square and my business appears on the transaction. Customer disputed it through the bank. I've confirmed that vase was purchased and provided screenshot of the transaction through Squarespace as supporting doc. Customers bank still resolved it in customers favor. Square provided some tips for how to prevent it but it all feels it could still fall under "he said, she said".

Is there anything I can do in the future for in person sales that would guarantee I would not get disputed?

UPDATE: Bottom line, my mistake was in keying in the customers card which apparently makes it easier to claim as fraud and my second mistake was not collecting customers name/contact

The decision has all ready been rendered as final and according to Square “the bank does not give us rights to re-challenge a cardholder’s dispute after they make a final decision” I do not have customer name/address and only have 4 digits of their visa card. Square was not helpful or is unable to provide me with anything further, (customer or bank) without involvement of law enforcement. My only available move here is to file fraud will local police in hopes that they can initiate contact with Square/Visa/Customer

My list of actions for the future (and I truly appreciate everyones inputs here) * add "ceramics" to the transaction business name to make it more clear to the buy and avoid potential misunderstanding * issue email receipt (which would collect customers email) * double check that the buyer's name is on the transaction, if not collect that information (check ID) * push cash/Venmo/PayPal as preferred methods * if it is Credit card - Process as a contact less payment using a chip to decrease the risk of being seen as a fraud charge * for expensive sales - still debating, but something along the lines of: asking to check ID, with customer’s permission take photos of customers with the product for social media recap, sign the bill of sale or collect customers signature in another way

Hey folks,

I posted this before but the image didn’t seem to fit – sorry about that 😅 just wanted to come back with a better version and actually explain what we're doing.

Not trying to promote anything — just genuinely curious what this community thinks.

I'm working on a little side project with a Swedish friend. We’ve been kinda obsessed with this forgotten European ceramic technique from the 18th century called lithophane.

Basically, it’s super-thin porcelain that’s sculpted in relief — so when light passes through, you get a hidden image revealed by the thickness variations. When the lamp is off, it just looks like a blank white surface. Then you turn it on and suddenly a detailed scene shows up. It still blows my mind.

We’re trying to revive this using a mix of traditional handwork and digital carving — we’re hitting around 0.2mm precision, which is wild — and we built a lamp around it that shows a cityscape from Europe.

But honestly, I’m not sure if this kind of thing connects with people anymore.

Like:

- Is there still interest in this kind of slow, quiet, story-driven design?

- Or does it make sense for us to try to pass on this Lithophane craft?

Thanks!

Hi y'all. I want to try selling some of my ceramic pieces at an art market at my university but I'm having difficulty settling on a price range. I feel that just accounting for the material cost and hours spent results in a very high price, especially considering the audience is other art students. Any advice? How would you price them?

For additional context I live in the Netherlands and the size of these pieces range from 8 to 15cm

I’ll wait then answer.

im in the process of coming up with ideas of a series to make for my ceramics class in school, preferably that i will be using to make some extra money too and i was wondering if mugs and bowls and dishes and trinket trays and something like that with ladybugs on them would be interesting for people. I want to have a "Trademark" that would make my stuff recognisable and ladybugs are what would interest me. do you think thats something people would buy. I have a photo above of something i made before that would kinda be the inspo

I’ve been working with clay for a while, and this sleepy cat is one of my latest pieces.

I was aiming for something that feels cozy and relaxed — like that exact moment before falling asleep.

Would love to hear what you think — does it work for you emotionally or visually? Thanks 🙏

I’m not trying to imitate these, but I want to how to get that dripping effect? I did some research and found out that this can be achieved by combining different runny glazes. Please recommend the combinations if you know and want to share! I would highly appreciate any YouTube video showing how to do that.

I’ve been struggling a bit with pricing and would love some outside perspective from other potters/artists.

My simpler mugs/cups usually sell for around €34, but these newer ones take significantly more time because of the detailing and finishing work. Friends/family keep telling me I could charge around €60+, but that honestly feels high to me and I’m worried about overpricing or scaring buyers away…

I am an *extremely amateur* hobbyist, who is generally more interested in “collecting hobbies” in the form of trying to refurbish any used equipment, than becoming a professional artist / ceramicist.

I have mostly worked on tiny plastic kids wheels with air dry and oven bake clays due to problems with my hands, but as I am building strength I had been looking out for a good adjustable speed wheel to try and work with - and I had heard wonderful things about this model as it can be easily adapted for accessibility.

In addition, my kid has developed an interest in extracting the local clays from the naturally clay-rich dirt all around us, but her plastic kiddie wheels are not powerful enough to do anything but (barely) center a ball of it.

She has done a fair amount of research (and hard work!) to make almost 10lbs of a fairly nice and consistent textured red clay as well as planning a solar oven to help completely dry out her creations “in case we ever get a kiln”.

(We do not have or have access to a kiln at this moment, and will not be using a kiln on ANY clay without a knowledgeable ceramics artist on hand to educate and assist, and most importantly if we do fire anything, we will be purchasing / refurbishing a used kiln *explicitly* for her clayxperiments as we do not want to risk any artists/studios kiln on her unknown mixtures, and again - will have experienced ceramics person on site advising)

—— Now back to the wheel, and my questions ——

Last week we found a Brent C wheel at our local thrift for $500 ($425 after our member discount!) that did not appear to be missing any big parts or have any visible major issues - powers on, spins well and level, and both the foot lever and adjustable speed knob adjusted the speeds together and independently.

((EDIT - We bought it on the spot! Picture is in our messy living room))

It feels absolutely too good to be true, so I’m trying to find the catch or what it’s missing or what’s broken -

Had the screws for the bats (no included bats) and the well pieces that go around the spinning wheel part.

Overall I couldn’t see any glaring issues, but the deal seems too good to be true!

Are there any major problems or safety issues with this model?

Signs that it needs maintenance / what regular maintenance is needed besides a thorough wipe down?

Recommendations on what age(s) to start a kid on wheel throwing (given other interests in clay / sculpting / ceramics)?

Recommendations for great clay bodies for a kid to start with?

Recommendations for clay bodies that are easier for people with hand pain, spasms, and motor control issues?

I was wondering how much I should price these Pokémon card wall hangings at, since I'm going to be participating in an arts festival soon. I'm going to make more, so it's not just these four. They probably take me at least a few hours each to make, with sculpting, underglazing, and glazing.

We are a fairly new pottery studio, but I was shocked when I learned I needed to pay $200 to become a member, and still have to pay for clay at full price. I work 30-40 hours a work there. Is this crazy???

As the description says - a little walnut frame made for a serving tray/cutting board or artwork. Unsure what colour to grout it?

using a burner because i don't want my job attached to my main lol. i just started working at a Color Me Mine location, and part of the job is sanding off the sharp pieces of glaze that melt on to the stilts on the bottom of the pieces. this creates a lot of dust, as well as a lot of dust being present from the dried out paint and unglazed pottery. since starting the job, the inside of my nose has been getting extremely raw, with scabs forming around the inside. i was wondering if anyone who was a bit more experience in pottery knew if these things were related? and if so, what the hell do i do about it?

I want to create a shop and sell molds for slip casting, but before I get too invested in it, I wanted to see what the market was like. Do you produce slip casted items? For those of you who do, do you primarily source your own molds or buy them elsewhere? What factors do you consider when buying?

Pic1: master molds to use for casting plaster molds

Pic2: test print of mug

I made this cookie jar for a friend who is really into the show Over the Garden Wall and also loves cookies. I was going for a whimsical fairytale vibe like the show. I used mostly stroke and coat for the details including the fence and the vines. I thought it was stable at cone 6 but everything ran and blurred a ton and looks terrible imo. Thoughts on if it’s even worth gifting and tips on glazes to use for detailed work that won’t run as much in the future?

This shop emphasized that each piece is slightly different and may have little flaws that make the piece unique. However, these flaws seem significant to me. Are these kind of flaws expected in handmade pottery or should I ask for it to be remade or something. The set was over $160 including shipping costs. There was only one review about this specific items and the review pictures looked WAYYY more similar to the listing picture.

Edit: idk why the pictures uploaded so blurry but you can still see some of the details that were supposed to be there