Shanghai’s Taikang Lu is a crowded market street, its length disordered by listless bicycle rickshaws, old ladies with shopping bags, and angry taxis. Narrow Lane 201 opens into the middle of it, defined on one side by an old factory and, on the other, a modest rose-red building that houses Hands in Clay pottery shop. Inside, a modest, light-filled gallery displays a group of meter-high figurative clay sculptures. In the adjoining room the light goes yellow and a little dusty. Glaze samples are arranged on racks; tables and benches are covered with clay residue. The air is earthy. The music is Liz Phair. Standing at his work table, dressed in worn Carhartt pants and a maroon University of Minnesota sweatshirt, is Jeremy Clayton. He is thirty and originally from White Bear Lake. The former garbage-truck mechanic and waiter became, in 2001, the first foreigner to open a pottery shop in the history of modern China. “It’s been kind of a weird path,” he admits, with his long Minnesota vowels and modesty. “I didn’t plan it, that’s for sure.”
In the early 1990s, Clayton took pottery classes at the University of Minnesota, but he was uninspired and transferred to Dakota County Technical College. It was a decision that would require him to “grease trucks with garbage dripping on my face in the middle of winter.” Clayton returned to the University determined to become a potter. He graduated with a fine arts degree in 1998 and followed his girlfriend, a Chinese major, to Oregon, then to Shanghai. At first he worked odd jobs, including a stint teaching English. But he became restless, and so, with a $16,000 loan (secured in Minnesota), he set up Hands in Clay. Not long after that, his girlfriend, “a Wayzata girl, a Breck girl,” left. “That was rough timing,” he admits.
Clayton’s challenges were not limited to a broken heart. For millennia, China has produced the world’s finest ceramics; over the last century it has manufactured billions of pieces of cheap “fine china.” It is not an ideal environment for a foreigner to set up a pottery shop. But Clayton had a plan. “I thought it’d be interesting if a foreigner opened a studio,” he recalls as he lays new cords of clay across one of his sculptures. “And if he taught classes to bored expatriate housewives.” He nods at four pottery wheels on his studio floor. “The classes are what floated my first year.”
Today, nearly three years into the venture, Hands in Clay is a small-scale success. The sculpture sells, and the classes are popular, with enrollment driven by good word-of-mouth in Shanghai’s expatriate community. “But you wouldn’t believe the number of people who walk in here asking me where to buy pot,” Clayton says with exasperation. “They think I’m some pottery-throwing hippie. I’ve got a business to run.” He also has competition from an aggressive Hong Kong heiress who recently set up a pottery shop and school one floor above his. “She said, ‘At first, I thought I’d buy you out. But then I decided I’d shut you down.’” Though she sets her prices to undercut Clayton’s, the Minnesotan’s superior work continues to outsell hers.
It is a dilemma that Clayton would not likely face if he had remained in Minnesota, where demand for clay sculpture is somewhat less than brisk. “I’m lucky to be doing this,” he says, taking a pinch of snuff. “That’s something I try to remember when it’s a struggle here. I mean, I could be living at home and waiting tables in Forest Lake. Doing pottery as a hobby.” He reaches for his clay extruder. “But instead I’m living this life in Shanghai.”—Adam Minter
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