Todd Pletcher Open House
On Saturday (May 3rd) my grandparents were visiting and they wanted to go with me to Todd’s sale. We made it to his place right near the end so no one else was there. Which was nice for me because then I could try to convince Todd to tell me all his pottery secrets.
We talked about his pots. He said that his woodfired pieces don’t sell as well as his mid range stuff. That was a little surprising to me but mostly because I know what is involved in each process. He said he talked to some collectors of wood fired pots a little while ago so he hopes to grow the demand for his wood fired pots. He said having his own wood kiln would probably help but there are plenty of kilns already in the area.
I learned that Todd is a yarn bowl guru. He said the yarn bowls are his best seller. And if you knit or crochet you can probably see why. They are large and well designed. He said that somebody asked him to make one a while ago and it just took off from there through word of mouth. He told me how certain glazes sell better than others and how a certain yarn bowl will get a big boost from being featured on Etsy.
He gave us a tour of his shop which was really cool. He explained how the pugmill works and told us the story of how he and Anna and another girl had lifted it up on the stand without crumpling under the weight. He showed me his giant buckets of glaze. He uses Amaco glazes and buys the dry powder and then mixes them in big plastic trash cans on wheels. That’s the way to do it! That would be way easier to glaze the bigger pieces than using the 5 gallon buckets that I use. He also talked about handles. He said he still likes the look of pulled handles but told me about how other potters extrude handles, sometimes 10 strips at a time!
I had time to inspect almost all of his pots. He’s putting some decals on mugs which are pretty interesting. Not so much the Chicago teams (Go Detroit!) but I love the Lord of the Rings maps. In fact I almost bought one but then I found this fantastic wood fired cup, in the sale section no less!
Wood Fired cup by Todd Pletcher
We talked about some other things, my grandparents loved talking to Todd and Anna and I learned a lot. He told me a bunch of other highly classified secrets but I promised not to tell…
The next page should have some photos from the first Throwing Challenge.