Wizard of Clay
Jamie Kozlowski
You’re a second-generation ‘wizard.’ Tell us about the history of Wizard of Clay.
My father built this place in 1979 and with my mother’s help, started the business. I joined him in 1994 in production and I’ve been here for 30 years. It’s a family business, we’ve been in business for 45 years. My wife is now the business manager and I am the only potter here. I’m here 7 days a week, making it work. As far as the history goes, we’ve had buildings that have been many different things – from a church to a lamp store and now that building is currently a microbrewery. There’s always something going on. I don’t think I’m ever going to leave.
You must’ve grown up making pottery. Has it always been something you enjoyed?
Pottery isn’t really my passion. My passion is keeping this place open. I’m here 6 and a half days a week, making sure this place is running. I’ve done it by myself, I’ve done some very difficult things by myself. And it’s just a matter of figuring things out. So I wouldn’t say pottery is my passion – I enjoy being good at it, but my passion has always been about keeping this place open. I watched it being built from a field and I was only 11 at the time. I’m 56 now. So it’s not about pottery. If I didn’t have this place I’d be doing something other than pottery. I had a unique opportunity to explore when I was at a time in my life when I was at a crossroads and figured I’d better at least try this to make sure I didn’t miss out on an opportunity. So I started throwing pottery. I told my dad I’d give it a shot. He taught me the basic skills and here we are today.
Do you see it as continuing a legacy for your dad?
Sure. He certainly does and I do too. We are very very successful now. We don’t even need to advertise. Over time this has become a destination point and we really don’t need to advertise. We have some signs on the road but now everyone has a phone in their pocket and it’s easy to Google wherever the heck you want to go.
My father, before he retired, wrote on the wall: “If you’re afraid to make mistakes, you’ll never make anything” and “No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care.”
Explain the pottery-making process from clay on the wheel to on the showroom floor.
First, we have to get it in from the driveway into the building. Then we open the box and the bags inside. We cut off a piece of clay and wet it and center it on the wheel. You throw the piece and it dries out overnight. Overnight they dry out enough to where they’re firm and they can be flipped over. The bottom is trimmed and smoothed and stamped. For Bristoleaf pieces, they’ll be printed with leaves. The leaves are sprayed over with a wet-colored clay to create a background. They dry again overnight. The next day the leaves are blown off with compressed air or pulled off with a pin tool. If they don’t all come off they can burn off in the kiln. Then they’re dried completely and loaded into the kiln and warmed up very very slowly to about 180 degrees and held there for about six hours. That lets all the chemically combined moisture within the clay escape and then that kiln is fired at about 1,800 degrees. That’s called bisque firing. Then they’re unloaded the next day. The piece is glazed and then loaded in a kiln and fired again to about 2,185 degrees. The kilns are set to turn themselves off. They’re computer-controlled. The kiln is turned off and cooled. And when it’s cool enough to unload, we unload it and then pieces are carried out to the store, priced and we open the front door and hope for the best. The fastest we can get through the process is six days.
Do you have favorite techniques?
I’ve been doing this for 30 years and I’m shooting bullseyes. Every single throw. It’s so easy for me now. Crystalline glazing is a challenge for me. Those are crystals that bloom in the glass of the glaze. It’s a zinc and silica crystal that forms when the kiln is slowly cooled. It’s like putting boiling water in your freezer, eventually, you’ll make ice. I saw it at an art show, was fascinated by it and started pursuing it on my own and within twelve years I mastered it. It’s a high price item. It’s very time-consuming, a lot of labor. I’m the only one here that can do it. There are only a couple steps of the process that I can delegate to a helper. I do that in the winter when I have more time. During the summer when the leaves are out, we’re doing Bristoleaf things; decorations with the leaves.
How many pieces of pottery do you spin on an average day?
It depends. I throw pieces Sunday through Thursday. I don’t throw on Friday because there is no one here to work on the pieces on Saturday. I don’t throw on Saturday because there is no one here on Sunday. Sunday I work a full day because I have a full staff coming in on Monday.
In 2019 I knew I was making a lot of stuff so I started counting. It ended up being 17 thousand pieces that year. In 2021 I set a goal to make 20 thousand pieces and I made it. That is an average of 55 pieces per day, seven days a week. In the end that year I made twenty-thousand one hundred fifty pieces. I put 30 thousand pounds of clay through my hands alone. I would say on any given day I am easily making 60 pieces.
You use tens of thousands of pounds of clay each year. Where do you source your clay from?
We’re using easily 40 thousand pounds of clay per year. We buy our clay from a manufacturer; the parent company is Laguna Clay. They are located in the City of Industry in California. We buy it from a distributor in Syracuse called Clayscapes. I’ll buy up to 6 thousand pounds at a time. It comes in boxes. There are two 25-pound blocks in a bag in a box.
There are hundreds of different types of clay out there. Clay is kind of like bread dough. Think about how many different types of breads there are – pizza dough to bagels to sourdough, it’s endless. They all have flour in them and they all have yeast in them. It’s the same thing with clay. There are different temperatures of clay. Different consistencies of clay. Clays with additives to make little black speckles. There’s porcelain which is white and translucent.
What is special about being located in the Finger Lakes? Where are most of your visitors from?
I think it’s a gem of a spot. We’re in an amazing little bubble here. I think it’s only going to become more popular of a region. Our winters are getting more moderate. Our summers – it’s not Tempe, Arizona – it’s not 120 degrees in the shade. I think we might see a population explosion within the next few years. There’s a lot to do here with the lakes.
What advice do you have for someone interested in learning the art of pottery?
Try really, really, really hard. It’s done through repetition. People will watch me and I’ll knock out a coffee mug in 60 seconds. And it looks just like the 20 I made before it. That’s 30 years of experience in one minute. So how long does it take to make a mug like that? One minute and 30 years.
As for learning how – lessons would help. There’s a lot of online information. I think if you’re passionate about something and passionate about learning it, you can teach yourself. Once you have a set of basic skills, it’s really a matter of taking a lot of time and sitting down and doing it over and over and over again. Failing and learning from it and succeeding and learning from it. People will say “I wish I could do ‘blank.’” You could. You can wish all you want. You can either use your wishbone or your backbone. It’s a matter of taking the time to repeat the process, to understand the process, the get fully immersed in the process and then you’ll start getting somewhere. Spend five years on a potter’s wheel and you’re going to start figuring some things out if you’re doing it at least every other day.
I think anybody with a few fingers on each hand and the willingness to get better and try and do and try and do and try and do, they’ll get it. The only thing that would hold somebody back from making pottery would be a strength issue or a health issue, or impatience. Patience is 90% of it. My patience has increased ten times since I’ve been making pottery. You can’t make pottery unless you’re patient. That’s what it takes; it takes strength, it takes diligence, it takes patience. Combine those three things together and put some clay in your hands and you’re off and running.
August, 2024
