Collaboration - Working Together - Online Benefit for North Carolina Pottery Center

 

Bruce Gholson and Mark Hewitt pose behind a grouping of porcelain vases thrown by Mark for the upcoming North Carolina Pottery Center Online Auction. The "Working Together" Online Gala and Benefit Auction takes place on October 24, Saturday evening, 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm. 

During the late months of summer Mark Hewitt dropped by a selection of tall porcelain vases for us to glaze with one of our crystalline glazes. 

One or two of these vases will be on the auction block come October 24, 2020......

Check out the North Carolina Pottery Center Gala for details and the complete list of potters participating.

Book and Bowl Giveaway on Cousins in Clay Instagram on May 29- June 1, 2020

Book and Bowl Giveaway on Cousins in Clay instagram on May 29- June 1, 2020

It is "Cousins in Clay" giveaway time! Join in and enter to win this lovely dotted bowl made by Samantha and the cookbook, "Kiln to Kitchen" by Jean Anderson.

Check out our  "Cousins in Clay" Instagram to enter into and hopefully win this Weekend Giveaway between May 29 - June 1, donated by Bulldog Pottery. You will need an Instagram account to be able to enter.

This Giveaway is in honor of this weekend's Seagrove "Cousins in Clay" pottery event that would have been taking place, this Saturday and Sunday (May 30 - 31, 2020). This intimate pottery event had to be postponed until next year due to the global pandemic.  We will miss seeing all of you!  The potters that would have been showing their awesome pottery work here at Bulldog Pottery : us (Bruce Gholson and Samantha Henneke), Michael Kline, Kyle Carpenter, Courtney Martin, along with our guest clay cousins Minsoo Yuh and Sunkoo Yuh from Athens, Georgia, and Ree Soojong from South Korea.

On Friday morning May 29, we will post and provide instructions on the Cousins in Clay instagram with instructions how to enter the Cousins in Clay Giveaway. It is pretty simple: Follow Cousins in Clay Instagram, like the post, and tag someone in the comments, and if you would like to share the post in your story that would be nice to help us get the word out about Cousins in Clay.

On Monday evening, June 1, we will announce the winner. This contest will be limited to the United States. The "Kiln to Kitchen" includes selected recipes from North Carolina Potters. Jean Anderson's "Kiln to Kitchen" cookbook deliciously brings together two of her lifelong passions—great food and North Carolina pottery.

In the "Kiln to Kitchen" book you will find the recipe for our Cousins Granola, a favorite breakfast that we serve during the Cousins in Clay weekend. Also included in the book is Mary Jane's (Bruce's sister) Greek Potato Salad recipe, developed specially for her husband Chronis, who likes food made without mayonnaise.

Listening to Books while working, A Studio Favorite

      We really enjoy our Scribd membership, which is a Monthly Subscription for Audible Books and Ebooks. They have a large selection of books to listen to and read, all free except for the membership. It doesn't have all of the choices or the most recent releases that a membership to Audible has, but for us there is more than enough to choose from. The subscription is $8.99 a month and if you sign up through the link below you can get two free months to try out the service, and if you do pay for a membership you will be gifting us with a free month of service. How cool is that?

The book we are currently listening to is "Sharks in the Time of Saviors" by Kawai Strong Washburn. We are enjoying it and the readers performing it kept our attention while we were glazing this past week.

Earn 30 days of free membership for every friend who joins Scribd. We'll give them 60 days free!

There are other extras to the membership... like sheet music if you play an instrument and articles from magazines to read-- And I just discovered today that included with a membership in Scribd you get extra perks like a Pandora Plus, TuneIn, Mubi, and other educational memberships. I think I will look into that further now that I know all those extras are available.

Walking to Retrieve the Mail

Poppies in the Garden at Bulldog Pottery, Seagrove, North Carolina

One new routine for us since the pandemic is to walk and retrieve the mail. Luna Bella walks with us. We spritz down the mail with a 70% diluted alcohol solution before bringing it into the house. We have been taking the Covid-19 seriously and will continue to practice social distancing, mask-wearing, and hand-washing.

The spring in Seagrove has been beautiful and the temperature cool. The beginning of the spring was incredibly hot and humid early on, and pushed our growth season here 1-2 weeks early.  The prolonged cool nights through April and May has treated our lettuces very well and provided us daily yummy salads. The raised beds we put in last year have worked well for us this growing season. We love them so much we are installing two more this month.

We are in the process of figuring out our cycle of selling our work online. I am sure it will change and develop as the summer progresses. Currently we are listing our pottery on our BulldogArtPottery Etsy page and will post some of the images on our Bulldog Pottery Instagram and Bulldog Pottery Facebook page as we list them. If there is something that we post that you are interested in and it is not on our shop site please don't hesitate to direct message us and ask if the pieces are available. At the moment our plan is to list pottery under 12 inches in height on our BulldogArtPottery Etsy page, and larger sized items will go on our Bulldog Pottery website.

Where will this new world take us?

At the beginning of the pandemic lockdown I remember reading how this will change the world and the way we live. I saw us just picking back up where we left off. Why not? But as the days pass I see that this is not the case, especially since the virus is now here and the counties all around us. We must design our days and movements to protect ourselves, our community, and society. Isn't that what mask wearing is about? Isn't that why we need to practice social distance and respect for one another? We need to keep each other safe and try hard to not pass this virus around to each other.

  So for the time being we don't feel we can responsibly invite you to visit our pottery shop at this time. We will research and implement to the best of our ability, protocols and infrastructure to make things as safe as possible. It is strange, it feels like our identity has been taken away. Our favorite and main way of selling our pottery work is one on one with you and the pots, and at the moment that is not a safe option for you or us. Presently our connection must be here online. We are having to make some of the most difficult decisions that we have ever had to make for our business.

Take Care! Stay healthy and safe in your day to day travels.

Entrance to Bulldog Pottery / Bruce Gholson and Samantha Henneke, Seagrove, North Carolina

Bruce Gholson retrieving the mail, a daily ritual

The Montgomery County water tower landmark at the end of our Bulldog Pottery gravel driveway

Our shadows, Bulldog Pottery, Seagrove, North Carolina

Bulldog Pottery Pandemic Updates

Hello!
First we want to thank you very much for supporting our pottery and artwork. We celebrate everyday that we are able to make pottery.

As our state, North Carolina, enters into Phase One of reopening, we need to make a decision on whether or not to open our Bulldog Pottery shop.

We have decided that our shop will remain closed for now.

We are steadily listing our pottery online, and figuring out what our process will be. We have an Etsy shop - BulldogArtPottery that we will update throughout the month with groupings of our clay artwork.

There are different ways to keep up with what we are making in our studio. Sign up to receive these blog posts in your email box or follow us on Bulldog Pottery Instagram. We will also send out an occasional newsletter. You can sign up for this email on our Bulldog Pottery website or the right hand column of this blog.

Please don’t hesitate to send us an email if you are interested in a particular style of work that we do. We will love to hear from you.

This is such a surreal time for all of us. We are constantly adjusting to the understanding of what the new reality holds for us. We will go through a myriad of feelings over the next weeks and months as we enter into unknown territory. Take care of yourselves and stay healthy. Please keep in touch.

Bulldog Pottery Events Cancelled and Postponed

It has been a bumpy ride this past month with lots of decisions that we made for Bulldog Pottery. We closed our shop on Sunday, March 15th. Cancelled our "Daffie Days" Kiln Opening and postponed our Seagrove "Cousins in Clay" event. We are not sure when we will be open again.  As the orders from the governor are made and information develops about the Covid-19 Coronavirus our decisions will be made on a day to day basis.  We have to look our for the health and safety of our customers and ourselves.

We are slowly making arrangements to move into online sales.  We have a selection of mugs and cups for sale on our BulldogArtPottery Etsy page. It takes preparation and planning to put pots online. The packing investment and shipping learning curve as well online commerce technology is a process that we are delving into. 

We will post when we have pots listed on our website commerce pages, on our Bulldog Pottery Facebook pages and Bulldog Pottery Instagram feed.  We have plans to integrate a newsletter into the mix as well in the coming future. 

We want to thank all of you for your support and appreciation of our creative endeavors and pottery making business. We look forward to actually seeing you again when these trying times are past us.

Stay Safe and Stay Healthy!

We created a digital magazine for Cousins in Clay - May 30-31, 2020

Cousins in Clay - Digital Magazine - Bulldog Pottery - May 30-31, 2020

Digital Magazine for Cousins in Clay at Bulldog Pottery, Seagrove, NC

Hi! We are super thrilled to be hosting Cousins in Clay this year on May 30-31, 2020. 

We created a digital magazine to accompany the Cousins in Clay website. It provides a bit more information about our event, accommodations, and some of the other pottery adventures that are available to visitors near by when you visit us for the weekend.

We are in the process of figuring our the different ways you can peruse the information. 

There is a link from our Bulldog Pottery website where you can view it on your computer.  It is in a pdf format so you can also open it up in your ibooks on your phone or ipad (not sure what that would be on your andorid). 

You can also look at it in magazine format on ISSUU.

Enjoy!

Cousins in Clay is an intimate pottery show and sale that takes place twice a year in North Carolina. At Bulldog Pottery the weekend after Memorial Day in Seagrove and at Michael Kline Pottery near Bakersville on Labor Day Weekend.