Chisel&Clay: Handmade Pottery for Everyday Use

Our Story

At the end of 2020 my family - my six kids and husband - decided to surprise me with a pottery wheel.

I am not a crafty person, as you might expect someone who takes up pottery to be. Although I have always been intrigued by the craft, I never could find the time to invest in the hobby.

Phil built me a wheel using some cutoffs (which are actually quite large - as timber framers most of our “cutoffs” are the size of end tables) and some spare parts from machines he had laying around. Ryan, my oldest, made a sign that read “Caution, mom throwing pots!” and David, my second oldest, made me some wooden throwing ribs.

All of this they had researched and looked into—as none of us knew anything at all about pottery. Phil researched what kind of clay to buy and shipped in ten pounds from Amazon. The kids painted and cleaned one of the rooms in our 100-year-old farmhouse basement until it was spotless.

When they showed me what they had done, I honestly could not believe my eyes. I had absolutely no idea what they had been doing as they were making this all for me.

I had never even mentioned that I wanted to learn pottery.

But after messing up that first ten pounds of clay, I was absolutely hooked.

Did you know there is only, like, one store to buy clay from in Iowa? Over in Iowa City—two hours away—which is where we drove three days later- to buy 100 pounds more.

It wasn’t long until I had a half-ton pallet shipped in from Minnesota.

That spotless, painted basement room is now covered in pieces of pottery, in various stages of drying and firing—the floor has clay curls, the walls little splatters of clay. The tables? Glaze. And I walk through too often saying “I have GOT to clean this place up…just as soon as I am done putting handles on these mugs…”