Feats of Clay Pottery
- Journalism Portfolio
- Aug 20, 2018
- 2 min read
Famous Pottery stores in the State of Texas
FEATS OF CLAY POTTERY
BY Brooke Rogan, Valeria Lopez de Vergara, Miranda Barrera, Danielle Viator
AUSTIN, TX — Feats of Clay Pottery is the oldest pottery store located in Austin, Texas.
In 1976, Feats of Clay Pottery opened to the public offering unique sculptural and utilitarian pottery crafted by owner, Judy Conroy.
“I think my pieces are unique because I create things I dream up, I like to make functional things and if I do things that are not functional I try to give them a function,” said Conroy.
Conroy hand-builds functional, food-safe, decorative pottery and recently, has been working on larger pieces. What inspires her the most is nature and gardening.
“I love to do things that I have never done before, but I also love to do things that I have done before and just try to make them as best and beautiful as I can,” said Conroy.
Conroy has been working in pottery for more than 42 years. She first started working with pottery at Barton Springs Pottery in 1971 when she first moved to Austin.
Marc Jeannin, a pottery artist at Feats of Clay Pottery has been working at the shop for about a year and a half now. However, he’s been doing pottery for three years full-time after taking a ceramics class after his last year of college.
“I like that it’s a lot of different skills sets and knowledge from different disciplines and sciences and crafts that come together for this ancient tradition and wonderful craft,” said Jeannin.
He chose Feats because it’s one of the only places that does a type of firing he likes called raku. Raku is “ a super quick firing to where the glaze is vitrified” which is when something converts into a glass like substance due to exposure of heat.
“I like creating useful things that you can eat out of, things you can drink out of, things you can use,” said Jeannin.
Due to this technique, he chose Feats since they work with this type of firing and like his work. The type of unique work he does, keeps him around at the shop.
“I like to go with very naturalistic shapes and strive away from things looking neat and perfect - where all things have to look the same,” said Jeannin.
Aside from having artists like Jeaninn, the shop has stayed open for so long due to other reasons.
They are unique to Austin because of the abundance of low prices they offer with their art. The owner said that one reason people keep coming back is because they have always kept their prices low compared to most other places in the Austin area.
Feats of Clay Pottery is still the oldest Pottery store in Austin. It is unique with its low prices and abundance of different types of pottery it has to offer.