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Richard Siegel and Karen Skelton had a life . One they ’d spend intimately two 10 building . One that any foreigner , font pressed to the chicken feed eight eld ago , would have envied . Siegel was full partner in a Manhattan ad federal agency ; Skelton , a free-lance computer graphic fashion designer , had recently launched a line of top - selling fabrics and wallpaper for Schumacher . The pair pass Monday through Friday in a chic West Village flat , then head for their weekend office in the Hamptons — a shingle - covered bungalow in Amagansett that they ’d repair and surround with old roses , blowsy perennials , even a picket fence . Everything , it seemed , was as it should be . Then , in 1991 , Skelton walked into a pottery studio on West 19th Street , and take the air out with a new life , the one she and Siegelreallywanted .
“ On a whim , I decided to take a class at this place , ” she explain , “ and I went home with substantial , tangible things : bowls and plates that I could use and hold and passion . graphical design is often a long , removed , intellectual process . This was quick and tactual and satisfying . A lightbulb go off . I guess I ’m a belated blunder , because , finally , I knew what I wanted to do . ”
Well , sort of . When Skelton got her name add to the wait list for a kiosk at the New York gift show — an annual market where middleman hawk their merchandise to retail merchant from around the commonwealth — she was n’t exactly trusted what kind of pottery she plan to sell . But since it usually takes several years to ensure a post , she figured she had batch of time to decide . That peculiar year , however , the show ’s God Almighty were adding a unexampled floral and garden section . If Skelton ’s Cartesian product fit under that heading , she was told , a cubicle would be hers in three weeks .
“ I ’d love to be able to say you that my decision to make flowerpots came from some pauperism in my own garden , ” Skelton says , express joy , “ but that ’s not how it happened . If they had say me they had place in a unexampled pet section , I would ’ve done pawl bowls . ”
Lucky for the rest of us , they — and she — did n’t . Instead , Skelton did for the pot what Kate Spade has done for the tote , Calvin Klein for the slip : elevated the simpleton to a stylish new stratum , making the familiar fresh again . The shape of Skelton ’s containers , an inverted triangle with a lip , is n’t raw . In fact , she uses store - buy , terra - cotta planters and then cut through them with colorful and textured glaze : shining blues as liquid state and bottomless as the ocean , delicate greens reminiscent of Chinese celadon , icy yellows that refresh like cold lemonade , a crusty sand you ’d verify was the actual thing . At a meter when garden goods tended to be either plain - Jane or over - the - top ornate , her crapper were nothing curt of mind - blowing . And buyers at the gift show knew it , even if Skelton did n’t . When she took orders for a whopping 6,000 green goddess — placed by high - death stores like New York ’s Bergdorf - Goodman , Chicago ’s A New Leaf , and The Gardener in Berkeley — she was pleasantly shocked . “ Then I reckon , what the pit am I going to do ? ”
With financial support from Siegel , she ordered thousands of pots from a provider in Manhattan ’s flower district , hired a carpenter to transform her Hamptons poulet coop into a studio apartment , and at once got to work . “ The studio apartment was under construction , ” she withdraw , “ so here I was out on the front lawn in the chic Hamptons , surround by pots and covered in glaze . I was getting up in the middle of the Nox to ferment on this kiln or turn off that one . pot were drying all over the house . It was a mess . ”
Within two years , as early client increased their club and new ones ( including Barneys , Takashimaya , and Ad Hoc Softwares ) came on board , Skelton clear she had a full - fledged manufacturing cognitive operation on her hands — and that Amagansett , with its sky - gamey property note value , was n’t the best place to expand . “ Already , the private road out there was shoot down us , ” she says . “ We tried everything to beat the traffic , even hitting the road at 2 a.m. Still , it was n’t easy leaving a house and garden we ’d been working on for yr . ”
The couple purchase four building in upstate New York : an arena rural enough to keep overhead down , but still shut down enough to the city for solace . The business , which Siegel christened Potluck , went into three building — a 1930s kit house became the place , a former roller skating rink blossom into a studio apartment , and an honest-to-goodness barber shop was reborn as a retail store — on Main Street in Accord . The population of the town , once home to a busy train place , had dwindled to around 5,600 , wee for an unusual labor pool . “ The first employee , Donna Connell , was a waitress when I engage her . Now she ’s the office manager and knows everything about the business , ” Skelton say . Another primal personnel putsch was Siegel himself . in short after the move upstate , he drop by the wayside his solar day job to go for Potluck full - time . Over the next four years , the couple learn scores of unseasoned locals how to candy pile ( as well as Potluck ’s newer lines of dinnerware ) and to launch the company depot .
Of the decision to go retail , Skelton say , “ It was n’t much of a risk . We had the place and were already there all Clarence Shepard Day Jr. . It begin as an experiment , a way for us to determine what our client went through . ” But it soon became a destination . Before the shop opened , nearly every storefront on Main Street was shuttered . Today , thanks to Potluck , the local economy is reinvigorate , and all but a few buildings are internal to bustling clientele .
In the process of quicken a downtown , though , Skelton and Siegel ignored their own blank space , an 1840s farmhouse 20 proceedings away in Gardiner . At home they function more slowly , from the privileged out . The house ’s noisome level architectural plan yielded a few outdoor nooks — garden rooms waiting to happen — including one near the kitchen that became a pergola - cover dining terrace . “ But the in force view was out back , ” Skelton says , “ where the lawn ripple down a hill . ” When the couplet move in , the room facing the backyard contained a single petite windowpane . So they knock down that bulwark , replace it with French doorway , and added a pack of cards . “ Then I seat on the deck for a year , ” she say , “ reckon and thinking , before I see out what to do next . ”
The melodic theme arrived , as they so often do , in the manikin of a problem : an unsightly well masking in the middle of the yard . Skelton commissioned a simple-minded , spacious wood arbor to enshroud the eyesore . “ Then we needed a direction to get from the deck to the arbor , so we put in a bluestone path . And on the spur of the moment , there were all these obvious places to begin planting . ” With the help of Debra Tobin - Gray of Gardenmakers , a local garden - design firm , Skelton station Alberta spruce Tree at each of the pergola ’s four corners , put in billowy shrubs to soften the transition from deck to itinerary , and began a perennial border that stretches out from either side of the route .
“ Most of the plants are honest-to-god - fashioned : pretty , flowery poppycock , ” she order . “ When I clip pages out of magazines , I always go for the unembellished , forward-looking , Nipponese matter . But I do n’t have a Zen sign of the zodiac . I have a cottage , so I planted a traditional cottage garden . ” Still , it ’s the unexpected braid on tradition , the surprise — such as two spiky pineapples rising from a duad of classical urns — that define Skelton and Siegel ’s garden . And their life .
Last year the twain finally betray their Manhattan apartment . “ You worry that if you leave the city , ” Skelton admits , “ you ’ll become unplugged and disappear . It was a huge leaping of religion . ” But just another in a recollective series of such leaps . As Siegel invest it : “ I identify the company not so much for what Karen was making as for what she was doing . Potluck means you ’re never indisputable how something will come out . ” And that ’s the elbow room — without a set menu or a detailed road map — he and Skelton got to where they are today , which is exactly where they want to be .
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