My First Art Market at Newstead Art Hub

The Newstead Art Hub market was a revelation, but not for the reasons I expected. I arrived with my small collection, having spent months scrutinizing every rim and every glaze drip. As a maker, you often become your own harshest critic, seeing only the tiny flaws—the slight wobble in a coil or the way a glaze pooled differently than planned. I was certain those “imperfect” pieces would be the last to leave the table.

But the opposite happened.

What I saw throughout the morning was a beautiful lesson in perspective. People weren’t looking for factory-line precision; they were searching for character! They gravitated toward the very pieces I had worried over & did not like. I watched as hands reached for the vessels that carried the most visible “human trace”—the ones where the clay told a story of its own making. These pieces were among the first to find new homes, sold to people who saw beauty exactly where I had seen a “mistake.”

It was a humbling reminder of why the hand matters. In a world of digital perfection, we are all secretly hungry for the irregular, the honest, and the unique. Those “flaws” weren’t errors at all; they were the evidence of a real person working & and it turns out, that was exactly what people came to find.