Hi friends! Sarah here. It’s time for a studio update and I've got all sorts of fun things to share with you!
Here’s what this new year is looking like at the studio…
We are now a team of three in the Hood River studio! After wrapping up the holiday production season in our Portland studio, Joey Rose and Sam joined me in Hood River to embark on building up production and growing our studio team here at our new space. Together, the three of us are dialing in our studio systems and gearing up to hire more team members this spring. What sorts of studio systems, you ask?! Everything from better record keeping, production logs, and production scheduling, to glaze testing and learning to use new equipment.
After the holidays we rented a U-Haul and moved a bunch of our equipment from Portland to Hood River, including 2 more large kilns. It feels good to have our trusty old kilns here!
We finally got Joey Rose on the wheel with a throwing lesson from Sam! Joey Rose has been with us for years and she's a master glazer who knows every other part of this process inside and out. I'd say her first time throwing went impressively well!
We've got exciting new equipment! For 5 years our tiny Portland studio served us well, but I am relieved to say that in the new studio we finally have space for a pug mill. This means we can recycle and reuse our clay scraps more easily and have less waste coming out of the studio. So cool.
There's one more exciting piece of equipment that we're waiting for and it's on a boat from England right now (at least I hope it is. It was supposed to come a month ago!). I'll keep it a secret until I have fun photos to share :)
What are we making right now and when will there be goods on the web shop again? We aren't planning to do any restocks this January or February. We're keeping our production schedule as simple as possible while we get settled here and working exclusively on a large order for a restaurant in DC called The Dabney.Once we're done with this order, we'll get to work on goods for the web shop and I'll be sure to announce when its restocked!
In the mean time, if you're eager to get your hands on some ceramics, or if you just want to support our team, we will be having a few raffles for unique sets of ceramics over the next few months!
Reflections on this year...
I've been learning and relearning a few lessons over this last year. Growth is hard! Moving is both exciting and exhausting. Living and working in a place near the mountains makes me happy. My studio team is hardworking and dedicated to making Wolf Ceramics sustainable and successful and I love them dearly, both as co-workers and as friends! Sometimes it's best to take things slow for a while and build a solid foundation, rather than produce and sell work without ever pausing to think and plan with more intention. Endless gratitude for my sweetheart Jared, his loving support and his table-building skills.
