Reprint from The Hamilton Spectator
July 3, 2006
By Meredith MacLeod

Potter takes craft and turns it into a thriving business for three decades

  Donn Zver's high school art teacher told him to give up any ideas about making a living at pottery.
  She also cut the ribbon when he opened his own studio and still visits occasionally all these 24 years later.
  Zver has become one of this area's best known artists and his mugs, plates, steamware, vases and casserole dishes are found in many homes in southern Ontario and far beyond.
  Next year he will celebrate 35 years as a potter.
  He doesn't have to sell at craft shows any more; his studio has become a destination in itself. Zver and his staff of three full-time and two part-time potters make about 12,000 pieces a year. Visitors can step into the studio where the wheel spins and the pottery is fired.
  A huge photo of Zver's mentor Cynthia Bringle, a celebrated potter in the United States, hangs over his left shoulder as he gracefully shapes his art.
  Zver knew from his first grasp of clay that it was all he would ever want to do, "I love the tactile quality of the clay and instantness of it. It goes from a lump to a shape in seconds."
  He skipped classes at the former Hamilton Collegiate to spin his wheel and was not deterred by anyone who said potters were starving artists.
  The Ontario College of Art turned his down because he didn't have enough high school art courses. But on his way home he saw a sign for the Sheridan School of Design. He pulled off the Queen Elizabeth Way and became a student.
  He studied for four years before getting an Ontario Crafts Council grant to study at the prestigious Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina.
  Then Zver returned and took a job setting up a ceramics course at the Saltfleet campus of Mohawk College, he taught for a year, beginning with 35 students and increasing that to 157.
  "I really liked teaching, but I fugured I needed to set up my own shop. My students were graduating to start their own businesses and I had never done it. How could I teach something I had never done myself?"
  For a year, Zver operated a co-op studio just outside Dundas with another potter and a weaver. When his grandfather passed away, Zver built a studio in the family farmhouse in Troy. But it wasn't until he bought property in 1980 on Highway 5 between Peter's Corners and St. George, that he truly left his art teacher's warning behind.
  Blink and you miss Troy. Zver quickly does the census: 11 homes, 72 people, nine cats and 4 dogs. But Hwy. 5 is a busy thoroughfare. Zver gets more than 25,000 visitors a year.
  He restored the dilapidated garage and opened his studio and gallery in 1982. He also fixed up the home next door. Built in 1861, it was once the home of the village's carpenter.
  "Between 1982 and 1996 there was an incredible increase in sales here. But it started to peak. I thought, 'If 1,000 cars go by a day and five want to stop for pottery how do I get more to stop?"
  He found the answer when he visited a potter's studio with a small café in Alymer. So he opened a small restaurant in 1997 called the Potter's Café. The goal was to drive the pottery business with lunch visitors - who dine on Zver pottery.
It worked. The year after the café opened, pottery sales jumped 30 percent. The restaurant developed a reputation for quality food, including winning the restaurant of the year award from Tourism Hamilton. Zver staged elaborate dinner events, including Dinner with the Kennedys (complete with a Marilyn Monroe impersonator) and a re-enactment of the last supper aboard the Titanic.
  But by 2003, Zver was fighting burnout.
  "I realized I had overwhelmed myself. The restaurant was bringing in 23,000 people a year, but I couldn't keep up with the pottery," says Zver now 57. The restaurant had an ambitious menu and was open for lunch and dinners seven days a week and hosting many weddings, parties and corporate events.
  "I had created this monster and it was emotionally and physically doing me in."
  He leased out the restaurant to focus on his first love. That changed again this month. His tenant's left to open their own restaurant and Zver is back in charge. He made some big changes. It's only open for lunch now and Zver encourages visitors to make reservations. The menu, revamped by chef Leigh Laidlaw, is small and simpler, focusing on salads, soups, quiches and light entrees.
  "I really observed during the year4s the restaurant was leased out. When your immersed in it, you can't see the forest for the trees. We're more focused now. A lot of our customers are women over 40 who want to have lunch after they shop. We want to make this the place to go for lunch and focus only on that, it was a valuable lesson."
  He renamed the restaurant Troy Café because he wanted to emphasize the connection to the village.
  Zver grew up in Hamilton, but the family also owned an orchard and grain farm in Troy. It's now operated by one of Zver's two brothers.
  In the time-honoured tradition of artisans, Zver is committed to nurturing apprentices. They stay with him for three to six years, before spreading their wings. His former apprentices include renowned Dundas potter Scott Barnim.
  "It's even more important now because colleges are cutting back more and more on the arts in favour of technology."
  Zver calls his style evolutionary. That seems wholly appropriate given how old the art of pottery is and how mostly untouched are the rolling hills of Troy. Zver follows trends, but doesn't change his approach because he's found a distinctive look. He has always favoured rich, earthy tones even during the pastel craze of the 1970's.
  "I'm sure I could have been a millionaire with dusty rose, but it didn't appeal to me."
  On the business side, he credits his sister Marion, with keeping him on the straight and narrow. She's done his books and helped out in the studio since it opened.
  "But I think the business end of things comes naturally if you are in touch with your customers," says Zver, who greets longtime customers with a hug.
  "One advantage of being small is that you can turn around quickly. Change comes in days here, not years."

Biggest Challenge:
"Keeping up with the demand for my work and the everyday concerns of running a business while I constantly making sure that the high standard of quality of work I strive for is constantly met by me and my staff."

Biggest Surprise:
"That I could actually make a decent living by working a craft which is decidedly low tech and somewhat primitive in a world that is very much high tech and sophisticated."

Best Decision:
"Opening my first restaurant in 1997 to compliment the functional pottery that we make here in the Troy Studio. It is the perfect symbiotic relationship: the restaurant tables are all set with plates, bowls, goblets and cups made here in the studio."

Worst decision:
"A few times I have changed some of the product line because I became bored and wanted to try something new and didn't listen to my customers. It took my staff to tell me that customer demand was high for these pieces. Consequently, I incorporated them back into the pottery line."

Learn the most:
"From my customers and my staff. Members of my staff have been with me for many years and I learn a lot from them every day. They are the front-line contact with the customers and keep me up to date on customer likes and opinions."

Best advice given:
"A high school teacher told me not to pursue pottery. She said that I could never make a living as a potter. This was the best advice ever given to me as it spurred me on to show her that she was wrong. In fact, when I opened my studio, I invited her to come and cut the ribbon, which she did."

Best advice to give:
"Always be in touch with your customers. Get to know then and open yourself up to them and they will become friends and loyal clients. Everyone wants to be treated well and we all need to be listened to. If you listen and respect your customers, they will keep coming back."

Secret to success:
"Having the ability to immediately respond to the needs of the customers. In the 35 years I have been a potter, there have been a lot of changes in demographics and lifestyle. These changes are reflected in customer taste and preference and thus in our constantly evolving line of functional pottery."