Meet Tamzin Lurlay

We recently connected with Tamzin Lurlay and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Tamzin, great to have you with us today and excited to have you share your wisdom with our readers. Over the years, after speaking with countless do-ers, makers, builders, entrepreneurs, artists and more we’ve noticed that the ability to take risks is central to almost all stories of triumph and so we’re really interested in hearing about your journey with risk and how you developed your risk-taking ability.

When I started college I was an art major. Art had always been my first love and I was excited to explore new ways of creating art and developing my voice. However after finishing my first 2 years, I needed to take time off to earn money to finish my degree and I began having second thoughts. It’s not that my love for art was waning, in fact I was still enthralled and I enjoyed honing my abilities in both 2d and 3d art. I was worried about my ability to support myself financially; I was only the second person in my family to attend college and I needed to be able to earn my living. In 1991, I switched to Elementary Education, finished my degree, and found a job teaching. I spent the next 20 years in education and my art was relegated to volunteering to paint signboards, creating t-shirts designs for local nonprofits, and doing art with my kids. I always believed myself to be fundamentally a creative person but it just wasn’t in the cards for me to pursue art as a career.
Then came a time when my children were largely grown and I had the opportunity to regroup. I took a class in ceramics at a local community college and I was hooked. It was a perfect fit for both my pragmatic, practical side and my inherent creative side. I began learning all I could and making pieces for our own use and as gifts for friends and family. My instructor encouraged me to find a studio and continue my practice, which I did. I showed my work at a local market in 2022 for the first time and sold several pieces. More important than the sales though was the overwhelmingly positive response to my work. I felt I was being given a second chance at being an artist and fulfilling my childhood dream.
In 2023, my husband lost his job and because of the recession, wasn’t able to find another. Finances were very tight and I suddenly had to revisit that same old question almost 30 years later: would I go back to teaching and take the safe, dependable route or would I trust in my skills and my passion and take a risk to continue with my art. I didn’t sign up for a single market in 2023, I was still creating, still making pottery but I was also doing a lot of soul searching and frankly handling some of life’s hard curve balls.
I decided I wasn’t willing to give up without at least a good solid try so I signed up for some local markets starting early in 2024. Some of the markets were juried and I had to wait to see if my work would be accepted and it was ! I signed up for market after market doing 10 throughout the year. Each market was another confirmation that this is what i was supposed to do. I sold more pieces, raised my prices and covered my expenses, and I met so many people who appreciated my art and my perspective. I realized I needed to lean into my art and accept that it would always be a risk. In fact life itself is inherently risky, but making the decision to follow my heart and my art was, and is, so worth it.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

As a ceramicist, I create small batch, hand built tableware and home goods using different clay bodies and glazes. Each piece is created organically, intuitively and is a one-of-one original. My work honors the fact that I am using very basic materials like earth and water to create cups, bowls, and plates that people will use everyday. My pottery is very personal and very human, my fingerprints are on each piece, and I hope to encourage people to develop relationships with the pieces they use daily.
Life is often crazy and fast and we often feel rushed all day long. My pottery encourages both of us to slow down a bit, to pick a favorite mug and take the time to make your favorite hot drink and then, even more importantly, to enjoy it–to savor the drink, the vessel, the time spent as a very human experience.
My pieces primarily focus on the process of preparing food and eating and drinking but I am continually working on new pieces that encourage both you and me to slow down, take a moment to appreciate the little joys of life and the beauty of every day things.
I will be showcasing my work at several Bay Area markets throughout 2025 and frequently updating my website to reflect current work available.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

The most important quality for me is curiosity. Whether you are a creative or a techie or an educator, be curious about your environment, your work, your perspective. I needed to be curious about what I was doing and how and really, why ? I’m still curious, can I do this differently ? what if I explore a bit ? This curiosity is the root of some of my most popular ceramic pieces.
Secondly, I really needed to cultivate resilience. I had to practice not fearing failure and moving through rejection as though it was the final word. At times I needed to evolve or adapt but I realized that I’d been doing that my whole life. I am successful at many things that I failed at miserably the first several times. I keep working, revising, and evolving and I have fewer rejections and the ones I do receive hit differently.
Finally, it was important for me to understand what the clay (the glaze or the kiln) could do and what it couldn’t. Clay won’t be forced and even when you do everything correctly, it will blister or crack or explode. I have had to work to release my expectations and my reliance on specific results. I’ve often brought a piece out of the kiln and been very disappointed in the finish only to fall in love with it a few days later. Or better yet, a piece I dislike will be beloved by a customer who appreciates the finished piece without my preconceived expectations.
These three qualities that I developed in my pottery practice have actually impacted my whole life positively.

Looking back over the past 12 months or so, what do you think has been your biggest area of improvement or growth?

This last year I learned an important lesson, which impacted both my work and my life perspective. I often talked about how flexible I was and how I was able to pivot when plans didn’t work out until my daughter said that it wasn’t flexibility or even really pivoting, it was that I just had so many contingency plans. After some reflection, I realized she was right. I anticipated roadblocks and failures and I had not only plan B but plans C-G as well.
What I came to understand was that I wasn’t able to give any plan or decision 100% because I also needed energy and bandwidth for the contingency plans. As soon I realized that, I decided I was going to put all my eggs in one basket, I would go for broke on plan A and if it didn’t pan out, I’d pivot but not until. This freed up so much mental and emotional bandwidth in my work and my life.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.tdlpottery.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tdlpottery