Merry Christmas, everyone!

Dee and I wish you all a Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and happy holidays of all kinds. Through this blog and through the Hatchville Pottery Facebook page, we have friends on almost every continent. (Any potters active in Antarctica?) That kind of connection is a real blessing. We know the joy and pain of many of those friends, and we know the great pots many of them are producing. I love that.
Many people around me and friends my age are retired or thinking about retirement, and I am often asked, "So, is this pottery a retirement thing that you do?" To which I do not usually have a civil answer.
For the past decade or more, pottery has been the next thing I do, not the retirement thing I do.
I think I keep getting better, making better pots, more interesting pots, more complex pots. Why would I not want to keep doing that? And replace it with what?
This year, I started serving on the board of directors of The Studio Potter, a good and serious-minded hard-copy pottery magazine struggling to find subscribers in a digital world. I'm very new and at times very much trying to catch up with the others on the board. But I've made new friends and connections I'd never have made without the magazine. And maybe I can help.
And this year I talked my a-little-bit-reluctant friend Kim Medeiros of The Barn Pottery in Pocasset into a weekend woodfiring at the Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill. She got great pots from the train kiln there by the ocean, pots that I personally thought were the best that came from that firing. And she fell in love with wood. Friend Dan Finnegan of Fredericksburg, Va., is coming here in a couple of weeks to talk about guiding the two of us through the building of our own wood kiln in the spring.
Our holiday kiln-opening and open studio was busier than ever; Kim, Lois Hirshberg and I sold more pots than ever before. Kim and I sold many pots right out of the warm kiln. Much jewelry, blown glass, coffee and paper goods went out the door, as well.
With luck, this winter we'll add studio and gallery space to the front of my current studio here in Hatchville. Our friend Mike Race, known by some of you, will do the building. More room for good pots.
Things keep changing and growing around here. Hoping it stays that way for many years.
Happy Holidays, everyone.

The photos: Our gallery, in a snowstorm a year or two ago, the photo used in a recent e-mail greeting from The Studio Potter magazine; one of my bowls from the Truro wood kiln; and one of Kim's pots from the Truro kiln, a pot that now lives comfortably here on a kitchen shelf with Ray Finch, Dan Finnegan, Doug Fitch and Hannah McAndrew.

Wellfleet and Durango, and Studio Potter

Who said things shut down on Cape Cod after Labor Day? I've had multiple shows to deal with, prepare for, finish up with ... in just the past couple of weeks.
This weekend it's the Wellfleet OysterFest down at the far end of the Cape Saturday and Sunday, then at the same time the opening of "Three Cups" at the Durango Art Center in Colorado. (And a Saturday annual board of directors meeting of Studio Potter Magazine in Boston ... learning how to be in two places at once.)
"Three Cups" opens Friday night. I won't be there, though my four teabowls will be. And I will be in the company of some people whose work I have admired for years - Warren McKenzie, the late Tatsuzo Shimaoka, Doug Casebeer, Alleghany Meadows, Joe Bennion, Peg Malloy, Sandy Simon - and newly-made friends such as Doug Fitch, Hannah McAndrew and Ron Philbeck. And many, many more. See the photos attached here; just a few of the pots in the show. Wish I could get there. (Adam Field contributed the show photo below.)
The OysterFest in Wellfleet has become for some of us the event that marks the true end of the summer season. It's the last craft fair before the holiday shows begin in November, and it's more or less the last chance for sunny and unseasonably warm weather. Often, the air is cold and a heavy breeze blows in off the Atlantic on one side or Cape Cod Bay on the other. Tents can fly at this show.
But thousands of people come out to it - for the oysters, fried clams and other seafood, for the beer and wine and the oyster-shucking contests and the rock bands on stage. Oh, and a few come to look at the crafts and the art. It can be a big show or - and this happened two years ago - hurricane force winds can blow in and send everyone packing. You never know.
I've got my first Studio Potter board meeting in Boston Saturday morning, so my friend Dafney Shufelt will fill in for me and we'll see if an attractive young woman sells more pots than a scowling 65-year-old male. I'll drive down well before dawn and get the tent up and the pots arranged, then hand it off to Dafney and head for Boston. I'll be back in the tent Sunday.
Speaking of Studio Potter, the board is debating the future of the magazine - in part trying to figure out if we remain a hard-copy magazine or become in addition/instead some sort of online digital presence. It's a very 2012 kind of situation.
Ideas? I'm happy to contribute anything you say to the conversation.

A sweet moment in Harwich

I just finished two looooonnggg days of watching herds of humans walk past my tent at the Harwich Cranberry Festival. More whining about that tomorrow, but I wanted to do one post with just this photo. Mid-day Sunday, the Festival parade went rolling past Brooks Park, with veterans and Scouts and costumes and fire trucks and - I'm pretty sure - a cannon of some sort. Which kept going off.
Afterward, the local Cub Scout wagon parked on the lot behind me and parents and kids took advantage of the hot dog concession there.

I wanted to get a photo of one of the Cubs, since my friend Hannah McAndrew is a dedicated Cub den mother in Scotland and I wanted her to see the US version. So when the heart-covered little girl and the Cub sat together on the fence rail, I shot them from the back. Which was fairly cute. It wasn't until I downloaded the photo last night that I saw the little girl's fingers splayed out gently across the Cub's little hand. Very sweet.

First Etsy pot shipped to Texas

A couple of weeks after setting up my Etsy online shop (with the IM advice of North Carolina potter and friend Ron Philbeck), the first pot has gone out the door via UPS. An artist in Houston will soon have the Shino platter with a pour of copper red across it. I'm hoping that is the first of many pots sold through Etsy. It's a more complex way of selling than I had anticipated, but so is almost any other way, and I'm slowly getting into the routine. Glad to see that first pot sold.
I spent an hour yesterday afternoon in the ceramics room at Falmouth High School, doing a throwing demonstration for the clay club there and for a number of other art students who stayed long enough to watch me throw mugs and bowls and talk about some pretty basic throwing principles. On the shelf behind me were several Doug Fitch and Hannah McAndrew pots, made a year ago during their workshop presentation in the same classroom. Tough work to live up to.
I volunteered a few weeks ago when teacher Corine Adams came out to the studio and she promptly got me in there and throwing. The audience was a quiet and attentive bunch and it appeared none of them fell asleep during the presentation, or had a long cellphone conversation.

It's possible that the 20 students and the hour or so of attention was because Corine had promoted my visit as an appearance by "world-famous local potter Hollis Engley." World-famous? Ummmm ...
I will also add a selection of teabowls from the POTS gallery in Seattle, set up during NCECA. Most of these pieces are, I think, by Steve Sauer of Port Orchard, Washington. Nice stuff.