Sunrise Beach Pottery

My name is Anne Wellings, and I have been making pottery since about 1980. I started in the Central Valley of California, graduating from CSU Sacramento with a major in Art with an emphasis in Ceramics. I taught at the UC Davis Crafts Center and worked for TS Post Ceramics, a studio pottery in Davis, California. In 1991, I moved to family property on the shores of Puget Sound near Olympia, Washington, where I entered a new phase in my pottery career. Since 1994, I have been selling at the Olympia Farmers Market each year from April through December. I am building this website in order to keep the public informed about what I am making, where it will be available, and what new ideas I may be working on. It will be updated on an ongoing basis.

The current pottery is made of a red, mid-range stoneware clay, fired to about 2100F degrees in an electric kiln. Each piece goes through a process of many steps, starting with weighing and preparing the clay, throwing on an electric potters wheel, trimming and decorating with incised or stamped patterns, the first, or "bisque" firing, waxing the bottoms and glazing, and firing a second time to melt the glaze.

The pottery is dishwasher safe and can be used in the oven and microwave with caution. The clay is fired to a nearly vitreous state, but can absorb a small amount of water, so items that will be washed often or are intended to hold liquid are sealed on the exposed clay bottoms. This way, water will not be absorbed during washing or leak through any possible invisible crazing in the inside glaze.

Another idea for my home page's text is notifying visitors about the enhancements I put on my site. For example, I want visitors to sign my guestbook or fill out my survey Form E-mailer to answer questions about my site, my business, or my site's topic.

I might not want a large amount of text on my home page if I want to guide visitors toward my other pages. Instead of text, I can add others' buttons to this first page, and I'll be rewarded for people who click on the buttons. For example, if a visitor signs up for a Visa using the NextCard button on my site, I earn at least $20!

Even if I don't put much text on my home page, it's a good idea to include hidden tools that will help me promote my site, so people other than my friends and family actually see it. For example, I could add meta tags, which are hidden codes that allow search engines to find my site. I could also install stats and a counter so I know how many people are visiting. If not many are visiting, submitting my site to search engines will guide more traffic to my site.