Charity events, silent auctions and raffle ticket fundraisers can be great ways to raise money for worthy causes. People ask us to donate pottery to their charity events regularly. They’ve been asking for years, and I used to say yes every time.
But a few years ago, I started saying no.
It’s not because we get too many requests. Even if we donated one pot per week, that’s only 52 pots per year, out of the 6,000+ pots we made last year.
It’s not because people don’t want the art. People might not bid the full $165 retail price for a Cosmic Mug at a charity auction, but it would definitely help raise some money.
There is one main reason why I don’t donate art.
I believe people should support artists, not ask them for free art.
Put yourself in the shoes of an artist. Which would you rather have someone say to you:
“Donate to our event please. It will support a good cause and get your name out there.”
or
“I just bought your art!”
If I donate my art to charity, then it tells the charity that it’s okay to ask other artists for free stuff too. That’s the problem.
Too many artists struggle to sell their art for what it’s worth. I believe artists are some of the last people in society that we should be asking for donations. You would never ask a doctor, lawyer or banker to donate their work to a silent auction.
Instead of donating pottery, we just let our pottery be available for sale on store.cherricopottery.com, cosmicmugs.com and to our Patrons. Then, we donate a portion of the money to charities that we care about, and keep a public record here, to help keep us accountable:
You shouldn’t donate to every charity who contacts you. We don’t, because that would be impossible. Every time I mention donations, we tend to get a flood of requests.
Just this week, another person emailed us asking us to donate pottery to an event for their son, a 10 year old boy who is fighting cancer.
Stores like this are so sad. Of course it makes me want to donate! But giving art and/or money to everyone who asks isn’t sustainable. Business, like everything, requires balance (I told them we can’t donate pottery, but we’re happy to donate some cash instead.)
It’s not important to donate to everyone who asks. What’s important is that you stay open to the idea of supporting charities, and actually do it consistently.
We simply pick a few good causes, and then make sure we’re giving consistently. Then, when we have stronger sales or another good cause comes to our attention, we can give a little more.
Society works best when we all make an extra effort to be of service to others. Donating money might not be the best way to solve problems, but it helps, and it’s our way of giving back beyond just making art.
We’ve been enjoying some warmer weather here in Central Minnesota and soaking up the sunshine. So, for this month’s free pottery giveaway, we’ve picked pots with bright glazes that really pop when in the sun.
This month, 3 winners will receive a beautiful pot paired with one of our favorite books. These books have guided the work of Joel as an artist, business owner, and individual, as well as the members of our team.
Enjoy a preview of these inspiring books:
“Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It’s a gift to the world and every being in it. Don’t cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you’ve got.” – Steven Pressfield, The War of Art
“When I force myself to utter the awkward phrase, “I am grateful,” I actually start to feel a bit more grateful…It’s basic cognitive behavioral therapy: Behave in a certain way, and your mind will eventually catch up with your actions.” – A.J. Jacobs, Thanks a Thousand
“Your true worth is determined by how much more you give in value than you take in payment.” – Bob Burg, The Go-Giver
Do you have a piece of Cherrico Pottery with a Cosmic or deep blue Nuka Cobalt glaze? Try taking your piece out into the sun and watch the many bright colors and tones come out. And we’d love if you shared with us – take a picture of your piece in the sun and tag us @cherricopottery on Facebook or Instagram!
Inspiration for Cherrico Pottery comes from many sources. Whether it be podcasts, books, or TED Talks, our team is always learning and looking for ways Cherrico Pottery can grow. Many of the books we read don’t just apply to our business, but to life, too. They provide a source of inspiration and motivation for the everyday.
Alongside some of our best pots, this month’s giveaway includes two books that have guided how we approach our art, our business, and our life.
Amanda Palmer, author of “The Art of Asking”, has a unique story in the world of asking, giving, art, and love. Her 2013 TED Talk also titled, “The Art of Asking” has been viewed over 10 million times around the world. Check it out here:
“Asking for help with shame says: You have the power over me. Asking with condescension says: I have the power over you. But asking for help with gratitude says: We have the power to help each other.” -Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking, p. 48
Derek Sivers is a professional musician and entrepreneur who sold his multi-million dollar e-commerce company to assist creative people in overcoming the everyday burdens of their work. “Your Music and People” is “a philosophy of getting your work to the world by being creative, considerate, resourceful, and connected.”
Derek has also presented multiple TED Talks. Check out this one on “How to Start a Movement” here:
We hope you enjoy our February Pottery Giveaway. Good luck!
A hot cup of tea with a good book is a splendid way to start the day. So, I thought it would be fun to give away one of my favorite books, paired with mugs inspired by it.
This giveaway features $395 in free pottery and books:
a pair of Cosmic Mugs ($360 value: 2 mugs x $165 each + $30 S&H average)
ENDED. Giveaway winner was emailed directly: “Ivetta” Congrats to you!
Tim Ferriss actually inspired the initial ideas orbiting the Cosmic Mug. He got one of the first 100 ever made years ago. I spy with my little eye a top shelf Cosmic Mug…
I’ve been following his “5-Bullet Friday” email for years. It’s one of the best, free newsletters I actually read, because it has valuable lessons from experts in nearly every industry: art, technology, business, mindfulness, mental health, love, sex, relationships, cooking, physical fitness….it’s probably the highest value newsletter I read weekly. Subscribe here if you’re curious: “5-Bullet Friday”
Tribe of Mentors is like a hard copy of those emails. It’s a collection of successful people, who each define success differently.
It’s one of my favorite books because it’s not just a collection of lessons. It’s a collection of people who prove that anything is possible.
As a potter, I’m successful if the newest pottery I make is always the best pottery yet.
But what if I have a bad firing? What if the pots turn out great, but no one buys them? What if I’m just having a terrible day, and don’t feel like working?
Tribe of Mentors is a book I turn to when I’m looking for inspiration from people who are the best at what they do. Sure, all of these people have websites, social media, etc…but there’s something special about being able to step away from our highly addictive smartphones.
Books give us the increasingly rare opportunity to go past the surface, and really dig deep into valuable life lessons.
“Every day is an opportunity to create a living masterpiece.”
This is a guest blog post written by Aubrey Walter, student worker at Cherrico Pottery during her undergraduate studies at the College of St. Benedict/St. John’s University. This post is a reflection of her work in the pottery office, assessing our environmental impact of shipping pottery to thousands of people globally.Enter Aubrey:
“Save what you love. A river. A mountain. A jacket. A pair of hiking boots. It all matters because it’s all connected…there is a powerful connection between treating our things as disposable and treating the people who make those things as disposable. And there is also a connection between the way we trash our stuff and the way we are trashing the planet, which is the ultimate source of all of that stuff.”
– Naomi Klein, qtd. in “Let My People Go Surfing”
People often ask us, “Is Cherrico Pottery natural?”
Yes, clay comes from the ground. Yes, Joel mixes his custom glaze recipes from natural materials, like wood ash, feldspar and silica.
But the truth is, everything comes from the ground. Even the smartphone or computer you’re using to read this was made from raw materials, which were originally mined from the earth.
How to Serve Customers and the Environment
At the time of this writing, Joel is currently throwing, glazing and firing over 500 pots per month. About 90% of those ship directly to customers’ doorsteps just weeks after he makes them.
How do we properly serve these avid pottery buyers, while still having deep respect for our environmental impact? First, we look to companies that have successfully achieved this themselves.
Every month, Joel requires each member of our team (including himself) to conduct “Reading and Research” to help us all learn the best ways to grow Cherrico Pottery, and ourselves personally. We read books, watch TED Talks, and post our quotes in the pottery office wall.
Photo by Avery, Joel in front of our Quote wall with one of his favorite books: “A Potter’s Book” by Bernard Leach
Recently, I’ve been reading Let My People Go Surfing by Yvon Chouinard, founder and CEO of Patagonia. A passionate outdoorsman, Yvon was hesitant to turn his passion into a business, weary of corporations focusing on profit and production, often destroying the very environment he grew up enjoying.
But Yvon took on this challenge with the founding of Patagonia, breaking the rules of traditional business and committing wholeheartedly to environmental responsibility.
As Yvon writes in the introduction to the book,
“Despite a near-universal consensus among scientists that we are on the brink of an environmental collapse, our society lacks the will to take action. Patagonia exists to challenge conventional wisdom and present a new style of responsible business.”
During my time as a student worker at Cherrico Pottery, I’ve seen Joel and Sienna make these same commitments to environmental responsibility.
We use 100% biodegradable packing peanuts to ensure our pottery arrives safe and sound to our customers. These peanuts are made from an organic starch that will decompose in water, leaving no toxic waste.
But not everyone wants peanuts because they make a huge mess. They’ve even been banned by Amazon because they’re so inconvenient and messy. So, we’re experimenting with our new “EA Air Cushion Machine”, which allows us to make our own bubble wrap and pillows with a #2 recyclable film.
Doing More With Less
As we said before, everything comes from the earth. Every material has pros and cons. For example, paper is a renewable resource and biodegrades, but it requires a lot more more raw materials to produce than plastic. It’s heaver to ship, less protective for our fragile pottery (requiring more material) and cutting down more trees to make more paper isn’t a great solution.
Whether using paper, plastic or biodegradable starch, the most important thing is that you make an educated decision about what to use, and how much.
This TedTalk featuring Leyla Acaroglu has given us a framework, called a “Life Cycle Assessment” to look past environmental folklore and determine how we can make the biggest positive impact.
Tracing Our Trash
Once our materials are used, where do they go?
We are also evaluating our footprint as a business by tracing each item of waste. As you can imagine in a small business that ships globally, we need to consume a lot of materials.
But even small things, like our shipping labels and packing stickers, are destined for the trash.
Stickers and shipping labels cannot be recycled due to their adhesive contents that get caught in recycling equipment. Their waxy backing is made of layers of both non-recyclable plastic and paper.
The thin, jute twine that we use to package our pottery is 100% recyclable and biodegradable, but it comes wrapped in protective plastic that we cannot recycle. So does the bubblewrap and cardbaord bulk boxes on full 4ft. x 4ft. pallets- all entirely wrapped in non-recyclable plastic.
Each of these items, small and large, are essential. We couldn’t fulfill thousands of pottery orders, and maintain customer satisfaction and safety, without each of these necessary pieces to our puzzle of running a sustainable business.
How do we stay environmentally conscious, while embracing global demand for Cherrico Pottery?
Odd that #EarthDay exists as a day at all. Instead, maybe it should be extended to the whole year, and then repeated annually
Even when Joel starting working with multiple Chinese factories to source a brand new type of Cosmic Mug, this mantra helped us to do it responsibly.
We call porcelain “Fine China” because the Chinese are simply the best porcelain mass-producers in the world, specifically for this type of “Tenmoku” pottery. It’s a specific type of intricate, black glazed pottery that you can learn about here, that the Chinese have been refining for 1,000 years. They can make high quantities of these mugs with both higher efficiency and quality than anyone else in the world.
After they arrive, the Cherrico Pottery Team individually inspects each mug for quality, then giftwraps them in our hand painted, recyclable cardboard boxes.
But what do we do with all the excess packing materials from China?
Each of these yellow boxes came from China and held 20 “Factory Made Cosmic Mugs” wrapped in bubblewrap, Styrofoam, cardboard and plastic.
Over the years, we’ve examined and fine-tuned our process. We’ve implemented alternatives to the waste-generating and single-use aspects of our business, wherever possible.
So, instead of putting non-recyclable packing materials in the trash, Joel came up with a better solution: dunnage.
Dunnage Bags: How We Reuse Non-Recyclable Packing Materials
We now turn most all of our trash into “Dunnage Bags” to be used as packing material, instead of peanuts or air pillows. We simply put our excess, non-recyclable packing into biodegradable bags from the local co-op.
While these bags still eventually end up in the landfill, they allow us to reduce and reuse:
Reduce our consumption of other packing materials
Reuse these non-recyclables, instead of throwing them right into the trash
Did you know that you can reuse these bags in your own packing?
We know that our environmental footprint as a business is far from net zero, far from where it needs to be. And we recognize this. We are conscious of the waste we produce, the environmental impact our small business is having.
While many companies turn a blind eye to their waste, their emissions, their footprint, we have not. And we will not. Because the nature of our business, Cherrico Pottery, is crafted from the very minerals of the soil and the water of the seas. Pottery is an art of the earth.
Kenneth R. Beittel describes it like this in his article Zen and the Art of Pottery:
“Pottery is the humblest of man’s arts. Even before it became metaphor, pottery brought Earth to shine forth in man’s world. It is best when it is most earth-honest; that includes process-honest; fire-honest, honesty of being itself. Mere expressiveness has no depth compared with rocks and mountains, sand and sea, which speak of being and presence.”
Innately, our pottery craft requires that we be earth-honest, process-honest, fire-honest. It requires that we are conscious of our environmental choices. While many companies maintain a “business as usual” approach when it comes to environmental responsibility, we are striving to defy the norm.
Think Globally, Act Locally
There is a saying at the Local Blend Coffee Shop that serves meals everyday from Cherrico Pottery. “Think Globally, Act Locally” is their unofficial tagline. It reminds us that even the smallest act, done by anyone just within their local community, can have global impact.
We’re continuing to have conversations about our own environmental impacts here at Cherrico. How can we be more sustainable? How can we be a model of environmental responsibility for other small businesses?
We’re learning a lot about your preferences as our customers, and are continuing to look for ways to consume less.
We’d love to hear from you.
GIVEAWAY: What is one thing you do to be more environmentally friendly in your own life?
*GIVEAWAY ENDED 3/25/20. WINNERS: Jessica and kim mendez. WINNERS WERE EMAILed PRIVATELY AND NOTIFIED, AND THEIR COMMENTS WERE RESPONDED TO BELOW.
Leave a comment on this blog post before 2pm Central Wednesday, March 25th, 2020 answering the question above (What is one thing you do to be more environmentally friendly?), and we will pick two people to win two free “Random Cosmic Mugs” from our back stock, each paired with two book copies from our “Reading and Research” shelves: Let My People Go Surfing by Yvon Chouinard. We’ll mail them to two of you for free (giveaway 21+ void where prohibited, no unicorns…view more detailed giveaway policy here: cherricopottery.com/giveaway-policy) winner will be chosen by Joel Cherrico and announced in the comments one day after the giveaway ends. Please allow 24-48 hours max for our moderator to approve your comment, and winners will be announced here publicly Friday, March 27th, 2 PM or earlier 🙂
