Spotlight Giveaway: White Peach Pottery
Meet Marianne Tolosa, a ceramic artist living and working in Northern Virginia. Marianne is the founder and creative hands behind White Peach Pottery, handmade and whimsical small batch ceramics.
Marianne loves to capture a mix of whimsy, pattern, and simplicity in her pottery. She desires to create pieces that we know you will find both useful and beautiful. She aspires to mimic her Creator, and take her aesthetic cues from places she visits as she attempts to mingle beauty with grace and simplicity.
Marianne is so incredibly talented and we are so excited to be partnering with her for a giveaway of some of her gorgeous hand crafted pieces!
That's right, two of you can win a beautiful gemstone coffee mug created by Marianne just for you!
Make sure you hop over to our Instagram to enter for your chance to win!
Make sure you also take the time to read our interview with Marianne below. What a beautiful story and life mission the Potter has molded especially for her. We know the words of her heart will come as an encouragement to yours.
Enjoy!
What inspired you to start WPP?
White Peach came together organically. I had done pottery during art school as part of getting my BA in Oil Painting, and then lived overseas in Japan, right out of college, where I was able to work with a local potter. But after returning to the States, I hadn't touched clay in years.
During my second year of marriage, at the age of 30, my husband and I had started fostering a teenage girl - which essentially took me from my previous fast-paced job of being the coffee director at a local coffee shop to being a stay-at-home mom. The new freedom of creating my own schedule while she was at school actually began to leave me bored and lonely.
I'm a creative, extroverted soul, who thrives on being active and surrounded by people, but suddenly my life revolved around chores at home and running errands by myself. After talking about my growing boredom with my husband, we landed on the idea of me joining a local pottery class to pick back up where I had left off in Japan. I started out making little cups and bowls for us, then a few presents for family and friends, and by the end of the 9 week class we had purchased a cheap wheel and a used kiln on Craigslist and transformed the garage into a small pottery studio. That was in 2010, and the rest, as they say, is history!
What is the meaning behind the name White Peach Pottery?
My nickname in college was "Peaches", because peaches are my favorite fruit and I would grab a couple to eat every time they had them in the dining hall. But when I lived in Japan, peaches became even more precious to me! You would walk into the supermarket during peach season and there were stacked displays of luscious, large white peaches individually wrapped in squishy, pink, foam netting. The white peach there is expensive - running from $2-10+ each depending on their quality. Buying one every few days as I shopped for groceries became a small treat for myself.
It's considered a special fruit - to be cherished as not only beautiful, but as delicious; it's meant to be enjoyed and eaten! I want my pottery to be like that. I call it the "sacred everyday" - using a precious object in a regular task, such as drinking your morning coffee. Like a beautiful peach waiting to be eaten, my pottery us meant to be used to bring joy to everyday moments.
As someone who owns her own business, what is one piece of advice you would give to women who would like to do the same but don't know where to start?
Give yourself time to get where you want to be, have grace with yourself when things don't go as planned, and trust that God's plan for you will be accomplished!
I've gone through many bends in the road to get me to where I am today. Some of them were fun times of rest and enjoyment; others felt painful but caused me to grow spiritually. Honestly, the painful times usually end up as the "best" times because that's where I meet God the most, and I wouldn't change my path to make it easier. His power is made perfect in our weakness, and the point of this pottery business isn't just for me to have a successful pottery business. It's to allow God to use me and the creativity He gifted to me to glorify Him. If that's done best through a pottery business, that's awesome!
Right now it allows me times of worship, prayer, and fellowship with the Holy Spirit as I work in my studio, and a schedule that's flexible enough to grab coffee with a friend who's having a hard day. But if He chose to take my business away tomorrow then I pray that He would show me how to glorify Him in a different line of work as well.