We've recently added a jewelry collection to our line of timeless, elegant, and classic pottery. Learn more about the creation of and meaning behind this collection!

Early in 2019, I was feeling a little lost in our business (who else has been there!?), feeling like I really didn't have a direction. My ultimate passion lies in writing/talking about art (thanks Art History degree!) and behind the scenes business tasks, but I felt like I wanted to get my hands dirty in making something. After all, I left my full time job working at a bank to fully embrace our pottery business. But at this point I wasn't feeling like I was doing that; I felt stuck in a rut so to speak, and I was searching for a more meaningful connection to our business. Have you ever felt this way? I hope that by sharing my story I can help encourage you, too! You deserve for better things to come your way, just don't give up!

I felt hungry to push the limits of what we could do as a small pottery business and I wanted to challenge myself to see how I could add to Curry's wood fired body of work.

And let's be honest, I have zero interest in learning how to wheel throw pottery and create the beautiful functional work that Curry does. Days turned into weeks of thinking what I could do to contribute. I experimented with a few ideas, but nothing seemed to work and I just wasn't passionate about these ideas.

Then, FINALLY, I realized that I could take something I've been doing for years and adapt it to ceramics: making jewelry. Since I was about 12 years old, I've been making jewelry with beads and wire. Though I would make it just for fun and give as Christmas gifts to my family, it was always something I enjoyed doing. I also collect modern and vintage jewelry and almost every birthday or Christmas I would get jewelry as a gift.

Needless to say, jewelry, whether making it or collecting it, has been a passion of mine for as long as I can remember. Do you have a passion you can share with the world? Something that will challenge to and bring your voice to a certain field? For me it made sense when I decided I wanted to challenge myself to adapt my jewelry making skills into making ceramic jewelry.

But what didn't make sense was the fact that I actually had no idea how to make ceramic jewelry, I just knew I wanted to do it. Thankfully I'm married to a potter who could--very patiently--teach me how to put this dream into practice.

I began experimenting with shapes, styles, and colors. Curry very kindly helped me along the way and encouraged me when I became frustrated that the end result wasn't turning out like I had in my head (but I mean does anything ever turn out like this? NO!). Curry kept rolling out slabs of clay so I could continue to cut out my shapes and experiment with figuring out what kind of look I wanted. Glazes were also a big hurdle because I wanted to work with different glaze colors than Curry normally used -- I'm inspired by vintage styles and prefer pastel and jewel toned colors, totally different than what Curry likes for his pieces. Sourcing the colors and figuring out how many hand painted layers needed to be applied to each charm was definitely a challenge that I was not anticipating.

Together, though, despite the initial hurdles, we persisted and I was determined to figure out how to make ceramic jewelry. Finally, after months of trial and error, things began working together (!) and we were able to create a new line of ceramic jewelry to share with you.

We are thankful that together Curry and I created this new line and that we kept pushing the limits of both clay and our own business ideas.

Thank you for reading! If you have any questions or comments I'd love to hear in the comments below or email me at curry@curywilkinsonpottery.com

Thank you for reading!

Sarah

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