 {ENTRANCE}
Our ceramics studio is nestled in a neighborhood just down the hill from
downtown Athens. Housed in an old brick produce warehouse, we are
the only commercial building in what is a very colorful neighborhood.
We have been here for 11 years. We also have a garden out back that everyone
at the studio tends.
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When you first pull up to the studio, the first thing you see are
our conspicuous white doors with our homemade sign on the front.
Once you walk in you sense the buzz of the workers |
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The office is immediately on your
left and is where all of the behind-the-scenes things get done that
keep the studio plugging along. On the wall above the office entrance
are a series of one-of-a-kind plates that Rebecca and a former worker,
Joel, glazed for a holiday sale a few years ago. They are an inspiration. |
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| Moving clockwise, you are face to face with
the clay room, the starting point for everything at the studio. |
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Next,
you see the packing area, small, cluttered, but so important! This
is where we do our final check of the orders and pack them well
before they are sent out for delivery to our customers all over
the country. |
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And lastly, at the
far right, are our pottery stock shelves. Sometimes fuller then others,
it is important to have a place to store our stock as we make things,
even though most of our orders are made to order. |
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{CLAY ROOM} |
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We recently
moved the clay room to this much brighter spot near the entrance
of the studio. We have five full time workers who roll-out, make
shapes, trim, and load kilns for this first step in the process
of creating an R.Wood dish.
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Looking along the
wall, you see the oversize cookie-cutter-like shapes we use to cut
out each piece from the roll out of clay- in the old days, each
piece was traced out by hand. On the shelves are the shapes we use
to support the cut outs when drying. |
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{KILN ROOM} |
| The kiln room is housed
in an old refrigeration room from the time when the building was
used for a produce warehouse. Half of the room has wrap-around shelves
that hold the freshly made clay pieces as they dry enough to be
loaded in the kiln. |
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We have five small kilns in the kiln room that
we fire most every night with bisque and glazed loads. |
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{THE WOOD SHOP}
We
share our studio with David Graves, who designs and builds furniture.
His shop is in the rear of the building so that we hear the buzz of
his saws, and every so often we peek in to see what he is making. He
helps us all of the time, whether it is building the display for our
gift shows or just in general. Plus he makes great custom furniture
and cabinets!
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{GARDEN} |
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| a zinnia out back |
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purple cosmos grows over a row of collards
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| rows of greens |
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| we had mounds of zinnias this year |
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