Hannah Groff | Episode 1165
Hannah Groff is a Brooklyn based illustrator and ceramicist, originally from The Gold Coast, Australia. After years working in Design, VFX, and Architecture Hannah now makes ceramics full time as the mind and hands behind G’Day Thrillseekers. All of Hannah’s pieces are handmade and hand painted without stencils or transfers.
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Your Instagram name is GdayThrillseekers. Where does that name come from?
That name comes from my very good friend, Ben who was trying to think of a gender-neutral way to welcome people to his lecture series he was doing at university. And another friend of ours chimed in with saying, “G’day, Thrillseekers!” And I thought, Man! That sounds really good. I’m going to take it! I don’t know if he ended up using it for his lecture series, but I have been using it since.
I noticed that on your website you have shop policies. My first question about that is, should every potter selling online have a set of policies along side with the actual products to be sold?
I don’t know if they should, but I think it is a really good idea.
Then my second question based on that is… In your shop policies why was it important to let people know about imperfections and differences?
I wanted to avoid any problems that would crop up. I have never had someone come to me and say, This sardine in a little more blue than this sardine. I have been lucky in that regard, but I personally strive to have measurements and colors exactly repetitive from piece to piece, but at the end of the day they are handmade. Sometimes with how people consume handmade goods through the screen and not necessarily holding them or having an understanding of the process to make this handmade good, that when they hear handmade, maybe they are thinking of product from a studio that does say they are handmade, but they are handmade on a die press and with a spray gun to glaze. So yes, they are handmade, but very different scale and equipment from this person to myself. I also want people to embrace the slight differences in a handmade piece, otherwise… what’s the point.
When you are making you said that tend to make in series. Does that help to keep things moving quickly?
Yes, exactly. I work in a very limited space; I share a desk within a community studio. So even thinking with how best to store my pieces, if everything is a consistent size, I can fit more pieces at a time on my shelf cause I can really cram them on there. But you also get into the flow state, you get into the grove and you know that I have to make a piece this by this, I’m going to put an audio book on, and crank them out ’til I have a line of 50 pieces that are the exact same size.
You mentioned that you are part of a community studio. Do you ever feel in a community studio that you don’t have any privacy?
Yes and no. I is a mixed studio of students and members. My desk partner and I ended up moving our desk to have a little bit more privacy. People are just curious and when they see you working on something, they come and want to ask you about it or even just pay you a compliment. Which is very nice, but I am someone who really likes to get into a flow… I have my phone on Do Not Disturb, I have a lot of work to do, I just want to get it done… interruptions throughout the day can really add up to a lot of time. So that is one aspect of it. The flip side of it is I am also a very nosy person in the community studio. If I see someone doing something that is amazing or looks really cool or something that I have never seen before, I’m up in their business leaving them notes, asking what glaze is this? even though I never step out of my glaze comfort zone. I still like knowing what everyone is doing.
Back to your website, I see that you have a way to capture people’s email. How often are people going through that process and giving you their email address and how do you care for that email list?
I have to confess that that is through MailChimp and I have sent one newsletter. I have sent to the kind people who have subscribed to my email list one newsletter. I figured out how to put that on my website and that is it.
Do you know how many people are on that list?
Enough that MailChimp has forced me to bump up the next subscription tier, but I am not entirely sure. I have to take the “L” on that one. That is a tool that I need to use more, but it’s just one of those business admin things that gets kicked down to the bottom of the list every month.
You are living in New York and you are living off your ceramics. How much time do you have for free time and how do you spend it?
That is a great question. I have been trying to reclaim my free time, specifically in the past few weeks because I fell into that trap that I am sure every creative out there knows of working seven days a week, every hour in the day. But when I am not at the studio, which is often, I love spending time with my husband and my dog. I love hiking, trail running, training for the marathon. So I am either running around New York City or I am on the pottery wheel. And that is my life at the moment.
The Underworld by Susan Casey
Instagram: @gday_thrillseekers
