In a pottery studio setting and on a potter's wheel sits a classic diner mug that tapers out on the top and bottom in a bold red color featuring iron speckles and a handle.

EF Workshop

The East Fork Workshop, formerly known as the Small Batch Studio, was founded in the spring of 2019 to provide a perfect platform to play, experiment, get weird, hone in on what works and what doesn't, and troubleshoot new forms that might one day end up in our line.

We are potters.

In the beginning everything was made on a potter's wheel in a few small workshops on an old tobacco farm outside of Asheville, North Carolina.  As we grew we began to explore different production methods, and by 2018 we had outgrown the original site and moved into a proper factory in Asheville and had fully embraced a variety of industrial manufacturing methods.  When we settled in to our new home or first apprentice, Cade Holloman, pulled out an old wheel, plugged it in and started making pots under the name of Small Batch Studio, which we renamed East Fork Workshop a few years later.

Today the pots are made by another early East Fork contributor, Mike Ball, working in much the same way John and I did in our own apprenticeships, learning the forms through thousands of repetitions, albeit with a little less direct supervision than we had making work elbow-to-elbow with our teachers.  Mike keeps a steady stream of beautiful pots moving out into the world to sit side by side with their machine-made counterparts, so as not to forget East Fork’s unusual origin.

A man smiles directly at the camera and is surrounded by clay tools, clay, pottery, and a potter's wheel. He's wearing a blue apron with wet clay on it.
In a pottery studio setting, a man is forming the bottom base of a Diner Mug. Surrounding him are hundreds of mugs.

Mike Ball

“It’s fun to set my own pace here…and I like being able to create something from beginning to end. We’ve got exciting things planned for the Workshop."

An animated image that says "East Fork is a vessel for" a rotating number of things

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