Twenty Years And Failed And Then Back Up Again | Joshua Simmons

Joshua Simmons | Episode 1260

Joshua Simmons is the founder and potter behind The Goods Pottery, a small-batch ceramics studio dedicated to crafting intentional, functional pieces that bring simple beauty to everyday life. Rooted in the belief that thoughtfully made objects can enrich our daily rituals, The Goods Pottery creates handcrafted ceramics meant to be used, loved, and passed down.

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I don’t know if anybody out there doesn’t like a good comeback story. But it is quite fascinating that Joshua, it took you 20 years before you figured out that you didn’t have what it took. And that would be very discouraging to me. Once you had kind of asked that question, Do I have the goods? and then you found the answer, which was No. How did that make you feel?

So much of my identity is wrapped up in being a potter. When I had the opportunity to start over after failing, it helped me Choose, what I was gonna be and who I was gonna be as a potter and that Is the major takeaway for me is that I had experience, but now I got to choose a new path Why didn’t you choose a different path?

Why didn’t you just find a new job or take up a new hobby?

Because I identified as I still do. I am potter. I am man with pottery wheel. And I really wanted to make pottery that people would want to buy. And I was committed to that process. And I couldn’t be more grateful for the opportunity to have done this work.

At 20 years, I would have thought, especially with you saying it’s your whole identity, I don’t have anything to learn. But you were willing to turn around and learn. How important is having a humble heart and being willing to learn again?

It’s critical, isn’t it? But I wish I had a really good answer for that question because when you unload the kiln and you see things that aren’t good, they’re terrible. They have to go in the garbage. I guess it just kind of is a measurement of like, is failure to you a reason to stop or is failure a stepping stone to success? You know, are you going to quit or is this just part of your journey?

What were the signs for you? What were the signs for you that things were turning the corner?

It was as soon as I started taking advancing glazes. When I had the ability to look at the chemistry in a glaze recipe and make decisions and become conscious of the ingredients that I was adding and what they were doing, then I began to have control over my process. And once I started taking notes and photographs and then making those adjustments and doing tests, I got control over my glazes. And it wasn’t until then where those two parts came together, like the glaze and the form, where I made them work together. That’s when I think it was the turning point for me.

Now, apart from your glaze and forms, is there one specific thing that you do now that you weren’t doing when you first quit being a teacher that you say, this is definitely helping me be successful?

As a teacher, I had glaze recipes that were handed down to me, that were handed down by someone else. And now these recipes are my own. I handcraft each of these glazes to fit the clay body that they’re on. Right now I’m switching over to speckled buff. And so I’m re-engineering the same recipes to fit speckled buff so they don’t craze, so they look the way I want them to look. And that control is the main difference. Sure, my forms are a lot better now, but before it was a glossy glaze dipped and you just roll the dice and hope that it turns out nice. Now when I fire my kiln, within a measure of, what would you call that, a variance, a certain tolerance. But I expect and then I get to see what I expected and it blows my mind to have that kind of consistency.

What is one thing that you look forward to working on next that you need to develop?

Dinner plates. Dinner plates are simple and so complex. And I love them. I have just recently finished a set of them for my sister-in-law, Susan, who I love. And I really want to make plates for the goods pottery because I think there is something wonderful about a stack of plates that all go together and being handcrafted, but then also very uniform. I love the matte lip with the glossy middle. They just have like the complete package. You know, they’re, they’re fun to use and they’re pretty and they make your Thanksgiving dinner look real, real snazzy.