Our Story

Hi, I’m Halley, the ceramic artist and designer behind Ice & Dust Pottery, a small-batch pottery studio in Westerville, Ohio.

I’ve been working with clay since high school, when I took every ceramics class available and eventually moved into independent study. I studied studio art in college before building a career as a graphic designer, and for several years after graduation, ceramics mostly disappeared from my life.

That changed in 2017 while I was working as a designer at CoverMyMeds.

CoverMyMeds had a program called CoverMyQuest that gave employees funding to pursue something meaningful outside of work. My quest was to return to ceramics. I received a grant that allowed me to buy the equipment and supplies I needed to start making pottery again, and Ice & Dust Pottery grew directly out of that opportunity.

What started as a way back into clay quickly became much more. I began selling my work online and at handmade markets around Ohio, eventually adding wholesale and growing Ice & Dust Pottery into a real small business alongside my design career.

A few years later, pottery also became a way for me to support a cause that mattered to me. I began creating an annual limited-edition mug benefiting Pelotonia, which funds innovative cancer research at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute. Customers came back each year for the new design, and together we have raised more than $8,000 for cancer research.

Ice & Dust Pottery has had a few different lives since 2017. Major changes in my personal life eventually pulled me away from the business and from the handmade market community for several years. I never completely stopped making, but ceramics became something much quieter.

In 2026, I came back.

Today, everything is made by me in my home studio in Westerville using a mix of wheel throwing, slip casting, mold making, handbuilding, illustration, and surface design. My background as a designer is still all over the work: bold color, vintage imagery, florals, skulls, typography, and plenty of things that are just a little weird.

Ice & Dust Pottery is once again online and at handmade markets around Ohio, but I’m less interested in rebuilding exactly what existed before than seeing what it can become next.

Thanks for being here.

— Halley