Hickory Clay is a pottery studio designed around the way clay actually moves — from the wedging table, to the wheel, to the damp room, to the kiln, to glazing, to the shelf where you finally take it home. Every inch of the layout serves that path.

Wheel throwers have ample space to focus and breathe. Handbuilders have a dedicated area with bright overhead light. And glazing feels like a laboratory tucked inside a treehouse.

We built this space ourselves because we couldn't find one we wanted to spend every day in.

DESIGNED & BUILT BY THE OWNERS

Hickory Clay was designed by Ashley Hinton, a working architect, and built alongside her co-owner Daniel Karvasales, a potter and ceramicist. We took a 1920s warehouse on 16th Street, hauled out 10,000 pounds of debris, installed all new plumbing and electrical, refinished the floors, and built the studio we wanted to throw in.

That meant a lot of choices most studios don't make:

• Custom worktables with cutting-board tops that are gentle on your hands and impervious to water and clay

• Maple plywood cubbies built to fit clay tools, towels, and a reasonable amount of mess

• A 200 sq ft damp room sized to let members work on pieces of any scale

• Operable windows on every wall for fresh air to keep the dust down

• A clerestory above the entire space that bathes the studio in natural light from sunrise to sunset

• Hidden electrical wiring means you’ll never trip on an extension cord

• A sink in every space to make for quick and efficient cleanup. We couldn’t imagine a glaze area without a giant sink

The space is a labor of love. We're proud of it, and we want you to enjoy using it.

MATERIAL PALETTE

The palette is whitewashed and airy: hardwood floors bleached pale, concrete accents, original redwood beams exposed overhead. Worktables are plywood Parsons-style with sealed tops that shrug off water and clay. We chose honest materials — wood, concrete, plaster, plywood — because they hold up to daily use and look better the more they're worked.

NATURAL LIGHT

A clerestory runs the length of the studio, pouring daylight into the double-height wheel area and washing the upstairs glazing loft in afternoon sun. Operable windows on every wall keep air moving and dust down. On a clear day, the overhead lights stay off until the sun drops behind the building across the street

DESIGN & CONSTRUCTION

• 22 pottery wheels in the double-height main area

• Dedicated handbuilding zone with a slab roller, 30+ plaster hump molds, and 25+ colored slips

• 8-foot plaster wedging table

• 200 sq ft damp room, environmentally controlled for in-progress work

• Upstairs glazing loft with our full collection of glazes and underglazes

• Two kilns, fired four times per week

• 2,800 sq ft total (only include if accurate — replace with your actual square footage)

• Located at 2710 16th Street in the Mission District, near 16th & Harrison

FLOW & CIRCULATION:

The studio is organized around the path a piece takes from raw clay to finished work. Clay storage sits near the wedging table; the wedging table sits near the wheels; the damp room is tucked into a cool and quiet corner.

Glazing is upstairs, deliberately separated from the dust of throwing. Nothing in the layout is arbitrary — every adjacency was chosen to remove a step, save a trip, or keep wet work from crossing dry. You move through the studio the way the work moves through it.