Megan Hinton took her first pottery class as a sophomore in high school where she learned the basics of hand-building and had her first attempt throwing pottery on the wheel. It wasn’t until her first year at Cabrillo College that she learned to throw and fell in love with pottery and the collaborative community that came with her class. Over several semesters, she developed a style that she continues to incorporate into her work under the name Megan Sofia Pottery. She continues to experiment with new designs and finds inspiration everywhere, but as a lover of home decor she gets most of her inspiration from textiles, patterns, and the experience of being in curated spaces.

Megan’s process includes three major steps: throwing, trimming, and firing. She uses speckled laguna clay, a Skutt wheel to throw on, various tools to shape, coyote glaze, and a Skutt glaze kiln for firing. Accidents can happen during any one of the steps in her process, like getting an air bubble, trimming too thin, s-cracks, or a piece blowing up in the kiln. Megan plans for these accidents by throwing more pots than she needs and not getting too attached or emotionally invested in her work. Even then, Megan says that the hardest part of creating is when she pulls something out of the glaze kiln and there are uncorrectable errors, “It feels like being five feet from the finish line but being asked to start the race over again.” She produces in batches of 20 and estimates that with firing time included, 4 to 6 solid days of work goes into each batch.

Megan often asks herself, “What feeling would I want someone to have while drinking out of one of my mugs?”; she hopes that you feel a sense of coziness and delight and that her pieces compliment your kitchen, dining room, and bedside table. “There is no better feeling than knowing that hundreds of people have a mug that I have created in their cabinet that they use for their morning cup of coffee.” You can find a variety of Megan’s mugs, vases, and spoon rests here at the shop.