Sarah Van Raden's Journey from Stylist to Ceramicist and Studio Owner
Sarah Van Raden is a self-taught potter with a background in styling and design. She owns a small shop in Portland, Oregon, called Notary Ceramics that specialises in sourcing handmade and thoughtfully designed products that beautifully accompany her own line of hand thrown ceramics. I've had the pleasure of enjoying one of Sarah's beautiful pieces of ceramics, one of her lights in my own home, and have actually used it in many styling shoots. So I'm very excited to share her interview with you. She is a beautiful soul and a kindred spirit, and I hope that you enjoy our conversation.
Natalie: Can you just shine a little bit of a light on where you grew up and how that might have informed where you are today?
Sarah: I grew up in rural Oregon here in the United States on about 15 acres. We didn't really have a working farm, but we had a lot of wildlife, a lot of animals, and a pretty free, pretty wild childhood. I have one sister and she and I would spend most of our time outside playing in the dirt or playing in the forest, making forts and fairy houses and all different kinds of creative explorations.
My mom's also an artist and growing up she was really encouraging of us making our own Christmas presents, birthday presents, things like that for our relatives and our friends. And so I definitely got started young, kind of starting to collect things from the natural world and repurposing them.
What about your later teenage years? Did you think you were going to go down an artistic path?
Not necessarily, no. I spent my junior year of high school abroad in Germany, and that was kind of the first time that I'd been exposed to a little bit of fashion and gotten outside of my rural roots. And I definitely fell in love with fashion and clothes and was a little bit more exposed to art. That year I was in Berlin, so the juxtaposition between the 15 acres that I grew up on and then being thrown into this urban setting was huge. It definitely inspired me and got me thinking more about art as a career, but I still had no confidence that that would be my path.
When I went to college, I ended up studying anthropology and spent all four years just falling in love with sociology and anthropology and learning about other cultures and people. But I started sewing in my closet during my free time and started making clothes, and some of my friends wanted to buy them, and that kind of led me when I graduated from school to start my own little clothing line.
How did you go about that? How were you selling it?
It was pre-Instagram and all things “Internet” that made things too terribly easy for us. So it was a lot of door to door. I would approach the shops that I absolutely loved and see if they would be interested in consigning some of my pieces. I got really lucky and got into some really beautiful shops in my area and then a few up in Seattle and Tacoma.
And then I ended up hosting a little fashion show for the clothes and had a pretty good turnout. I think it was after about a year and a half though, my boyfriend (now husband) and I did the math and realised that I was making about $1.50 an hour. It was so much fun and it was wonderful that I could do it while I was young, and I was happy to be poor, but it wasn't really quite cutting it. So I took a job at a shop part-time while still making the clothes. And then got to start doing some of the buying for the store.
Then one of my clients at the shop suggested that I try styling. So I started just kind of hustling, doing any free styling I could for anybody who needed a clothing stylist. I was still sewing a bit, but I definitely started spending more of my time focusing on styling and really fell in love with that, and kind of pivoted into that as a career for about 10 years.
So was that fashion styling or interior styling?
The bulk of it was fashion styling, working with clothes, and it worked pretty well for me as a career for a long time until I had children and it was all freelance. Trying to find childcare at the last minute, with those long 14 hour days on set – it just got to be too bonkers.
I can understand that. I'm just curious what gave you the confidence to start actually doing this clothing line put yourself out there? That's something that a lot of people really struggle with. They have this desire to do something, but they find all the reasons why they shouldn't do it, which is often tied to confidence. What do you think helped you kind of go, okay, I'm just gonna do this?
I've definitely always had a really supportive family. Eeven back in high school when I was sewing, my parents were both really supportive. They bought me my first sewing machine and kept encouraging me. And that was a big boost for sure. But honestly, I think I just have always had this drive to create something myself. I've been an entrepreneur since I was seven years old and making potions and trying to sell them from the end of our driveway. And even though I didn't necessarily have the confidence, I still had this drive to do it and this passion to create.
So I started very small, and with the clothing, I had friends and other people who wanted the clothes before I necessarily started putting myself out there, going door to door. So I had enough of a push to get me going. And then once I started, I'm a little obsessive I think, so when I fall in love with something, then I can't help myself and it's all I want to do all the time.
It's been that way with ceramics too. It was never something that I intended to be my career. It was something that started because I just fell in love with it and was passionate about making it and loved the way that it felt to make things. The business has just been a byproduct of that and a way to support my family.
When you were doing fashion styling, were you working for small brands or bigger companies? Can you paint a picture of the types of shoots that you were styling and some of the lessons that you learned during that chapter of your career?
I live in Portland, Oregon, and most of the fashion styling here is sportswear based. So I worked a lot with high-end sportswear companies. Nike is here, Adidas is here, Columbia Sportswear. There were a few companies that I would work for and fly down to Los Angeles, but for the most part, my work was here. At the beginning of my career, I think I was so fulfilled because I was getting to be incredibly creative. I was often working with other creatives and we were executing a vision that we'd come up with together.
But the more successful I got, the less I was in charge of my own vision and the more I was executing somebody else's. And that got to be pretty disheartening at times. As a creative person, the reason that I got into that career was to be able to be creative, and I was finding that I was having no creative freedom left. That's when I realised that I needed to consider a change.
So you were starting to feel a little bit disenchanted or disconnected from the creative process. Is that when you had children and then did that process again? I know many of my students say that when they've had this time with their children, there’s this moment of evaluating what they want the next chapter to be. Was that your experience? And what led you then to ceramics?
Yeah, it definitely puts a lot of things in perspective when you have to completely shift your focus and go from thinking about yourself and maybe your partner, to then putting these little beings ahead of everything. And I knew that I wasn't particularly happy in that career anymore, but I didn't really know what my other skills were. I'd been doing it so long that it felt sort of like my safe place. But with kids, I found myself coming home at the end of these days and not necessarily wanting to tell the girls what I've been doing all day, that I've been working in an industry that I wasn't feeling very passionate about anymore, and that I wasn't even feeling like I necessarily wanted to be a part of.
So my sweet husband gifted me the ceramics class in the evenings one evening a week just to try to help me reconnect with my creative side. And I came home after the first class and I was just completely hooked. Like my cheeks were sore because I'd been smiling all night long, and I was covered in mud and filthy and it was the absolute antithesis of a fashion shoot. And I just felt fulfilled and happy. And again, I never thought that would lead to this career, but I just kind of paid attention to it and kept doing it.
But after about four or five months of doing this ceramics class, I had a health crisis related to the stress of my career. I finally found a naturepath who was able to give me a diagnosis, and her main advice to me was to cut out stress. So my sweet husband and I looked at our finances and figured out we could do about six months to a year on his salary and our savings. So I just got rid of all of my styling stuff that was in our basement and filled it with a used wheel that I found online that came with a free kiln.
At about month four, a sweet friend of mine asked if I would like to sell a couple of my wonky pots in her shop. They were not something that I was particularly proud of yet, but still something that was bringing me so much joy to do. She started selling things in her shop and they started to take off. And at about month six when we were right at that breaking point of needing me to start being able to bring in an income again, I got my first large wholesale order. And that was what propelled me to basically start this career.
I know for me it was scary to take that step of going freelance. I don't come from a family that, you know, is creative at all or anything like that.
Don't let me mislead you. I was so scared!
How did you overcome that fear?
My thought process was always that I had this backup in my mind that I would go work. But I think at that point I didn't feel like I had another option. And when you're a mom, you really don't have another choice but to keep moving forward and figure out how to take care of these kids and provide for these little beautiful little women that I was raising. So I don't think it came out of bravery, I think it came out of necessity. I didn't know what else to do, so I just kept doing what I felt good doing, which was making pottery and I didn't know where it would lead. But I knew that every day that I got out of bed and I went down and did it, that I felt positive and that I felt empowered, and people seemed to be responding to my work, which was a feeling that I hadn't experienced in a long time.
Instagram: @notaryceramics.home
And with my background in styling, I had the opportunity to take nice pictures of my weird wonky pots and put them out into the world and start a little Instagram. I knew the value of creating this brand and knew how to do that. So I used that skill set to help along this new creative endeavour.
How long ago was this, and what was your journey to where you are now with Notary Ceramics?
That was about seven years ago. I had just taken that one beginning ceramics class at this local art school, and it was mostly me with a lot of older retired ladies. I took the same beginning class twice. And then when I got my wheel and my kiln, I just started watching a lot of YouTube videos in my basement and practising and trying things out and just kind of slowly taught myself the things that I wanted to know. And it was a big hurdle. It was a lot of knowledge that I didn't possess that I wanted to learn. But going back to that kind of obsessive excitement about something, I just spent all of my waking time doing it.
What about the journey from making things in your basement and having this one wholesale order that came through to now, where you’ve got a shop and create lots of different products?
I worked in the basement for about two years and I hired an assistant after about a year and a half who came in to help me with some of the production because I was starting to get these larger wholesale orders. After about two years, the basement with no windows and very little space and the two of us working together felt incredibly cramped. So we started shopping for spaces and came across this darling little spot about a six minute drive from my house in this little standalone building that was for rent for pretty cheap because they were planning on tearing this building down after two years.
So we signed the lease thinking this is all a gamble. We'll see if we even can make this last for two years. And originally I thought it would just be our studio. I didn't necessarily know that I would have a shop out of it, but I knew we needed more space and we could afford this space. So my assistant and I moved in and people kept coming to the windows all the time and trying to come in the door. And it became pretty apparent pretty quickly that we were gonna be part of this little community and we had to figure out how to at least open the doors to it in some way. So we portioned off this little square and started selling small quantities of ceramics out of there and holding classes about once a week in the evenings to help cover the rent.
What is the shop like now, and how has your team grown?
It did start out very slowly with me and just this one other woman. When we created the shop, we needed somebody to help run the store as well. So after being in the space for about a year, I was able to hire a third person and now we're a team of six, so still quite small and I still throw pretty much every piece.
I've never wanted the business to grow so much that I didn't have my hands in the clay every day, because that was the whole point of this and why this worked for me.
What's the best life or career lesson you've learned along the way?
I think to surround yourself with people that make you feel good. I think Covid taught a lot of us that as well – when we kind of got to strip down our lives and our worlds to those very most important people and most important things, it definitely shone a light on the things that I wanted to focus on, and a lot of the people around me I think felt the same. And so for me it's just surrounding myself with those very few very important people that truly inspire me and make me feel loved and comfortable.
What's been your best decision?
Leaving my other career behind, and focusing on my health and my family. That changed everything for me.
What's your proudest career achievement?
I think it was when I was able to pivot from selling whole wholesale to being able to sell primarily our own products and bring in third party products to our website and our shop, so I wasn't having to hustle quite so hard to fulfil all these wholesale orders all over the country and all over the world, and now we get to work with our customers one-on-one. I find that a lot more fulfilling.
Instagram: @notaryceramics.home
Who inspires you?
My kids the most. My husband, my parents and my friends. But day to day it's those little girls. They're funny and witty and smart and weird and they adore me unconditionally in a way that I have never been loved before. And I love seeing what they make and create and how they see the world. It's offered me a new perspective.
What are you passionate about?
I'm definitely passionate about ceramics! I love being creative. I love getting dirty and I love feeling tired at the end of the day. I'm also passionate about my family – spending time with my kids and my husband and getting away from work. We just got back from Oaxaca and we got to see a new cultural experience together and it was definitely life-changing. I'm very passionate about travel and haven't gotten to do it for a long time. And it awoke something in me getting to travel again, and now I'm starting to plan our next adventure.
What dream do you still want to fulfil?
I guess I would love to live abroad at some point with my family, or at least with my husband. I was lucky enough to live abroad with my husband when we were about 26. We moved to New Zealand and quit our jobs and just got to live in a crappy little Mitsubishi station wagon and drive around the country for a year. And I'd love to have an adventure like that with my family.
What piece of advice would you give to your younger self?
I would say not to operate out of fear. I think it's really easy to let fear stand in the way of getting almost anything accomplished. But generally the thing that we're so afraid of really isn't usually that scary and failing isn't as terrifying as we make it out to be. It gives us an opportunity to figure out what it is that we should be doing.
LINKS
Sarah’s Instagram @notaryceramics.home
Notary Ceramics Pinterest page
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