Working here since June 2018

Primary Roles – Deliveries & Warehouse order fulfillment

Fun Fact – Julie likes Manga and computer games.  She had a much longer quote that MAY have been in a somewhat foreign language and may also have been a complete practical joke.  Either way, i can’t remember it to type it in here.

Julie is one of our few pre-pandemic people here.  Throughout that challenging time, we all had a lot of things thrown at us.  So many changes in short time, and Julie adapted to all of them, all while keeping her wry and dry sense of humor intact.  In addition to driving the BIG TRUCK and moving around literal tons of clay with the manual jack like it was packing peanuts, Julie has also trained most of our current warehouse staff in how to drive the forklift, build and order, follow procedures and in general, do good work.

Working here since October 2021

Primary Roles – UPS/FedEx Shipping & Receiving

Fun Fact – Eric has, at different times of his life, gone by two different names, so half of the world (well, at least the town), knows him as Jack and the other half as Eric.  We mostly call him Eric, except when we are counting employees who’s names start with J.  then we call him Jack.

We really lucked into finding Eric. Sometime mid-pandemic I was at the bank getting my signature notarized or something and talking to my banker about how understaffed we were and that I couldn’t find anyone. Enter Eric. He had retired from his time working as terminal manger at the UPS Lawrence service center. It just doesn’t get any more perfect than that!

Working here since January 2023

Primary Roles – Resident Artist & Customer service

Fun Fact – “I like clowns- the happy ones, not the scary ones… OH but I CAN watch the movie IT and laugh now, because i’ve already had all my nightmares about it” 

Rachel is a recent graduate of Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls, TX.  She moved away from her entire family and group of friends to settle here in Lawrence KS and be our first artist in residence.  In addition to her residency hours, she works here as a full fledged employee, and although you will usually find her up front helping customers pick out glazes, she also knows how to build a pallet, mix clay, and her FAVORITE thing, make casting slip.    As a bonus to us, she keeps us all on our toes as the commander of chaos and crazy fun.

Worked here from January 2023-June 2026. Joe is too special to us to remove him from our staff list.  He now lives in South Dakota

Primary Roles – Warehouse order fulfillment, part time student

Fun Fact – Joe wants to know….”Is your bar of soap always clean?  because what if you use it to clean something that’s dirty?  Then is it still clean?  Where does the dirty go?”

Joe is always keeping spirits up around here by posing questions like that or pulling ridiculous pranks.  He has definitely gotten EVERYONE out here at least once with his antics.  So we asked him:  “Do you prefer Trickster or Joker?  His response was Joker…but with an e: the Joe-ker.  Yep, that fits.  Welcome to your new Nick-name Joe!

Primary Roles – Repair Tech & Manufacturing Manager

Fun Fact – Well, it’s not always FUN, but Dave is married to Cindy…?  hahah just kidding.  Cindy is LOTS of fun to be married to….always!

Rocketed to earth as a small child and found under a feldspathic rock, Dave is known to some as Captain Feldspar.  To most people he’s

“The Kiln Guy” or “Kilndoc” or maybe “That guy with the long hair that fixes stuff” or sometimes Dave Bracker (be warned, he rarely answers to that one). Dave has been fixing kilns and other ceramics equipment for more than 25 years now.  And for the last few years, you can add industrial clay mixing equipment to the list.   Dave is the president of our sister company, Kansas Clay, and with that great power comes the great responsibility of keeping everything working. That’s a tall order!

Working here since birth, give or take

Primary Roles – keeping everyone on their toes by jumping out from around corners to see who frightens the most easily, (hint, it’s the one who’s always CLOWNING around)

Fun Fact – For fun, Cindy likes to ride her bike and grow things in her garden, so between that and clay things, she’s pretty much always dirty, sweaty or both.  She almost never looks like this picture.  that was a rare clean moment.  

At around 12 Cindy was putting together promotional packets of catalogs for teachers, washing out slip buckets (ew) and assembling North Star Slabrollers.  During high school, there was summer and saturday work of filling orders and counting inventory, which paid out some nice cash for a high school kid to spend.  While in college and seeking a degree in music (with zero plans to go into the family business), slowly Cindy fell in love with the world of clay.   In the years that followed, Cindy learned nearly all aspects of the business and in 2017 became our President.