The Fall Update

I've taken to posting daily on the Hughes Pottery page on Facebook, and only writing a blog post on the occasions that I have 2 brain cells left to bounce off of each other. This has been increasingly rare as time has passed. This has been a tough year of transition for us. Some good, some bad, but change regardless.



 So what's been going on?

At the beginning of the year, Hughes Pottery ran a very successful Kickstarter Campaign to raise money to attend the Buyer's Market of American Craft and enter the wholesale market. The campaign was a success, and we went to the BMAC and we got a whole lot of new customers. So many new customers that we are still sending out the rewards we promised our backers. We got twice as many backers and twice as many customers from the event that we anticipated, so naturally it's taken twice as long to produce and send out the rewards. We're about done now, the only ones left are the ones that include chocolate chip Biscotti. And I think I still owe someone in Australia some magnets. They will be going out soon.

 The biggest new customer we got was Gaelsong and they have kept us hopping. Hot on the heels of Gaelsong was The Old Forge Brewing Company who had us make all the plates for the Grand Opening of their new location.

 It has been unreal. Hardly a minute to think. But life goes on and throws in some family stuff. In June we had to move one of the kids and a friend to school in Monessan PA. In August we had another kid move home from the DC area.

In the midst of all this new business and moving chaos we have been searching for a new house, We really need a place, a nice place, on the cheap with a 2+ car garage for the studio and zoning appropriate to running a business. It's hard to find. The last time I posted, on July 3, we had just gone to see a big old Funeral home. Since then we have seen some 10 or so houses. I think we have a winner, but we'll know in a week or so. I may even post here again before December to tell you all about it.

In the meantime, here it is October and we have very little personal stock, normally we have a sale at our house towards the beginning of November. I'm having doubts about having enough stock to have it. I'm getting focused on making for us now, so who knows..as a team Rowan and I can often do the seemingly impossible. If nothing else we'll have an amazing amount of stock for our online store through the holidays.

Stop by the Facebook page and visit, see what's going on in the studio, say hello!

Funeral Home Report from Oil City

So we've been looking for a new place to live and work, our little cottage home is just too little. We need more space, we need the studio out of the basement and we need an affordable place with a low mortgage , so we looked into this Artist Relocation Program in Oil City, PA

We've been ramping ourselves up a little bit with the possibilities because the homes are all very reasonably priced and we kind of set our hearts on this crazy old Victorian built in 1890 that spent it's last few years as a funeral home. Yep a funeral home. We figured the downstairs would be all set up for viewings..and the upstairs would be nice since that is where the family lived. We also figured that the outbuilding in the back would be a great studio. We were so disappointed. I noticed right away the paint job was peeling off..all of it. The inside was just as bad..the wallpaper (shudder ewwww) was also damaged, bubbled and wrinkly and it never stopped feeling like an industrial building, even in the living area. There was no real kitchen..there was no real flow to the place. It was a huge rat warren and the basement..was wet..really wet walking on boards wet.The electrical was updated on the bottom floor, but upstairs, there was a fusebox in the hallway. Yep. A Fusebox. Live.

So I'm going to upload a few choice photos here, so you can see the place and it's problems in all their glory.We're pretty sad about this, but I am sure there will be others to see.

Massive hallway downstairs

not bad..workable

This area was lovely

damaged ceiling

This was a nice room

This was the kitchen

More Damage

The Embalming Room..next to the kitchen

UGH Paneling from HELL

The very wet basement

Yucky wet moldy basement

One Garage Here, two up the hill. No contiguous workspace.

Adventures in Sparky Kiln land

It's never a good time to lose a kiln.

Here we are, pressed for time and money, Orders we took at BMAC are almost ready for shipment. We have a show in another state starting next Thursday. 

TIME IS VERY IMPORTANT

So what happens?

Kiln Fail.

Burned out wire..something wasn't tight enough.
Replace it.





Replace the suspect relays:

It doesn't work! They're old ones we didn't throw away. With no visible signs of damage it's hard to tell if its good or bad.
OH NO. Now what.





 We don't have an L&L, but the principals are the same. So we applied the information.

Test:


Found the bad relay and since it's a weekend

Cannibalized other kiln:

Repair:






















Order a new one..no not from a kiln supplier

From Newark Under $10, not nearly $30

yep.. awesome.

All Kiln repairs starring Rowan Rose!  Who despite not knowing a thing about electricity, does a great job and in fact at this point is making her own intuitive leaps to diagnose and repair the problems.