The 3,890-square-foot building near the corner of Market Street and 30th Avenue Northwest in Ballard sat empty for more than five years — until June, when Rebecca Sorensen moved in.
In three months, she created a fully stocked pottery studio, complete with three kilns and 22 wheels. Murals of storks, orcas and flowers now stretch around the outside of Ballard Clay as her vision of a bustling community center begins to come alive.
It’s a “dream come true for sure, of my high-school self that thought a career in pottery was not something possible,” Sorensen said.
Ballard Clay opened in September, the product of time, hard work and thousands of dollars in equipment, furniture, rental fees and more. But Sorensen is far from the only Seattleite who’s recently taken such a leap. Pottery studios that started or expanded since 2020 now dot Seattle — Reclaim Clay Collective in the Chinatown International District, The Clay Corner in Fremont, Seattle Artist League in Georgetown — and their owners said they’ve filled most of their classes. Local potters linked this trend to the pandemic, which they said pushed people to connect with the Earth and each other.
Nationwide, the National Endowment for the Arts found the percentage of people who engage in ceramics, pottery or jewelry-making has remained fairly steady over the past decade, moving from 4.54% in 2012 to 4.39% in 2022. (The NEA grouped pottery, ceramics and jewelry-making together when collecting data.)
However, the NEA also found that Washingtonians were more likely to make pottery and other visual arts; in a survey taken in 2019 and 2020, it found that 17.5% of the state’s residents did so, about 7 percentage points higher than Americans as a whole. The Washington Clay Arts Association, a statewide pottery group that offers networking events, exhibitions and scholarships, said its membership increased from about 300 people at the end of 2018 to over 600 now.
So while many arts organizations have struggled since the pandemic, Seattle’s pottery studios seem to be thriving in the city’s rapidly expanding pottery scene.
Why the demand?
With the popularity of the British television show “The Great Pottery Throw Down” and Instagram Reels that show potters hypnotically shaping clay, several local potters said they’ve seen interest in ceramics spike in recent years.
But that demand isn’t entirely new. In 2015, when Sorensen started looking for a pottery community, she said registering for a class was “harder than getting Taylor Swift tickets.” Myra Kaha — the director of continuing education for North Seattle College, which offers popular ceramics classes — agreed.
“Before Pottery Northwest had online sign-ups, people would camp out the night before in front of Pottery Northwest in a line as if they were buying concert tickets,” Kaha said. “Seattle has always had a demand for ceramics.”
What Seattle hasn’t always had, however, is studios. Pottery Northwest was founded in 1966. Seward Park Clay Studio opened in 1969. While some potters may have offered lessons in much smaller studios, those two were some of the only large studios offering classes in Seattle for decades.
But within the past 10 years, more spaces appeared, like Rain City Clay in West Seattle and Saltstone Ceramics in Wallingford. That trend accelerated after 2020, with Denny Porter, the general manager at Seattle Pottery Supply, saying he saw significant upticks in kiln purchases.
“The pandemic burned us all out so much on technology,” said Luanne Wilson, who co-founded Reclaim Clay Collective with Siera Matsuo in the Chinatown International District in May. “Working with our hands, that helps us feel like a different connection to humanness.”
On any given afternoon at Reclaim Clay, which Wilson and Matsuo started in a former fortune cookie factory, studio members might lounge around, joking while carving stripes into mugs or painting checkerboards on vases. To Wilson and Matsuo, that’s why pottery is so popular: It helps people make connections.
And those connections can create a snowball effect. For instance, Seattle resident Kenneth Wohlf joined the Seattle Artist League last year after his son and daughter both started learning ceramics.
“I was like, ‘Wow, everybody around me seems to be doing this,’” Wohlf said. “And I kind of [was] feeling the need to get my hands on some of it too.”
He became a student in one of SAL’s first classes in Georgetown. The studio used to be based in North Seattle, but went fully online during the pandemic and then reopened in its new location in June 2022. Since then, it’s already expanded, with the founders adding more classes and developing a new space for more advanced students.
“We’ve been welcoming a lot of new ceramic students,” said director S. Ruth Vergin, who typically goes by Ruthie V. “Our new studio really took off.”
Studio business
Pottery isn’t exactly cheap.
Kilns can easily cost thousands — Seattle Pottery Supply’s online stock starts around $2,000. Pottery wheels cost several hundred dollars apiece. Supplies like the materials in glazes have seen an “exponential price increase,” according to Porter.
Many studios rely on grants or outside funding for support, sometimes choosing a nonprofit model or seeking fiscal sponsorship, in which a nonprofit supports the studio in receiving grants and donations.
That’s how SAL operates: It’s fiscally sponsored by Shunpike, a Washington arts nonprofit. It’s benefited from other nonprofit support, too. After SAL’s former North Seattle space closed, Vergin struggled to find a new location.
That’s where Watershed Community Development, a nonprofit that supports Georgetown arts, stepped in. The organization offered to help SAL build a space if it moved to Georgetown — so SAL did.
“The affordability issue is pretty major,” Vergin said. “We couldn’t have done this without a nonprofit collective or land trust.”
Plenty of studios do operate as small businesses rather than nonprofits. But it’s not easy: To open Ballard Clay, Sorensen had to take out three separate loans. Equipment alone cost around $60,000, she said. Sorensen had previously been offering small ceramics classes from her home, but she paused for about four months to set up the larger studio.
Matsuo and Wilson likewise took on debt. Without much capital or know-how about starting a business, they relied on programs like Business Impact NW to help navigate the process and secure funding. They said they spent about $200,000 overall to start Reclaim Clay.
The expenses limit how affordable they’re able to make their classes. The studio uses a sliding-scale system, so a five-week intro to wheel throwing at Reclaim Clay currently costs between $285 and $325, depending on what the customer can pay. To increase accessibility further, Matsuo and Wilson said they put 10% of their profit margin toward scholarships for students who may not be able to afford classes.
They said they’d like to do more — once they’ve paid off their debt.
Other studios, like The Clay Corner and the large nonprofit Pottery Northwest, also offer scholarships. But just keeping a small business going and meeting a bottom line can be a challenge for studio owners, especially new ones.
At least so far, many newer studios said they’ve been able to fill up spaces. People signed up for every spot in Sorensen’s multiweek classes within 48 hours of registration opening to people on her email list. Sean Kelly, the owner and operator of The Clay Corner in Fremont, said his waitlist grew to over 100 people by last year — which is why he felt confident he could open his second space down the block this September.
Kelly said he isn’t sure if today’s demand will persist for studios all over the city. Deborah Schwartzkopf, owner and founder of Rain City Clay and Rat City Studios, said her pessimistic side is always wondering: Is this interest sustainable?
But with waitlists for pottery classes remaining around the city, Pottery Northwest for one doesn’t see all the new studios as competition.
Said Ed King, its executive director: “A rising tide lifts all boats.”
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