East Fork dinnerware is available from Indio—at our brick and mortar or online.
Please call during business hours, (919) 797-0456 with questions.
East Fork is a Vessel
"East Fork started in 2010 in a dark little hollow outside of Asheville, NC as a wood-fired pottery studio. The name was the same but that’s about it. I made a few thousand pieces a year until my friend John joined (now our CFO) and my wife Connie gave shape and voice to the brand and shared our days and our work with the world. We hired more potters and made more pots, eventually moving out of the county and into the city to build our own factory. We climbed through the rusting skeletons of old dinnerware plants, hauling out machines that had been idle for decades to bring them back to life.
Today, we make over 500,000 pieces of pottery a year. At the heart of it all is the collection of dinnerware we designed years ago when John and I spent our days hunched over a potter’s wheel: low-slung bowls appear at rest like a well-worn river rock, handles of mugs move with the fluidity of good calligraphy, plates with taut and precise curves emanate the fullness of the moon. They resonate with the loving care of a freshly-swept floor. They are comfortable and humble. Quiet and strong.
To your left is a collage of the East Fork world from the earliest days to the present, small manifestations of that care and consideration brought to bear on every part of our work."
—East Fork CEO and Founder, Alex Matisse
About East Fork
- Certified B Corp
- Factory and headquarters are in Asheville, NC
- The East Fork workforce is made up of 100+ employees
- Everyone at East Fork makes at least $22 an hour and they have plans to raise this minimum wage again to what MIT has calculated as a family living wage in Buncombe County, North Carolina
East Fork Dinnerware FAQs
- Dishwasher & microwave safe
- 100% lead free and made from regional materials
- Forms are created first on the wheel, then prototyped by East Fork Mechanical Engineer, and finally adapted to the machinery in the factory
- The dark spots are a signature part of the East Fork look. The clay they use is rich in iron so when the pots are fired, the gas in the kiln pulls oxygen from the clay, causing the iron molecules to rise to the surface leaving those “freckles”
- They utilize machinery to make all of the pottery, but humans remain central to their process
East Fork pays it's team a Living Wage
East Fork's commitment to embrace technology and automation is animated by their desire to pay their manufacturing team well (3x the federal and North Carolina state minimum wage of $7.25 an hour), create safe and accessible work for all members of the community (no art degree, no previous experience with clay, no resume, no background checks required here), and create a workplace environment where people can be the fullest expression of themselves, together making and selling some of the most beautiful dinnerware in the world.
