South Sound pottery whiz with 48K Instagram followers opens studio with classes
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Potter Teri Erasmus opened a 2,800 sq ft Port Orchard studio to teach classes.
- The Bisque offers workshops, private lessons, kids’ sessions and membership access.
- Erasmus maintains her Pots by Teri brand and markets work via Instagram.
Teri Erasmus was exhausted.
The Texas-born mom of three fell in love with pottery after she took her first class in ceramics. After taking a long break to raise her kids, Erasmus decided it was time to turn her passion into a business, and enrolled in a community college to further her training. By 2020, she was shaping her own bowls, plates and mugs out of a studio set up in her garage, she told The News Tribune.
Her business was growing, clients were ordering hundreds of items and her Instagram account, @potsbyteri, was taking off. But she felt herself getting drained. The COVID-19 pandemic drove her into isolation, and she suffered a carpal tunnel flare-up from how much she was producing.
“It was a lot for a couple years, and it got really lonely,” she said.
The Bisque was born after Erasmus discovered a second love: teaching pottery, starting with small groups in her home garage studio. Her new 2800-square-foot storefront in downtown Port Orchard celebrated its grand opening Jan. 24 and has 13 wheels where Erasmus and other staff will teach students to shape their own ceramic pieces.
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The studio at 710 Bay St. is open Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., according to the business’s website. It takes the place of a bookstore, Find The Path Books, which closed last year.
‘A happy clay community’: Studio to offer ceramics classes, workshops
The Bisque offers an array of one-time workshops and classes for beginner and intermediate potters, per their website. The studio also offers private lessons and workshops for kids, including a weekly pottery session for homeschoolers. A few seats are left in their Valentine’s Day-themed workshops, including a jewelry dish workshop Feb. 13 and a heart bowls workshop for couples Feb. 14.
Potters who want to use the studio’s tools, wheels and kilns for their own work can pay a monthly fee ranging from $175 to $350 based on three membership tiers.
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Erasmus told The News Tribune she named the studio “The Bisque” after an oft-used term in the pottery world: the first firing that a piece undergoes is called a “bisque firing,” before it’s glazed and fired again.
The name also sounded right to her, she said.
“It sounds like a cozy place to be, and that was what I was hoping to make this place,” she said. “A safe, cozy, fun, colorful, loving environment.”
The studio’s spacious downstairs includes pottery wheels, kilns, work tables and shelves for storing work in progress. Kids’ classes are held upstairs in a separate area.
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Owner started sharing pottery journey on Instagram
Though she’s opened up a teaching studio, Erasmus plans to continue making her own pieces and taking viewers along for the ride on her Instagram, @potsbyteri. It’s where she started taking orders for her ceramic pieces, from sets of dinner plates in rich earthen hues to multi-colored mugs, dog bowls and vases. (The Bisque has a separate Instagram, @thebisqueco.)
Erasmus said there’s something “therapeutic” and “magical” about being able to take a formless lump of clay and make it into anything you want.
“There was some, some form of pull towards it that I was like: ‘I can’t stop thinking about it,’” she said about her beginnings in pottery. “I go home, I think about my baby pieces that I threw that are sitting there ... when I was taking a class and I’m like, ‘I hope they’re doing OK. I hope they’re not drying out. I hope they’ll be ready for me tomorrow when I go in.’”
“ ... you look at your pieces, you’re like: ‘They’re mine, and I can do whatever I want with them.’”
She started using Instagram to start promoting and selling her work. That was how she found her first big client, Ballerina Farm, which ordered 300 mugs a month from her for one year. The exposure continued to grow her business, and she’s shipped items to every state in the United States and almost all provinces in Canada, she said. She also hosts virtual workshops through live videos.
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She also strives to be organic in her posts.
“Like today, I posted a picture in my jammies, and I looked crazy, my hair was bedhead, and I was unloading a kiln,” she said. “And I’m showing people that I’m unloading their pieces in my jammies, and I look crazy. And I do lots of singing and dancing and fun things and lots of behind the scenes. They see me make their pieces that they’re buying and feel like they’re part of it.”
@potsbyteri now has about 48,100 followers, and Erasmus credits her community with helping her on her path toward The Bisque.
“I will never get rid of my Pots by Teri,” she said. “That has always been my bread and butter. And those relationships I built just over Instagram, connecting with people, they’re the ones that got me to where I am.”
