Claymates
The East Fork Workshop is our return to first principles. A small studio within a modern factory, it preserves innovation and exploration.
Our potters experiment with hand-thrown forms, surface decoration and materials—rooted in tradition, open to reinvention, with one hand stretched to the past, and the other outstretched to the future.
Our Workshop Potters
Our potters each bring a unique perspective to their work but share a love and mastery of the hand-thrown pot. The East Fork Workshop is led by East Fork co-founder and former CFO John Vigeland, alongside our longtime friend and collaborator Mike Ball, with occasional appearances by our founder and CEO, Alex.
History of Workshop
East Fork began with one potter, then a few more, throwing pots for a wood-fired kiln way out in a gloomy Western North Carolina holler. Since then, we’ve traded the farm workshop for humming factories in Asheville, NC, where humans and restored machinery together produce about 1 million pieces of pottery each year. Though our process has changed, we’ve never lost our appreciation for wheel-thrown forms and more traditional practices.
In 2019, our first apprentice, Cade Holloman, pulled an old wheel out of storage, plugged it in and started throwing a collection of limited-edition pieces. That’s when what’s now known as East Fork Workshop began.
Today, the Workshop continues to be an important connection to our original taproot. It’s a way of keeping our hands in clay and having a little fun while we’re at it.
Workshop Archive
2025
After losing our Workshop space to Hurricane Helene, Mike began throwing Third Wave Mugs in his home studio for each seasonal color. John, East Fork’s co-founder and former CFO, came back to the wheel after a seven-year hiatus to throw a limited run of pitchers.
2024
We went into the year with big hopes for what the Workshop could become. John stepped away from his role as CFO to return to his roots behind the wheel, and Mike threw East Fork’s first incense holder. But no one was prepared for the devastation Hurricane Helene brought. By October, the Workshop was paused after our studio was destroyed by the storm.
2023
In 2023, we expanded beyond form and began experimenting again with glaze, starting with an Ash Glaze reminiscent of our earliest pots. Mike also explored new shapes, introducing the Farm Bowl and branching into mugs with a heftier, diner-style design.
2022
The year the Small Batch Studio officially became East Fork Workshop. As Cade stepped into the role of East Fork’s archivist, longtime friend and local potter Mike Ball began throwing pots under the newly named hand-thrown program.
2021
A big year for hand-thrown collectors. We introduced the Third Wave Mug, our ode to the artisanal coffee movement, and released a small run of Little Pitchers, finished with raw clay exteriors and Harvest Moon glaze inside. They’ve since become sought-after pieces within East Fork’s community trading network.
2020
The world shut down, East Fork didn’t. While navigating closures, new protocols, and a general sense of unease, we decided to have a little fun and get a bit weird. Enter the Two-Handed Mug, along with a handful of pieces that helped make life at work and home a little more joyful.
2019
We had just sold the farm and moved to Asheville—a bold leap that shifted East Fork from a small rural pottery to a scalable manufacturing operation. In the corner of our new factory floor, our first apprentice, Cade Holloman, pulled an old wheel out of storage, plugged it in, and began making limited-edition hand-thrown pieces once again under the moniker “The Small Batch Studio.”
