Human pottery assistant lounging with happy cow on the farm at Darn Pottery

Eco-Friendly
Farm Made
Pottery

Our studio is a red barn with a white roof on a old hillside farm in the Cherokee National Forest. We are surrounded by dense woods full of foxes, bears, deer, runaway farm pigs, coyotes, and bobcats. The trees are making a comeback as we nurture the previously clearcut fields back to forest. Our solar panels make quiet electricity and our well provides mountain filtered water. Our garden makes enough food for everyone, including the raccoons. The dogs and cats are in charge of security, while the hedgehogs drink whiskey and make pots well into the night.

We believe the forest around us is magical. It inspires not only our work, but our lives. The earth needs our help to get back to normal. The forests need to be left alone to regrow.

So we do everything we can to limit our carbon footprint. This includes the obvious things like solar power, recycling, and composting. The inconvenient things like not driving to town unless absolutely necessary. The physical things like growing and putting up our own food and asking the hedgehogs, the cows, and sometimes the horses to mow our grass.

And we actively support science-based legislation that acknowledges climate change and moves forward with proactive solutions.

Solar powered Darn Pottery studio
Darn Pottery hedgehog on a ladder under an apple tree

With pottery, we’ve made some key decisions to minimize our carbon impact. We use a local clay mixer and stock up for an entire year at a time. We’ve formulated our glazes to melt at slightly lower temperatures, saving thousands of kilowatts a year in firing energy. We run a 95% paperless operation (which is just fine with the hedgehogs since they do not enjoy flipping pages).

We recycle and re-use all our shipping materials, reclaiming cardboard, bubblewrap and peanuts by the truckful. We ship twice a week, instead of daily, saving gas and preventing Co2 emissions. Our goal is to offset our carbon footprint completely by 2026 and as new technologies and offset options become available in our area, we utilize them fully.

Our pottery is entirely handmade right here on the farm in Tennessee. It is either handbuilt or thrown on the wheel. We use no ram presses or machines to speed up our production and each pot that comes out of our studio is unique. Some mugs are taller. Some bowls are wider.

We are not a factory. We are a dozen hedgehogs, one mid-sized feminist with opposable thumbs, and a clever pocket nerd who makes magic pixels appear on your screen. We formulate and make our own food safe glazes, we draw original illustrations for each piece, and eventually, we carefully wrap each piece for delivery to your home.

Our website is new in 2020 and a response to the fact that pretty much all craft shows have been cancelled due to the pandemic. We hope to see our friends again next year and to rejoice at the positive changes that are sure to have been made by then. We will hug and drink hot cider and laugh about the great toilet paper shortage of 2020. But until then, the hedgehogs must eat. We all thank you for your support and hope our pottery brings joy to your table.

Donkey, hedgehog, and scottish highland cow hanging out at darn pottery eco-friendly farm

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