Creek Road Pottery Newsletter – March 14th, 2026

The question wasn’t whether you felt inspired to start creating. The question was whether you were willing to create in order to become inspired. I found that waiting for inspiration could take quite a long time, and in that time, I could have been doing something. We didn’t get time back once it was spent, and the best time to do anything was yesterday. The next best time was right then.

I didn’t need to be inspired to go to work at the big paper factory and make paper towels. I drove there almost automatically when I was scheduled and showed up on time. If we could do those daily life activities without feeling inspired, then we should have shown up for ourselves automatically all the more. Making work to be inspired meant you were already doing something because you showed up. As you worked and solved problems, you might have found a few things that were interesting and then moved on to try new things. Rabbi Simon said: There is not a single blade of grass that does not have a constellation in the firmament that strikes it and says to it: ‘Grow.’

Juggling Work and Pots

I woke to juggle both work and the pottery. I had about 120 pieces that needed to be fired out, all sitting waiting to be trimmed. The bowls would go quite fast as over the years I had adapted my throwing to work with my work schedule. All the bowls were thrown in ways that needed very little trimming and all the mugs were thrown where there was no need to trim at all. Such tactics and strategies used in making pots had been so helpful, especially on days where I had to go into work on night shift but still needed to have the pots finished to put through the first firing.

Seth Godin said that how we juggled was very important. Some days it was how I caught, and other days it was how I threw. Juggling the right way meant I shouldn’t throw more than I was able to into the air, as something would drop. So I might not have gotten all the pots trimmed before work, just the pots that may have needed it the most. With work at the big paper factory, I needed to be well rested and able to do tasks correctly every time at the right time. I also needed to be awake to help solve problems that arose. We all worked quite hard to have easy days and nights.

Fingerprints and Primitive Marks

After night shift, I woke to a beautiful spring afternoon, had a coffee, and went to the studio to start trimming pots. I had 24 bowls flipped from the previous day. The trimming went rather quickly and some design work was put into the bowls with a kitchen rasp that would be used for creating lemon zest. Next came the trimming of some twenty or so tea cups that were intended to have a primitive look to them.

I trimmed them in a rough cut fashion and then impressed texture patterns into them. Others I created slip designs in them with my fingers. The thinking behind the process was that since I pulled the pots off the wheel by hand there were slip marks on the pots from lifting them. Having some design or personal prints in the pots fascinated me as such a design was leaving something of me on the pots. The plan was to fire out the tea cups to bisque temperature, then glaze the insides, leaving the outside raw, then fire them in a cone 6 glaze firing. After firing they would all be soaked in whole milk, then refired to about 600°F to have the milk glaze the pot in a primitive way.

The Rhythm of Glazing

That day was a big glazing day as I prepped all the pots for the final firing. I strained the glazes after mixing them in the pail to make sure there was no contamination or thick particles. Once screened, I started glazing the bowls. I filled each bowl up to the rim then poured the glaze into the next bowl and continued around the work table until all the insides of the bowls were glazed. The way the feet were trimmed into bowls helped speed up this process, as the bowl bottoms became like easy-to-hold handles.

The kiln would be done around 3:00 a.m. Between checks and turn-ups, I might have tried to glaze more and also take a small nap before the next turn-up of gas was due. The rain was slowly falling, though the air was warm. It was nice to load the kiln at night hearing the peepers. I wasn’t able to hear the peepers working nights in the big paper factory. How lucky I was to be able to work nights making pots instead of just working nights making paper. Once all the pieces were glazed, I started to plan how each shelf of the kiln was loaded, trying to throw them in such a way to fit as many on a shelf as possible to avoid wasting space.

Opening the Kilns

The updraft kiln of work that went down at 1:30 am was able to be opened at noon, less than 12 hours later. With the temperature drop and the kilns being outside, it seemed to speed up the cooling. As I unloaded, I checked the pots for any cracks from thermal shock or glaze issues, and I didn’t find any. Maybe I got lucky in some way. I wondered if I worried too much about what temperature the pots came out of the kiln at. Grandma used to remove the scalloped potatoes she made for dinner on Sundays at 350°F, and there I was worrying if the kiln temperature still read 280 when I opened the damper halfway.

That day was another big glaze day, though I was able to get an earlier start. I had all the pots glazed for another kiln load in the updraft and had it started by 1:30 pm. That kiln went down around 6:00 pm. I was firing a clay body that could only go to cone seven. I was working in the shop and missed a check. When I looked in the peephole, the cone was fully down but hard, so I believed the kiln fired to a mid to high cone 6. The next day would be show day at the Creek Road Pottery shop. This would mark 10 years of selling pots and 8 years of selling pots locally. Right then, I was relieved that all the work was put through the kilns and cooling.

Show Day Morning: Ten Years

I was up at 4:00 am and made coffee, then went down and put my hand on the kiln lid to see how hot it was. It had cooled quite fast due to the weather being so cold. I was very happy with how the greens came out, though I didn’t have very high hopes for the blues, as I had been having issues with the blue glaze having pinholes. I had two half-pails of one glaze that I simply dumped into the other, so I mixed red iron oxide rutile glaze with a cobalt glaze. The pots came out better than I expected. I never got my hopes up until the pots were all unloaded and I had looked at them. Working with the pots had made me a pessimist.

It was 22°F, and the grass was frosty, which left the shop cold. I had to make a run to get a tank of propane to warm up the shop before I had to open at 9:00 am. Not long after, the second kiln was ready to be unloaded and I held my breath. As I opened the lid I was surprised that many of the larger pieces made it through the firing without the pinholes in the glaze. Just two might have needed to be refired at some point, though the rest looked great. I believed I corrected the pinhole problem by firing the kiln much hotter to give the glaze more time to melt and set. After getting all the pots into the shop I was so relieved all the work was through the kilns and I could take a break from making pots and try to sell them.

Thank you for following along and supporting Creek Road Pottery. Every comment, visit, and bit of encouragement makes the long hours worth it. I hope your spring is full of good conversations, less snow, hot tea, warm blankets, creative victories, and the courage to make good work.

Until next time,
Alford Wayman
Artist/ Owner

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