Our Story

How Claymonster Pottery got started...

Cat made perfectly normal pottery until she met Rich. Whimsy and a sense of humor has always found its way into Rich’s artwork.

A long long long time ago they took some clay with them for a vacation at the beach. They made goofy little worm creatures and Cat started putting feet on little balls of clay. (She love feet and little toes.) They were just being silly and having fun.

The “Jar Guy” was the earliest occurrence of what would become their Claymonster line of work. That was back in 1995. Rich had a simple bottle throwing assignment where he pinched the lip to look like a smile. It was probably his first pot where he added eyeballs.

They didn’t take it all very seriously until Rich was teaching an assignment at Towson where the students had to incorporate the design of the surface into the cut of a slab box. His demos were a series of boxes that had monster faces on each side. The box was cut open at the teeth. He made enough that Cat was able to take a few to shows and they quickly sold.

The next big step towards monsters was an exhibition Rich did at the Saints & Sinners tattoo parlor. It was an entire show of large monster vessels where all the work was hand-built from wheel, coil and slab construction. The success of that show was a big push for them to continue down this path.

After seeing how people loved these new monsters, Cat started to explore ways to create a body of work that was fun, functional, and monstrous — over time, converting initial concepts and ideas into actual product lines.

And their fans REALLY love them! Demand grew so much that their booth went from a few shelves of monsters among an array of ‘normal pottery’ to a few remaining shelves of Regular Joe mugs amongst an army of Clay Monsters.

Today Cat and Rich love and cherish the many Claymonster fans who have stuck by them as customers and friends for almost two decades. The idea that what started out as a little bit of whimsy is now out in homes and people’s jobs around the area, country, and world is humbling.

“When people come back and tell us that their Monster Mug makes them smile every day before work, we realize that making Clay Monsters is one of the best jobs we could have ever dreamed of.”