how is P O T T E R Y manufactured?

Here is a beautiful video of how this pottery is made:
How is pottery manufactured?
{click on the above link to watch, it is just four minutes long}

Here every dish is manufactured by hand from beginning to end.

We were here in this factory, with these workers, touching this pottery. 
It was jaw-dropping fascination for us.

Knowing something is hand made and seeing it made by those hands was an eye-opening experience for us. Speaking no English, it was all smiles and nods with the workers. This man graciously stepped aside and invited me up to his place at the wheel.

It was the perfect day for pottery shopping.

I had already mapped out the stores we would go to and had a plan of the order to go. We were pleasantly surprised to be almost the only ones shopping which makes it so much more enjoyable. A personal factory tour was not on my itinerary.

Thank goodness for flexibility and having an open mind.

Now, I would highly recommend anyone going to Poland to shop to take the tour. It changed the way we feel about the beautiful items we purchased.

With floor to ceiling of pottery and some rooms being super small- even a couple bodies in a single store is too crowded.

One of our first stops ended up being our favorite and made the whole experience the difference between buying it on a shelf and buying it from the factory in Poland.

Manufaktura is a larger store connected to their factory. They also have two outlet stores in town which also happened to be our favorites even before we knew that everything came from their factory.

After shopping around for a little while, I asked the guy working there {seemed to be a manager} if we could have a quick tour. I didn't want it to take our whole day {we were on a mission}, but we could see the potters through the window and our curiosity was piqued.

He had someone cover the front desk and was quite happy to take us on what ended up being one of the highlights of our trip. We felt like we had a backstage pass to a rock concert. I asked if I could take pictures. Initially, he said I could but not faces.

After taking a couple pictures, he gave me the go-ahead that it was acceptable to take any pictures that I would like. After scaring one of the first workers with the flash of my camera {he jumped}, they warmed up and were fine with our presence and our camera.

Walking into the painting room was what I imagined walking into a factory a century ago would have been like. The girls were lined up in rows of tables painting side by side. As we entered the room, there was talking and giggling.

As soon as they noticed we were there it got quiet. They stayed quite solemn for the duration {maybe 10 minutes} of our visit. We did not move around much, I think we were just fascinated by what was going on in there.

Curious as to how much they are paid for their labor, I asked our new friend if the girls make a decent salary. He let us know wages are not as high as in Germany {as if the Germans are rich}, but they do alright.

He also said many of them are immigrants from Kazakhstan, Hungary, Czech Republic and Lithuania, so the wages are much better than they could ever receive in their neighboring countries.
They use paint brushes and special sponges to hand stamp the pottery. They colors are faded as they paint them on, then brighten after they glaze and fire it up. Nothing fancy. Plain and simple.

They were so fast.
Their designs are beautiful.

They have traditional designs, and special patterns called UNIKAT.
UNIKAT involves much more color and detail usually signed on the bottom with the designer's name. We now understand completely why they are more expensive. They are truly works of art.
 
I could have watched all day.

Moving on to the one girl dipping each piece of pottery in the glaze was incredible to us as well. The guy giving our tour told us it is all natural and pointed out that she was not even wearing gloves. 

The more we watched, the more we loved it.
We meaning both Jim and I.
We were equally intrigued.

At the end of our tour, we walked outside to see the clay in the back, pulled from the nearby rivers. 

It was time to wrap up our shopping and dinner.
With no time to stop for lunch, we were so hungry.

Polish specialties for dinner did not disappoint....

the price of S U P E R on the economy

I keep repeating myself. We are running out of time.

Looking at the months we have left in Europe and the places we need to see, I am not sure there are enough weekends to fit it all in. But, we are going to try!

We could have moved back without going to Poland again, but why? I am the only one who has gone, and really wanted to go back with Jim.

Last week, the boys were out of school on Friday which also means I was off work. It was a good day to make a trip somewhere.

We decided a day or two before for Jim to take the day off and make a quick trip. 
With the boys starting basketball in December, we know open weekends off are soon to be filled up.
Ty had to work on Friday, so we had a cute girl come over to babysit.

With Ty finally driving- the problem with transportation is solved. A beautiful thing.


Poland is super cheap. We could have done a 24-hour trip again, but decided to spend the night instead. Our room was not fancy, and the bed was not comfortable, but for around $50 {including breakfast} we were fine. 

We left Mackenbach about 3:30am and drove straight to Boleslawiec- the beautiful town of ceramics. North east of our house, we drove through Dresden {a city I would love to spend more time in} and just over the border into Poland.

Our destination was slightly south east of Berlin- another city on our list.
No police stops this trip {Jim was driving}, but we did have Esso station issues.

We carefully mapped out where the last Esso station in Germany was in order to avoid paying for gas on the economy or in Poland.

Before filling up, I went in and asked the ladies at the gas station if they would take our Esso card- pre-loaded with $ which allows us to receive our rationed price.

They were not sure if it would work or not, so we decided to just test it with 5 Euro before filling up our whole tank.

I'm not sure what part she did not understand, but as soon as I tried to run our card to pay the 5 Euro, she realized they would take our card and told us to finish filling up. I tried to pay the 5 Euro, but she reassured me that it was fine- go fill up.

Unfortunately, because we had two transactions, it would not go through. So frustrating. She told us to figure it out when we got back to Ramstein. We ended up having to pay {economy price} right there.

Price to fill up was a whopping 94 Euro, which is $131.50.
Ouch.

Fortunately, Esso made it right and after filling out a dispute {once we returned to the base}, they approved it and refunded us the difference.

In order to do this, they go back to that day and figure out the price of gas.

Convert the euro to dollar rate that day based on the euro.
Subtract what we should have paid {our rationed price} from what we paid. The bottom line shocked us. If the transaction had been done properly, we should have paid $58.61.

A huge difference {our refund} of $72.89 on one tank of gas- more than it cost us to fill up. Wow.
At least we had a full tank of gas and were on our way to a full day of shopping and togetherness.

L I G H T S would be nice

Polish pottery is very popular among military and civilian wives who live in Germany. You see it everywhere. With cobalt as the traditional color, I did not initially fall in love with it.

While having dinner with friends, or walking past it in the mall, I always thought it was nice, but I could maybe live without it. It was a lot of blue and we just don't have a lot of blue in our house.

Until this summer.
We now have some blue.
I'm also now in love with it.

I'm not sure we can ever have too much blue now.

I don't know if it is better or not that I waited three years to decided I wanted our own collection.

In July, we had friends over for dinner. They were moving back to the states and I knew she knew how to shop and buy polish pottery.

I threw out the idea of going on a shopping trip to Poland that week before she left so she could teach me how to shop and where to go.

We convinced the husbands we needed to go and within a couple of days we were on the road.

Along with another friend, we left at 2:00am on a Friday morning.

The drive to Boleslawiec, Poland, the polish pottery capital, is about six and a half hours.

Our plan worked perfectly with one quick stop {by the policja} along the way.
We had crossed into Poland and noticed the police in front of us on the highway.

Not knowing the speed limit, I decided to just keep going slow behind them. You can't speed if you are following the police, right? We were going really slow.

Within a minute or two, they held their lollipop STOP sign out the window for us to pull over.

Seriously, I had no idea what I did. It definitely was not for speeding this time.

They {two of them} came to my driver's side window.

My heart was beating a little fast, but I knew we were fine.

One of them knew a few words in English, so we spoke mostly broken German between us. Crazy, I know.

We figured out we did not have our headlights on. In Poland, it is law to have them on twenty-four hours a day.

Oops.

He said I was flashing them on and off. All we could figure is that I had them on auto and they must have been turning on and off. I'm still not convinced.

I gave him everything I had and we waited in the van.

Where we pulled over, there was a chain fence with a padlock.

Michelle {our pottery expert who just forgot about the lights... we were so excited to shop} let me know we were NOT going in that gate- no matter what.

We couldn't stop laughing.

This is not always a good thing when you are trying to sweet talk your way out of a ticket. This is not the first time to have this happen to me. In Poland, when you receive a ticket you are required to pay on the spot. They will take you to an ATM to get the money if you don't have it. They are serious.

A few minutes later, they motioned for me to come over to their car.
What police does that?
Polish police, obviously.

I had given him my international license, military id, germany driver's license, passport and our car registration. He asked which was my license and if I was a soldier.

Nope, not a soldier but I let him know my man was a mighty fine one. I'm not sure if they understood what I was saying, but they didn't ask me any more questions.

He wrote down one of the numbers from one of the ID's and let us on our way.  
Before leaving, I did ask what the speed limit was and reassured him the lights would stay on.
Lesson learned. Welcome to Poland.

Running in to no fewer than a dozen more police that day kept us on our toes.
They were out in full force, but we didn't let that ruin our day of shopping.

We shopped all day without another person in any of the 10-15 stores that we visited. It was amazing and overwhelming at the same time. In the states, the prices are outrageous. In Germany, on base they are maybe not as high but still very expensive.

Not only are the prices better in Poland, the experience is unlike any other.
We finished up when the last shop closed at 6:00 and headed back to Germany.

Driving into Mackenbach right at 2:00am, it was exactly a twenty-four hour trip.
This weekend, Jim and I decided at the last minute to make a quick trip back.

We had a fabulous time.
This time, we decided to spend the night.
And, he kept the lights on.