Free Sample
The Complete Guide to Becoming A Potter, Manufacturing
The real pay, the real path, and the real day-to-day of making pottery for a living — before you spend a dime on training
by Alumigogo Books
Chapter 1: What Does a Potter, Manufacturing Actually Do?
Let's settle the most common misunderstanding first: a potter, manufacturing is not the person who throws one-of-a-kind art vases in a sunlit studio and chats with gallery owners over espresso. That person exists, but they're a studio artist, and they have a very different job. The manufacturing potter is the person who makes the same mug, bowl, or plate hundreds of times over, in a workshop that looks more like a small factory than an artist's loft. If you're considering this career, you need to know what that actually looks like on a Tuesday morning, not just on a Saturday afternoon when you're taking a class.
Let's walk through a concrete version of the job. You work in a production pottery studio, which might be a standalone business that sells to gift shops and online stores, a larger ceramics manufacturer with a dozen or more employees, or an in-house studio attached to a company that makes tableware for restaurants and hotels. The studio floor has the same basic equipment regardless of size: pottery wheels, a slab roller, a pug mill for recycling clay, shelves stacked with ware at every stage of dryness, and at least one kiln — usually an electric kiln, though some production studios use gas-fired kilns for particular effects.
Your day is organized around the stages of making a finished piece. Clay comes in either as moist blocks from a supplier or as recycled clay that you've reconditioned