LaughinGnome: A taste for something great

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If you’ve ever found the bite of whisky a little too harsh, or your glass of wine hasn’t gone down all too smooth, there may be an unconventional answer for your problem. 

Instead of springing for a nicer bottle next time to conquer that unwanted taste, you might consider learning about nucleation. 

What’s nucleation? Owner of LaughinGnome Pottery Darby Huffman could tell you all about it, or at least how it applies to pottery. 

Years back, when Huffman was first starting what is now the LaughinGnome Pottery company, he discovered that the clay he uses possesses a unique ability to make the beverage it holds taste better. Some quality of the clay chemically reacts with air outside the cup and the liquid on the inside to give any beverage a rounder, fuller taste - even water. Huffman has tested out his theory, too, with confirming results. At the Port Townsend Farmers market, people who drank coffee out of LaughinGnome mugs and cups reported that they indeed could taste the difference between drinks in LaughinGnome Pottery versus drinks in regular glasses. 

Almost mistakenly, Huffman had figured it out one night over a bottle of wine when he and his ex-wife discovered that the bottle tasted much better from the unglazed pottery wine cup, than from a regular wine glass. This apprehension, though by accident, has proved to be a bridge between Huffman and his niche, which has allowed him to start a successful business selling his pottery. 

When Huffman was in preschool, and he had his first pottery project, he obviously didn’t know too much about playing with clay, but he did know that his name was on the bottom: it was something that he had made. 

“I knew when I did it, that’s what I wanted to do,” Huffman said.

As he grew up, he realized that there weren’t any potters in his small town that he could learn from. And, while all of his friends got jobs at the tire shop, Huffman wanted to get out of town. 

Luckily during his last years in high school, his parents moved to Grass Valley, where Huffman got to go to a school where he could play with clay. Most days, Huffman would complete all the stuff he did not like to do first - like math and science - then he could be free to work with pottery all he wanted. 

After high school, Huffman went to school at Cuesta College in San Luis Obispo, where he was able to take more pottery classes. But the trouble was, he really didn’t get all that much instruction, and the art professor there wasn’t even interested in pottery. So, Huffman had to forge his own path and figure out how to throw clay by himself. 

After college, Huffman thought it would be easy to get a pottery job on the West Coast, but it proved to be much harder than he thought. With his then girlfriend, he got married at Yosemite, then went up the coast to Oregon when he heard that they were hiring apprentices in Portland. 

Huffman found a carpenter’s apprenticeship instead. 

“I went to be a carpenter because I needed a living. Going to get married, got to have money, you know, and obviously there were no jobs as a potter.” 

Huffman has been working since he was about 17, and now 68, has worked about 50 years in different careers. 

“I’ve not stayed in one career at all. I’ve worked 25 years as a potter, 25 years as a carpenter and overlapped that with about 10 years in sales,” explained Huffman. 

It was the pottery side of success that came further down the line. Huffman had tried to start a pottery business once before, in 1980, but the company didn’t do as well as he hoped and Huffman was forced to go back into construction for a while. 

In 2004, Huffman opened up again, under the name of Daily Bird Pottery, now known as LaughinGnome Pottery. It was in 2006 that Huffman discovered his high fired unglazed pottery had the ability to impact the taste of a beverage. 

Part of the reason for LaughinGnome’s success, especially during this past year of the pandemic, has been their online presence. 

Huffman began looking for ways to diversify and make a more stable setup as COVID kept people indoors and away from the farmers market. 

“We are completely tied to the farmers market. If the farmers market stops like it did last year, we are in a world of hurt,” Huffman explained. One of the ways he adapted was by filming and releasing an online pottery class that anyone can take, from learning to throw and beyond. The class is six weeks long and teaches pottery to any level of aspiring potter. 

But through all the ups and downs, Huffman explained that it’s not the money that keeps him going.

“What I told young potters is, find a niche that really makes you get up in the morning and then it won’t matter how much you sell, you’ll be so happy doing it. It won’t matter if you sell a little or a lot one day, because you know you’re doing what you need to do.”

To learn more about LaughinGnome Pottery or their online class, visit www.laughingnome.com or catch them at the Port Townsend Farmers Market on Saturdays.