Meet the WV potter whose products sell out in 10 days each year

By Stephen Baldwin, RealWV

“Come on in here,” Maryanne Tuck Grimmett says as she opens the pink door to her pottery studio and invites me inside. “Thank you so much for coming to visit.” 

She’s got a smile the size of Texas, and I quickly learn it’s as genuine as Indian Creek, which runs near her farm. 

Maryanne and her husband, BJ, make their living on their property just outside Greenville, WV, in Monroe County. He is a horse trainer and preacher; she is a potter. 

You can’t just find her pottery anywhere, though. She sells most everything she makes each year during a ten-day period in one historic West Virginia venue. 

“Growing a small business is doing the best you can with what you have,” she reflects. “I’m lucky and proud…and just so thankful.” 

Early struggles 

Maryanne first took an interest in pottery in 2008. She was attending graduate school in North Carolina, pursuing a Master’s degree in English at Appalachian State University, when she first saw a potter’s wheel in action. 

“I didn’t know a thing about pottery,” she remembers. “I was amazed. There was a woman working at a studio on campus. I asked her how long she’d been doing this. She said seven years. I remember thinking that if she could learn how to do it in seven years, I could too.” 

So Maryanne charged her iPod, downloaded the dramatized New Testament, and started making pottery. Kind of. 

“I was very, very bad at it,” she says with a laugh. “In my first six week class, I didn’t produce a single piece.”

“I just wasn’t naturally good at it,” she reflects. “That’s ok. You don’t have to be naturally good at things if you enjoy it and it’s worth it to you to keep doing the work.”

She did enjoy it, and she did keep up the work. Not long later, she took her first few pieces to a small farmer’s market in North Carolina one weekend. “A little old lady bought a spoon rest from me,” she says with the joy of a child on Christmas morning. “I was playing it cool on the outside, but I was ecstatic. Then it just grew from there.”

The potter’s process

When Maryanne & BJ moved back to West Virginia (she’s originally from Rainelle), she set up a pottery studio in the basement. Now, she works out of a dedicated, separate space beside her house.  

“People tend to think pottery is this abstract creative process. It isn’t,” she says. “I hate to break people’s hearts, but pottery is 95% hard work and 5% creativity.”

For her part, Maryanne loves every step on the path. 

“I love the work. I love to work hard. I love having a plan, making a plan, putting systems in place, and sticking to it.” 

After several years in business, Maryanne has a well-oiled system in place. She creates pottery starting every January, making as many pieces as her “one woman show” can until the State Fair of West Virginia kicks off in August. 

Then she loads up her Shasta Airflyte Camper, named Bernadette, and takes all of her work to the fair to sell. Within 10 days, nearly all of it is gone. 

“Thanks to beautiful, amazing, supportive customers who come and pick out pottery,” she says. “They give it as gifts, they keep it for themselves, and they come back.”

Maryanne says time and time again that “West Virginians show up for each other,” something she has seen in her business time and time again. It’s a principle she does her best to give back to the state that’s given her so much. 

If she has any pottery left after the fair, she chooses a local business, “preferably woman-run,” and sets up a pop-up store.

“I may sell a few pieces online if any is left, but I don’t ship or sell online.” 

‘Functional & flawed’

Maryanne offers a wide variety of items including mugs, bowls, plates, spoon rests, dog bowls, tumblers, and ornaments.

As she crafts each piece, she thinks about who will buy it and how they might use it. “Somebody will put this in their camper and drive to Pipestem,” she thinks. “Somebody will sit on their front porch each morning as they drink coffee from this mug.” So she aims to make every piece as unique as the person holding it. No two are exactly alike. 

“Everything I’ve learned about pottery I’ve learned by making mistakes,” she says, with a confidence that belies her confession. 

Her Rotten Tomato mugs are a perfect example. “They were born of a mistake. I was throwing mugs, and I accidentally smashed one. My sister in law said it looked like a rotten tomato.”

“It was sunk down and squatty,” she remembers. “They’re wrinkly and kinda weird but they’re easy to hold. I have customers who have a hard time gripping and they love these. They’re very easy to hold. They’re functional and flawed.”

She introduces the famous Rotten Tomato mugs in a new color each year. This year, her customers can look forward to a light blue hue. 

Maryanne doesn’t take her success for granted

As I look around her pottery studio, I notice history textbooks. I ask the talented potter if she reads heavy-duty history textbooks in her spare time for…fun? 

She laughs and says, “I’m actually ⅔ of the way through a PhD in History at Liberty University. It’s strange to switch back and forth between the French Religious Wars and the Thirty Years War in Central Europe. And then do my pottery!” 

But somehow it all makes sense for Maryanne–the pink studio, the teal camper, the bright smile, the history textbooks, and the pottery with a personality to match its maker. 

“I’m just really grateful to do what I love,” she says. “People don’t need pottery; they choose to make pottery part of their lives. I really respect that. I’m very thankful for that and try to produce something that’s worthy of people’s generosity.”

For more information on Maryanne’s pottery, visit her under the grandstand at the State Fair of West Virginia or check out her website and social media.