I will never forget when Jen first fell in love with ceramics.
It was the summer of 2013. We were living in America and renting a beach shack located in Oceanside, CA. Jen’s journey with ceramics started with a Groupon deal for a discount pottery workshop at a local studio, and it ended with Jen bursting through the front door hyper-exploding about every single aspect of her first time touching clay.
Life took an unexpected and grounding turn after that. Not only would Jen never be home on a school night, but we also needed to purchase more succulents than ever before because there was an endless number of planters collecting on our kitchen table.
As Jen fell deeper in love with the grounding nature of working with clay, our Saturdays turned into setting up and packing down the Yucca Stone Ceramics stall at the Leucadia Farmers Market.
About 12-months after that very first experience with clay, Jen begun teaching that very same Intro to Wheel class that she attended one very short year prior.
Fast forward to 2021 and we have a dream studio in Kingscliff, NSW, and are privileged to celebrate creativity and dedication to craft with a vibrant community of individuals that we believe makeup what we call - Stone Studio.
People often ask us how the studio concept came about. I think very early on Jen began dreaming about what her studio would look like and how she wanted to share her love of clay with others. It really was only a matter of when the right time would be to make it happen.
We moved back to Australia in late 2017 and that is when we set up Jen’s first home studio at our farm in Duranbah, NSW. This allowed Jen to offer one-on-one lessons for friends and family wanting to experience the joy of pottery first hand. During that time, I was under the impression we were saving for a house, turns out I was wrong. In January 2020, when COVID was slowly on the rise, Jen looked at me and said, “So I have been thinking… We should put our savings into a pottery studio”. As any smart husband would do, I said, “it doesn’t appear like I have a choice”.
We have never taken on a project like this before. Starting with a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign to scrape together the resource required to purchase all the equipment, we slowly began piecing together a game plan for the studio. Looking for any way possible to save on cost, the plan was simple, I would handle the fit-out of the studio and Jen would build the website.
After months of constant focus and gruelling long days, Stone Studio opened its doors on August 15th, 2020. To this day, it was the support and encouragement from our friends and family that allowed this opportunity to come to life. Something we will never forget.
As we pass the first 6-month milestone for the Studio, Jen and I are so grateful for all the lessons this project has taught us, thrilled by the constant encouragement and positive feedback we receive and excited to share our love for community and creativity with friends, old and new.
Our goal for the blog is simple. Celebrate creativity and dedication to craft. We look forward to sharing our journey and that of the people who inspire us with you.
We still have much to learn but grateful for the journey.
Thank you for your support.
Brad.
Founder, Stone Studio.
