Pewabic House & Garden Show
Pewabic Pottery Studio
Detroit, Mich.
June 8, 2025
Founded in 1903, Pewabic Pottery has been a ceramic staple in Detroit homes, churches and buildings for decades. It’s found in the city’s many historical gems like the Detroit Institute of Art, the Detroit Public Library and the Guardian Building, as well as more modern fixtures like Comerica Park, Little Caesars Arena and QLine stations. A leader in the city’s Arts & Crafts movement, it is one of the oldest continuously operating potteries in the United States, known for its handcrafted tiles and iridescent glazes.
The annual Pewabic House & Garden Show fundraiser offers visitors an opportunity to learn more about the historic pottery, shop ceramics, meet artists, and understand the pottery-making process while touring its National Historic Landmark studio.
While I had visited the studio once before, last weekend was my first time attending the show. I enjoyed the chance to get a closer look (there’s always something soothing about watching someone throw clay) and talk with some of the potters.
The show started outside with a tent full of works by different artists. While out of my price range, the pieces were exquisite: mugs, dishware, vases, jugs, planters, decorative tiles. The motifs ranged from nature to mythology to geometric patterns to Detroit pride, full of rich colors, shimmering iridiscents and intricate designs.
Drew Davis was throwing clay live, making a series of vases. Across the tent, Katie Bramlage was selling a variety of circular totems in light, earth tones. She says she envisions her art as something textural and primitive washed up from the shore that she would use to decorate a cave.
Inside, the studio had a self-guided tour that took you through the pottery-making process, interacting with demonstrators along the way. One of my favorite parts was watching decorative tile pressing. Wet clay was pressed into square plaster molds of varying motifs, then left to dry for about 20 minutes before being popped out and baked in a kiln.
In the next room, another artist demonstrated the glazing process, using small bottles with narrow tips to fill the imprinted designs with different colors. In between, we saw clay-making equipment, tile displays and the kiln room, an unchanged fixture since Pewabic’s earliest days. Upstairs was a small museum gallery, showcasing archival pieces. We also saw its education studio, where a class was learning to glaze tiles.
Back downstairs, we visited both the standing retail shop as well as its showroom with a full range of the studio’s tile patterns and glaze options (still sadly out of my price range; my kitchen backsplash will have to wait).
One of my favorite things about Detroit is its historical architecture, the grand old homes, ornate Art Deco buildings and stunning churches that hint of the city’s Glory Days, and the presence of Pewabic tile is always a point of pride. So often it is associated with Detroit’s past. But visiting the original Pewabic studio, meeting the artists and watching the tile-making process is a welcome reminder that the studio is still very much a part of the present and, hopefully, will continue to be a part of the future.
