The Opposite of Upcoming

We closed the doors to the shop around 15 years ago. And recently on my instagram, I have been reflecting on past work, and this exceeds the amount of characters I was allowed to use so I decided to post it here instead.

Having a shop was a learning experience for me; it was really hard. I am naturally a quiet person, and I don’t want to stand out; this was the opposite of that. We did everything on a budget and it was hard to survive; so many people wanted the business to stay there, but it didn’t.

There was a paint-a-pot in the unit after us, and from what I have seen, there is a pottery studio teaching here now, but in a different unit at the Marsh Mill Village.

My work changed from my time at University. At University I was firing the gas kiln, which made luscious glazes I just couldn’t do in my tiny 42 litre plug-in kiln. I tried to adapt by playing more with forms, adding textures rather than relying on the reduction firings I was used to before that. At University though I had filled the kilns we weren’t allowed to program the kilns or anything like that, so unsurprisingly my first year of making for myself I exploded a kiln load of work that looked dry but hadn’t been dry enough to fire.

I used to sit in the window and throw in the hopes it would lure people into the shop; it did sometimes, but more often than not I would get a thumbs up on passing. The most popular thing we offered was Kids and Clay on a Saturday; my wife would teach hand-building, and I would teach throwing. Despite it showing three tables we had four or five small white tables, and we used to cover them in paper so then we could easily clean up.

This led to me going and doing teacher training. Still not sure what was harder: this shop or teacher training; both were year-long struggles. Both left me emotionally broken and out of money. In fact, money-wise, we were paying this off until 2018, just before we bought a house. And my student loans just from the one year teaching are now several times what they were when I finished the course, so swings and roundabouts.

But it was cold; we had a little oil heater, but I couldn’t afford to run it unless the shop was going to be busy. The walls were Corex board with a bead of silicone holding it on. We had three completely different wheels, and of these three I only have the Shimpo now, though I preferred the Alsager wheel; it was impractical for teaching on as I couldn’t move it place to place and after shutting the shop here we carried on working on the pottery for another year.

Also the floor was bare concrete as we couldn’t really afford a better option, but it got mopped often. The unit had a carpet when we moved in, which was stuffed into the cupboard under the stairs, and I relaid it when we left.

I taught myself how to paint in acrylic when we had the shop, because I really wanted art for the walls, but didn’t want to have other people’s work in the shop as I was afraid of it getting dirty or damaged. All the materials we already owned from being students, and I had just never really learned to paint because I had worked digitally on personal projects when I was a student and had focused on pottery for many years.

Having the shop is the only reason I started learning to paint; I even wrote a blog for it at the time, as I was so into blogging. The Signature on the painting is one of my many pottery marks from the time when you are young and still trying to find your identity (I wrote to someone this week saying I am still struggling to find my identity a decade and a half later)

I am working on new work, and it has me thinking about everything I have ever made, going through old collections of photographs, actual work scattered across the house. Wondering if I was more confident in and of myself if something had taken off and hadn’t near broken myself through the negative situations that have left me feeling less as a person because I couldn’t just make it work.

We even ended up in the local paper with everything we were doing. I have been in the paper a few times since, but not with my other half.

Before opening the shop, someone advised against it, said as a young maker I should just focus on making the work, not open a space because then the space becomes the work. And sitting here fifteen years after shutting my shop I agree with the sentiment. I don’t want to open a shop again, I have helped open pop-up shops in the last few years and I find them really uncomfortable to do, being in a space hoping someone comes so then you don’t feel like you have wasted your time and energy and it is demoralising when they don’t.

If you don’t want to listen to the advice of not opening your own shop, please just save enough money before you do to cover all the expenses for yourself and the business for a year, that way you aren’t reliant on the shop finding the money every month which can make you feel miserable.