Every year on the first weekend in May, pottery and ceramics studios in Maine open their doors for a chance to meet the artists, peek in the kilns, see demonstrations, and shop for pottery and other handmade goods.

Local potters Martha Grover and Joshua Rysted have hosted a spring sale in their West Bethel studio for about 10 years, but adjusted their schedule to coincide with the tour about four years ago.

In addition to their usual showroom, Martha and Josh filled the studio space with hundreds of their pieces — everything from functional butter dishes and olive oil decanters to Grover’s distinctive and fanciful porcelain creations.

More than 50 studios participate, from as far away as Blue Hill and as far north as Saddleback, but the majority of the studios on the tour hug the coast.

“We were very busy both mornings, and then steady in the afternoons,” said Grover. “We had some people who were traveling the tour circuit — the farthest travelers were from Burlington, Vermont. Mostly we had locals, some who knew the studio already, but there were several newcomers who were curious, saw the Pottery Tour signs in town, or saw the spot on WCSH and decided to come check us out.”

“Things were decent,” agreed Rysted. “Traffic and sales were similar to last year. We had 70 people come through over the weekend. Most were local or just passing by and saw the signs in town. About ten percent were actually on the pottery tour, but that’s not unusual given our location in relation to all of the other studios.”

In some ways, Grover and Rysted start creating pieces for the spring sale not long after their holiday sale, but they both teach as well and the demand for pottery class has been high enough this year that they have added additional sessions. Their work for the sale began in earnest about a month ago.

They also sell their work at a number of fairs in Western Maine, including the Chamber of Commerce’s annual Summer Festival in July on the Bethel Green and the Mahoosuc Land Trust’s Monarch Festival in August.

Organized by Lori Keenan Watts of Fine Mess Pottery in Augusta, the Maine Pottery Tour is funded in part by a grant from the Maine Arts Commission, an independent state agency supported by the National Endowment for the Arts. For more information about the tour, and participating artists, go to mainepotterytour.org. The site includes an interactive map showing shop locations, color-coded by region.

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