Interview
Ida Berg on fewer pots and fairer prices
The potter from Graz on what she throws away, why she raised her prices and the classes that pay the rent.
Questions by Clara Neumann · Oct 16, 2026
You throw about forty pots a week. How many do you keep?
About thirty. The rest go back into the clay bucket, and I don’t feel bad about that anymore. A pot that wobbles in my hand will wobble on somebody’s table for twenty years.
Your prices have gone up twice this year. What did your customers say?
Almost nothing, which surprised me. I wrote a short note on the website about what the clay and the kiln cost now, and two people wrote back to say it was about time.
The ones who left were mostly buying for resale. I miss the money, not the orders.
A pot that wobbles in my hand will wobble on somebody’s table for twenty years.
What would you tell someone opening a studio tomorrow?
Teach. The evening classes pay the rent in the months when nobody buys bowls, and they bring people into the studio who come back for years.