We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Julie Miller. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Julie below.

Hi Julie, thanks for joining us today. What do you think Corporate America gets wrong in your industry? Any stories or anecdotes that illustrate why this matters?

I think that the number one issue anyone creating handmade products deals with is the fact that we are simply not part of Corporate America, and we don’t want to be. We are not Target, or Walmart, as a potter I am not Corningware. We are not cranking out massive amounts of work in a factory with machinery, and I am by no means a production potter. We are craftsmen who create pieces with our own hands, the way things used to be made.

Pottery is in no way a simple, straightforward or easy craft. Anyone who has worked with clay, from beginner to expert, will undoubtedly tell you that it is a humbling experience. There are many different ways to create pieces (wheel thrown vs handbuilding), clays to work with (stoneware, earthenware, porcelain), glazes to use (commercial vs mixing your own), where you choose to create (community studio vs home studio), how it’s fired (electric, gas, wood, pit fired), decorative techniques (sgraffito, slip trailing, glaze layering/application) and how you choose to combine all of these together will influence the production and outcome of your pieces. The best and the most daunting thing about ceramics is that there is always something new to try and the experimenting never ends.

I often get asked how long it takes to make each piece and that is such a hard answer. As a small batch potter I can make 16 mugs in a batch since that’s what I can get out of a 25 pound bag of clay. Technically it takes me about 2.5 hours of hands-on time to create one mug, but there is so much more that goes into that. The process involves weighing and wedging clay to prep, throwing time on the wheel, then drying overnight, trimming the bottoms, pulling and attaching handles and slip trailing designs the next day. After that, depending on the time of year, it could take 2-5 days for those mugs to be dry enough to fire. Then there’s one 24 hour bisque (where the clay goes from raw to stone), applying glazes and another 24 hour trip back into the kiln. So really 2.5 hours means an absolute minimum of 6 days. (Note this doesn’t include the time it takes to set up, man a booth and breakdown from markets or to stage and upload pictures, write descriptions for an online listing and then to pack and ship that order).

I once had another creative ask if I could make custom tea cups for a tea ceremony that he was hosting in two weeks. I explained that I would love to but unfortunately didn’t have any tea cups available since I make coffee mugs and I wouldn’t be able to make any in that time frame because of my production schedule. He then asked if he could rent some of my coffee mugs for the event, saying “I don’t need a lot, maybe just 50?” My jaw dropped. Even during my busiest season I don’t normally have 50 mugs on hand, especially that I can just lend out. I appreciated the fact that he wanted to support my business but I just wanted to say “dude, I am not a factory”.

When you choose to buy a piece of handmade pottery you’re paying the potter for each decision that they have made in the creation of not only that piece, but every single one that has come before it. You are paying that artist for all the years of practice, education, materials and supplies, the failed pieces, the stress and the joy of the process, all of the wins and all of the losses. You are paying for their TIME.

I think the biggest thing Corporate America gets wrong about the handmade industry is that we don’t want to be part of it. We’re not here to maximize profits. Artists take so much pride in their work and so much attention to detail goes into each piece that is created. You can see the mark of the Maker and you know that an actual person made it. We are here creating functional, beautiful pieces of art that can be utilized every single day, and most of all bring the customer joy while using our products. Handmade means you are supporting a person, not the system.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My name is Julie Miller and I am a small batch potter from Phoenixville, PA. I discovered pottery while attending Penn State University as an Art Education major. For this major you need to take a variety of studio classes to be able to teach all kinds of mediums, so I decided to take a pottery class with a friend who had signed up since the figure drawing class I wanted to take was full. At this time I was fully committed to developing my skills in drawing and painting and honestly wasn’t excited about clay, but when I sat down on that wheel something just clicked and I knew this was it! I struggled so hard on the wheel during those first classes, trying to figure out how to center the clay and create something that remotely looked like the form I was trying to make. Over the semester I was in the studio as much as possible at night and on the weekends trying to hone my skills and not embarrass myself in front of my peers and professor. After that I took a pottery class each semester until I graduated in 2013. After a few years of teaching K-5 Elementary art at a school in rural South Carolina, I decided it was time to move back home. I ended up not accepting a teaching position that next school year and was kind of at a crossroads with my professional life. By that point I had been working with kids for 10 years (volunteering in after school programs in high school, camp counselor during and after college, teaching) and while I loved the kids I knew teaching in a traditional school setting was not for me. I picked up some waitressing shifts and started teaching pottery classes in exchange for studio time at a small clay studio just outside of Philadelphia. While there the owner decided to take some of my pieces that were on display in the window to a Holiday Market in the area that she was attending and to my surprise they all sold! It then clicked that this could be a side hustle since there is such a great local art scene in my area.
Fast forward to 2019, I was working at The Ceramic Shop doing retail sales full time and working in my studio every night and attending markets on the weekends trying to make a name for myself. After doing this for almost 2 years it got to the point where I was turning down opportunities for pottery since I didn’t have enough time in the day because I was working full time. After wrestling with the idea of leaving my 9:00-5:00 job to pursue pottery full time and what all that would entail, I decided it was now or never! I had 6 months of bills and rent money saved up and told myself that if it didn’t work out that wouldn’t be the end of the world but I knew I had to just try. Thankfully, I haven’t looked back.
Today I work out of my home studio with my dog Whoopie as my studio assistant. I try to keep normal working day hours since that’s the schedule the rest of the world is on, but honestly it’s been amazing to have so much freedom to work when I want to. I still wake up by 7:30 am but I take time in the morning to enjoy my coffee, do some social media stuff and answer emails, take Whoopie for a walk and get my workout in, make some food and am normally in the studio by 11:00 am. As someone who is not a morning person, this has been the biggest and best change for me and definitely the benefit of being my own boss!
I create wheel thrown functional pottery using a beautiful red stoneware clay with hand applied floral designs. The technique I use is called slip trailing and it allows me to combine my love of drawing with my pots. I take clay and water it down into a slurry and pour that mixture into a squeeze bottle. I then hand pipe (like on a cake) my designs onto each piece allowing the shape of the pot to determine the exact design. You can see these patterns on the variety of pieces that I make, including mugs, bowls, serving pieces, plant pots, plates, etc. I would say my favorite pieces to throw are the large serving bowls, but my most popular pieces with customers are definitely mugs and spoon rests. Each piece is handmade completely by me and I feel so lucky to wake up every day doing exactly what I want to be doing.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

To be honest, 2022 was a really though year financially for me. Like everyone, I was still dealing with the ramifications of the supply chain issues due to Covid. For a while it was tough to get supplies, especially glazes, so whenever they were finally in stock I would order double or triple what I normally would to make sure I wouldn’t run out any time soon. With inflation hitting and the prices of materials skyrocketing due to gas prices, my budget was basically blown for the year by July. My credit card still hasn’t recovered from that, but I just bought glaze for the first time this year in June so that’s a plus!

And then in December my class started having issues…

While working one day I started to notice that there were small chunks of something in my clay… little white pebbles that I would have to pick out while throwing. If there are any impurities in the clay it can cause so many issues from making the piece off center and wobbly while throwing to whatever that material is shooting out of the pot while it’s being fired in the kiln and causing damage. I called my supplier and they said there was a recall on my clay and it should be back in stock in 8 weeks… it actually took 6 months.

The analogy I like to use is the difference between cooking and baking – with cooking you can substitute all you want and your meal is most likely going to turn out fine but with baking, if you are off by a smidge your whole recipe could fail. Ceramics is like baking – clay and glaze need to be in sync to work. Some glazes look completely different one white clay than they do on red clay. Some glazes fit on some clay bodies but not on others (shrinkage rates in each and a lot of chemistry talk). They were changing one of the ingredients in the clay so that the little pebbles wouldn’t be a problem anymore but I didn’t know what the ingredient was and how that was going to effect the new recipe. And for me personally, I knew that my Twilight glaze combination, my bread and butter and the one that I am most known for, does not look like this on any other clay that I’ve tried in all my years. I was freaking out!

This also happened during the Christmas rush, the busiest time of year for small businesses and artists. Luckily I had a few boxes left over from my last order and got in contact with another local potter who had a few boxes I could buy from her and I just got to work with what I had. I knew that January was coming and I would have down time to make a plan. In the following months once I realized my clay wasn’t going to be back in stock any time soon I had to go back to the drawing board and dig up my old notes of clays and glazes that I had used in the past to fulfill wholesale orders and get inventory up for market season to start again. It was a lot of experimenting and relearning how to do things with new clay bodies and how my glazes reacted to those but we got it done. Thankfully I can say my beautiful red stoneware is back in stock and is perfect!

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

As most artists, makers and small business owners who use social media to promote their work know it is not the same space as it was a few years ago. I started my business Instagram back in 2014 with a chronological feed and I would actually see posts from the people I followed. It was a simpler time and I don’t think most of us knew what the word algorithm even was. Honestly, I am so thankful to Instagram for being that amazing space that supported and promoted artists. I relied on it so much back in the early years to promote my work and get the word out there about shop updates and local markets that I was doing, and my customers actually felt connected to me.

Now it seems, to quote comedian and podcaster Jared Freid “we are at the mercy of Father Algorithm”. Social media is not what it used to be and is no longer the only way I promote my work. I also jumped off ETSY and created a website with an online shop to have everything in one space. Here you can find my EVENTS page with all of my local markets, a GALLERY page to promote past work, FAQ to find out information about my business policies and an ABOUT page so people can learn about the artist. The best part about my website is that customers can sign up for my Newsletter to receive an email when I’ll be updating my online shop with work that can be shipped all over the country.

I have also pivoted to doing more in person markets the past two years instead of relying so heavily on online sales. In the past I was able to make a few posts on Instagram saying that I was going to update the shop on this day at this time and would have an average of 40 orders come in that I would then ship out. Since “Father Algorithm” has taken over and my followers aren’t seeing those notifications like they used to my online sales have taken a major hit. I still do a shop update about once a month but I now average about 15 orders per update.

But on the bright side I honestly love doing markets! It’s so nice to get out and meet my customers in person and talk to and get to know you! And I think that people like to know the person who is making the thing they’re buying, whether it’s the farmer who grew the tomatoes or the person who poured the candle you’re smelling, it’s nice to put a face to the business. And since I work by myself it’s just honestly nice to get out and talk to people in real life! (Shout out to my mom and sister who are normally helping me out at markets).

While we always hope for sunshine and good weather, the markets I do are typically outdoors and weather dependent. Spring is normally rainy and I’ve had my fair share of markets cancelled due to weather, so just a little note that if it’s just a sprinkle your farmers market is still probably happening so make sure to go support your local market, especially in the rain!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.juliemillerpottery.com
• Instagram: @juliemillerpottery
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/juliemillerpottery

Image Credits
Julie Miller Pottery