Primary Roles – Deliveries & Warehouse order fulfillment

Fun Fact – Julie likes Manga and computer games.  She had a much longer quote that MAY have been in a somewhat foreign language and may also have been a complete practical joke.  Either way, i can’t remember it to type it in here.

Julie is one of our few pre-pandemic people here.  Throughout that challenging time, we all had a lot of things thrown at us.  So many changes in short time, and Julie adapted to all of them, all while keeping her wry and dry sense of humor intact.  In addition to driving the BIG TRUCK and moving around literal tons of clay with the manual jack like it was packing peanuts, Julie has also trained most of our current warehouse staff in how to drive the forklift, build and order, follow procedures and in general, do good work.

Working here since October 2021

Primary Roles – UPS/FedEx Shipping & Receiving

Fun Fact – Eric has, at different times of his life, gone by two different names, so half of the world (well, at least the town), knows him as Jack and the other half as Eric.  We mostly call him Eric, except when we are counting employees who’s names start with J.  then we call him Jack.

We really lucked into finding Eric. Sometime mid-pandemic I was at the bank getting my signature notarized or something and talking to my banker about how understaffed we were and that I couldn’t find anyone. Enter Eric. He had retired from his time working as terminal manger at the UPS Lawrence service center. It just doesn’t get any more perfect than that!

Working here since September 2022

Primary Roles – Clay mixer for Kansas Clay

Fun Fact -My dad and i were both born on the same day of the year, and we are exactly 30 years apart!  

Kylynn is a graduate of Free State High School, right here in Lawrence!  She started as a part time clay catcher for our sister company, Kansas Clay, but we quickly learned how amazing she is and pulled her in full time.  She is very serious about clay quality, and we have her train ALL of the new people who work back there even occasionally.  Clay is an interesting beast and the weather can be a huge factor.  One particularly humid day, the clay was just not behaving itself and Kylynn came up front and told me “If buff was a person, we’d be FIGHTING today”. (and i’d put my money on Kylynn to win!)

Working here since January 2023

Primary Roles – Resident Artist & Customer service

Fun Fact – “I like clowns- the happy ones, not the scary ones… OH but I CAN watch the movie IT and laugh now, because i’ve already had all my nightmares about it” 

Rachel is a recent graduate of Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls, TX.  She moved away from her entire family and group of friends to settle here in Lawrence KS and be our first artist in residence.  In addition to her residency hours, she works here as a full fledged employee, and although you will usually find her up front helping customers pick out glazes, she also knows how to build a pallet, mix clay, and her FAVORITE thing, make casting slip.    As a bonus to us, she keeps us all on our toes as the commander of chaos and crazy fun.

Working here since January 2023

Primary Roles – Warehouse order fulfillment, part time student

Fun Fact – Joe wants to know….”Is your bar of soap always clean?  because what if you use it to clean something that’s dirty?  Then is it still clean?  Where does the dirty go?”

Joe is always keeping spirits up around here by posing questions like that or pulling ridiculous pranks.  He has definitely gotten EVERYONE out here at least once with his antics.  So we asked him:  “Do you prefer Trickster or Joker?  His response was Joker…but with an e: the Joe-ker.  Yep, that fits.  Welcome to your new Nick-name Joe!

Working here since May 2023

Primary Roles – Customer Service, Repair Service Coordinator

Fun Fact – I love paddle boarding, reading, and geocaching.  I’m also a writer and anticipate publishing my first book next summer.  I’m also a complete docu-junkie

Alexis is finishing her degree in Organizational Management and Marketing.  She is INCREDIBLY organized and detail-oriented.  To “reward” her skills, she was recently put in charge of Dave’s repair schedule and followup.  Best of luck, Alexis!  (you are going to need it!). Alexis will also be taking over Bracker’s marketing and using our company as her capstone project for her degree.  We are so fortunate to have her expertise and her detailed efforts!

Working here since May 2023

Primary Roles – Warehouse order fulfillment and part time student

Fun Fact – I like tabletop (board) games andI have a lot of those, but also i can solve a rubiks cube in 30 seconds.  I have a box full of Rubik’s cubes….I have a 4×4, a rubik’s snake, a dodecahedron – that one i can’t solve in 30 seconds, it would take me longer, but the standard 3 x 3, yeah.  30 seconds, that was my main hobby in high school.

In addition to working for us, Jake is working on his degree in computer science.  He’s very smart and he’s also very funny.  When asking him for his fun fact, or if he had a funny nickname (that he wanted to share) he told the story of how, for several years, his girlfriend’s dad thought his last name was Spaghetti (it’s sanguinetti), he embraced it and now we, too, call him Jake spaghetti.

Working here since June 2023

Primary Roles – Customer Service

Fun Fact -I have lived in 6 states.

When we saw Sav’s application and resume come in, we were instantly interested.  When she walked in the door and said “don’t let my frame fool you, i’m a power lifter,” it pretty much sealed her fate.  Not just because she’s physically strong (obviously a plus out here becuase EVERYTHING is heavy), but she is incredibly confident.  Sav recently earned her degree in Psychology with a minor in Ceramics from Baker University.  Sav is often the first to jump in and try to answer a question, solve a problem, or propose a new improvement into our methods/madness, often with a flowchart.  She can even keep Dave in line! 

Working here since July 2023

Primary Roles – Deliveries & Warehouse order fulfillment

Fun Fact – “My head is filled with fun, useless trivia. “

Jason applied for a position here after retiring from a long career in teaching.  He holds a masters and we felt that he was WAY overqualified, but fortunately, he agreed to come join our team anyway.  We are so excited to see what his enthusiams, experience and energy will bring to our team!

Primary Roles – Repair Tech & Manufacturing Manager

Fun Fact – Well, it’s not always FUN, but Dave is married to Cindy…?  hahah just kidding.  Cindy is LOTS of fun to be married to….always!

Rocketed to earth as a small child and found under a feldspathic rock, Dave is known to some as Captain Feldspar.  To most people he’s

“The Kiln Guy” or “Kilndoc” or maybe “That guy with the long hair that fixes stuff” or sometimes Dave Bracker (be warned, he rarely answers to that one). Dave has been fixing kilns and other ceramics equipment for more than 25 years now.  And for the last few years, you can add industrial clay mixing equipment to the list.   Dave is the president of our sister company, Kansas Clay, and with that great power comes the great responsibility of keeping everything working. That’s a tall order!

Working here since birth, give or take

Primary Roles – keeping everyone on their toes by jumping out from around corners to see who frightens the most easily, (hint, it’s the one who’s always CLOWNING around)

Fun Fact – For fun, Cindy likes to ride her bike and grow things in her garden, so between that and clay things, she’s pretty much always dirty, sweaty or both.  She almost never looks like this picture.  that was a rare clean moment.  

At around 12 Cindy was putting together promotional packets of catalogs for teachers, washing out slip buckets (ew) and assembling North Star Slabrollers.  During high school, there was summer and saturday work of filling orders and counting inventory, which paid out some nice cash for a high school kid to spend.  While in college and seeking a degree in music (with zero plans to go into the family business), slowly Cindy fell in love with the world of clay.   In the years that followed, Cindy learned nearly all aspects of the business and in 2017 became our President.