Hinckley Pottery

Hinckley Pottery at 3132 Blues Alley NW is a ceramics studio and gallery in the Georgetown canal neighborhood, on Blues Alley, the lane that has been associated with Georgetown’s music and entertainment culture since the famous Blues Alley jazz club established the alley’s identity in the 1960s. The pottery studio in the Blues Alley setting serves Georgetown’s appetite for the handmade ceramic object in both the functional and the decorative categories, producing the bowls, mugs, plates, and vessels that the studio pottery tradition has made into one of the most accessible forms of American craft art.

The studio pottery tradition that Hinckley Pottery represents is organized around the wheel-thrown and hand-built ceramic forms that the studio potter produces in small runs or as unique objects, fired in the kiln and glazed in the specific palette that the potter’s aesthetic develops. The functional ceramic, which is used for eating, drinking, and serving food, is the most practically immediate form of the craft: the handmade mug that the Georgetown homeowner uses for the morning coffee is in daily contact with the user in a way that a painting or a sculpture is not, which gives the functional ceramic a different intimacy with its owner.

The Georgetown gift market provides a significant component of the pottery studio’s customer base: the handmade ceramic bowl, the set of mugs, or the single statement vessel is among the most appropriate gifts for the Georgetown host, the Georgetown housewarming, and the Georgetown celebration that requires a gift with both utility and meaning.

Blues Alley is accessible from the M Street level and from the canal-adjacent streets. Hours run Tuesday through Sunday. The Georgetown residential market for handmade pottery is sustained by the neighborhood’s culture of the domestic meal as a social occasion. The Georgetown dinner party, which is a regular fixture of the neighborhood’s professional and diplomatic social life, provides the handmade ceramic bowl, the individual soup mug, or the serving platter with a specific audience: the guests who notice the objects on the table and who understand the difference between the handmade ceramic and the production piece.

The Blues Alley address at 3132 gives Hinckley Pottery the canal neighborhood character that the studio pottery tradition belongs to: the working studio in the residential and light commercial lane, accessible to the neighborhood without the commercial overlay of the main retail strips. The Georgetown visitor who finds Hinckley Pottery in the Blues Alley address discovers it in a specifically Georgetown context, in the lane that the jazz club has made one of the most recognizable addresses in the neighborhood’s cultural geography. Hours run Tuesday through Sunday. Hinckley Pottery at 3132 Blues Alley welcomes visitors Tuesday through Sunday, with Saturday hours extended to 6pm for the Georgetown resident who combines the pottery visit with an evening at Blues Alley jazz club next door. The studio’s production cycle means the inventory changes regularly as new work comes out of the kiln, which rewards the regular Georgetown visitor who returns to the studio through the seasons.