She is a designer-architect and he is a handy man …
Before they started their pottery journey Alex had been making things around the house from all kinds of materials. There is time for a full-time job and the rest of the day goes to making Wu’s wishes happened. Meanwhile Wu is working as a full-time architect, who has a strong vision on how a comfortable and welcoming house should look like, drawing a plan to rebuild their house and custom-make furniture and other elements of decor.
Where did the pottery come in place?
On the 4th of July weekend, they were looking for a thing to do in one of the experience-marketplace apps and came across a 3 hour pottery class in Ojai, California. Combining a daily trip to Ojai with a learning experience sounded like a good way to spend the holiday. So off they went. The result were 4 pottery pieces that did not carry any particular significance but the desire to do better was brought back home and challenge was accepted. They looked up local pottery studios in Los Angeles, California and signed up for the upcoming classes in a pottery studio of City of Pasadena.
Few months have passed, a love to clay was born and the obsession that made them going to the studio rather daily turned into a constant routine of planning the work, executing (or trying to) the plan and then looking at the results and marking what went right… All their friends started to notice that they were receiving pottery as a gift for almost all occasions and they didn’t mind (at least Wu and Alex believed so and never asked about it, so the believe stayed strong.) Are you still reading? I’m impressed – thank you! Concluding ..
Because the studio time and the studio fee were constant, but the world travels were frequent, later it became harder to maintain weeks of travels outside of the country and the pottery classes and processing schedules to comply with.. the decision of building a home-studio was made. Building things, as it was said earlier, has been always a joy, so building their-own studio was a special kind of joy. That proclaimed a new chapter in Wu and Alex’s pottery journey that led to learning glazing chemistry and exploring all kinds of clay to work with…
Wu
Owner, Main Potter, Designer
A naturally talented potter Wu, she loves cats, travels and more cats. Best food for her is noodles hence she is a master of bowls and other tableware.
Alex
Owner, Potter, Photographer
Sometimes feels like he wedges clay more than makes pottery. In love with tea-drinking and mostly makes non-traditional tea pots and tea ware
“The Useless Ceramics store is an extension of our reach to you …”
– Wu & Alex.
Cheers!