New Website Launching Soon!

pieces currently available at OneClayBead

LeeWolfePottery.com is in the works! I am excited and strangely filled with a humble grace as I move my online sales to a website of my own. I’ll be offering my full range of dinnerware options, heirloom wedding gifts, and fine artisan serving pieces. Plus it will look really cool.

dinnerware currently viewable on Facebook

I want to acknowledge Sarah-Lambert Cook of Tuckooandmoocow for her invaluable help and encouragement.

hand painted Chickadee locket by Sarah-Lambert Cook

To a smart young person like Sarah, setting up a website means a few weeks of learning CSS while breezing through the endless ‘next’ buttons on the 4,261 steps necessary to create a web page in 5 easy steps. Whereas to me, who was born into an era when an Apple was a fruit, the web was built by a clever talking spider named Charlotte, and technology gurus published helpful tips on how to operate your manual can opener, creating a website is synonymous with

or perhaps building a nuclear reactor that comes in a box with “some assembly required”.

Anything on LeeWolfePottery.com  that looks like Yoda made some stoneware pottery or reads as if ee cummings wrote the descriptions is mine. But anything that actually works is to Sarah’s credit.

I also want to acknowledge and thank the Full Time Etsy Crafters for their inspiration and technical help. These women have opened many windows and doors into what I now see as possible as an artisan business.

As always, I work, create, and dream in solitude, but it is the radiant candles of friendship that light my path.

New Blog Design!

I’ve needed a better graphic look for this blog! It never even had a banner until now and the text scrolled in a tiny narrow strip. I’m a fairly decent writer and love blathering away and imagining that I am important enough to read, so Sarah of Tuckooandmoocow came over yesterday and pimped my blog up. I designed the banner and sidebars, she made the buttons for social media links and created the HTML.
Sarah loved the vintage Zuni fetish beads that I use sparingly in my jewelry. They are hand carved by individual artisans in the 70’s, right before Native American jewelry moved largely into production assembly. These tiny works of art have a powerful beauty. I noticed that Sarah handled them reverently and appreciated the totemic meaning. I traded her 5 beads for her help. She plans to pair them with her landscape painted miniatures. You can follow tuckooandmoocow on Facebook to find out how she uses them.


It is way cool that I bartered for her expertise with beads. Such an old way of honoring someone’s labor.
I’m going to be writing more often now. You know how happy I get when you let me know that my visual obsessions please you, so don’t hesitate to comment here, and on my Lee Wolfe Pottery Facebook, too!

the TuckooandMooCow story

I met up with Sarah-Lambert Cook at the Big Crafty in downtown Asheville. She’s using her drawing talents to capture a niche audience with quirky miniature jewelry based on literary and film characters. If you enjoy The Hobbit, Monty Python or Shakespeare, her zany meets cute world will wow you.

Here’s how she went from unemployed to full time artisan, in her own words:

I began listing items in May 2010, selling art and the hand painted jewelry. In the first few weeks, sales were few but steady. Since it was mostly the jewelry, I decided I ought to focus all of my energy on that. But life threw a curve-ball in August when the store I was working at in Kansas closed. My husband and I decided it would be the perfect time to pick up and move east. My parents were living in Atlanta and offered us the front room of their house until we could get settled. For seven months we lived in one room as storage space, bedroom and studio simultaneously.

Emboldened by reaching 80 sales by the end of October I stopped looking for work and focused my energy on Tuckooandmoocow. Researching, networking, renewing, and creating new designs paid off! I had almost 200 new sales the next month! Business stayed steady through Christmas, and when things didn't slow down much for the rest of winter, I knew I had it.

Now, we live in beautiful Asheville, NC and are able to depend on sales from TuckooandMooCow to support us. There have been things that didn't work: shipping UPS express international is a cluster-cuss for everyone involved, staying up all night for more than 3 nights in a row will cause a massive migraine and creative burnout, and with made-to-order items there must always be time budgeted for unforeseen circumstances. Some things have been godsends: Etsy is a community of artisans, not just solely a venue, so getting involved in some aspect of that can be very helpful to your business and your sanity. As TuckooandMooCow grows, I'd like to eventually be much more self-sufficient and not purchase settings, but make them myself.

I haven't had a full day off since November, but I'm happy and the rewards have been worth the effort.