Selling Your Pottery in the UK: Craft Fairs and Online

You have spent hours at the wheel or the workbench. You have wedged clay, thrown pots, trimmed them, glazed them, fired them, and held the finished pieces in your hands with a quiet sense of pride. At some point, a friend picks one up and says, “You should sell these.” And the thought lodges itself in your mind. Should you? Could you?

The answer, for most potters who have reached even a modest level of consistency, is yes. Selling your pottery does not require you to be a professional artist or have a gallery behind you. Thousands of UK makers sell their work every year through craft fairs, online marketplaces, and social media — and many of them started exactly where you are now, slightly unsure and wondering if their work is good enough. It is. Let us get into the practical details of how to actually do it.

Is Your Work Ready to Sell?

This is the question that holds most beginners back, and it is worth addressing honestly. Your pottery does not need to be perfect. It does not need to look like it came from a high-end studio in Margate or a boutique shop in the Cotswolds. What it does need to be is functional, safe, and made with care.

If you are selling functional ware — mugs, bowls, plates, vases — there are a few practical standards to hold yourself to. Mugs should hold liquid without weeping. Glazes used on food-contact surfaces should be food-safe and properly fired to their recommended temperature. Bases should be smooth enough not to scratch a table. These are not arbitrary standards; they are what any reasonable customer would expect, and meeting them protects both your buyers and your reputation as a maker.

Decorative pieces have a little more latitude. A hand-built sculpture or a decorative wall tile does not need to hold tea, so your focus shifts to aesthetic consistency and structural integrity — pieces should not be fragile or liable to shed flakes of glaze.

A good honest way to assess your readiness is to look at your last firing and ask yourself: would I be happy receiving this as a gift? If the honest answer is yes for most pieces, you are ready to start selling.

Starting with Craft Fairs

Craft fairs are often the best first step for new pottery sellers in the UK, and for good reason. They give you direct contact with customers, immediate feedback, and the chance to see what people actually want to buy. There is also something irreplaceable about watching someone pick up your mug, turn it over in their hands, and decide to take it home.

The UK has a wonderfully active craft fair circuit. Events like the Affordable Art Fair, Handmade in Britain shows, and the British Craft Trade Fair in Harrogate attract serious buyers. Smaller, local markets — church halls in winter, park bandstands in summer, farmers’ markets on Saturday mornings — are often the right place to begin. They are lower cost, lower pressure, and give you time to learn what works before you invest in bigger events.

To find fairs near you, search for your county or region plus “craft fair” or “makers market.” Facebook groups for local craft sellers are particularly useful — Crafts Council regional groups, local maker collectives, and even community groups often share upcoming events. Websites such as Craft Fair Finder and Folksy’s event listings are also worth bookmarking.

Applying for a Stall

Most craft fairs in the UK require you to apply, rather than simply turn up and pay. Organisers want to ensure a good mix of products and a certain standard of work. This sounds daunting, but it is genuinely manageable.

Your application will usually require:

• A short description of your work and your making process
• Photographs of your pieces — clear, well-lit images against a neutral background
• Sometimes, a photograph of a previous stall display (though many organisers waive this for first-time applicants)
• Confirmation that you hold Public Liability Insurance

That last point — Public Liability Insurance — is important and sometimes catches new sellers off guard. Most craft fair organisers require you to hold at least £2 million of Public Liability Insurance cover before they will allow you to trade. This protects you if a customer injures themselves at your stall or if your products cause damage. For craft sellers, premiums are generally very affordable. Insurers such as Craft Cover, Hiscox, and Protectivity offer specialist policies aimed at UK makers, and annual premiums for a basic policy typically start at around £50 to £80. It is worth getting this sorted before you apply anywhere, because it will almost certainly be asked for.

Setting Up Your Stall

Your stall is your shop window. The good news is that pottery is a naturally beautiful product — it does not need much to look appealing. But a little thought about display goes a long way.

Height and variety are your friends. A flat table covered entirely in mugs is visually monotonous. Use wooden crates, small shelves, or stacked risers to create levels. Grouping pieces by colour family or function helps customers understand your range quickly. A simple tablecloth in a muted, complementary colour ties everything together without competing with the pottery itself.

Pricing should be clear and visible. Many buyers, particularly at craft fairs, feel awkward asking how much something costs, and if they cannot find the price easily, they are more likely to put the piece down and walk away. Small hand-written tags with a consistent style look artisan without being precious. Round numbers (£12, £18, £35) tend to make transactions smoother than figures like £11.50 or £17.75.

Bring more stock than you think you will need. Gaps on a table look like you are packing up to leave. If a piece sells, rearrange what remains so the display still looks full. And do bring a cash float — while most UK customers now pay by card, it is worth having change available, and card readers such as SumUp or Square are inexpensive and reliable for sellers who do not yet have a full business setup.

Pricing Your Pottery Fairly

Pricing is the part that most new pottery sellers get wrong, and they almost always get it wrong in the same direction: too low. There is a deeply ingrained hesitancy about charging properly for handmade work, and it is one worth actively pushing back against.

A simple starting framework for pricing is: materials + time (at a fair hourly rate) + overheads (kiln, studio costs, market fees) + a margin for profit. If a mug takes you forty-five minutes to make, trim, and glaze, and your materials cost around £2, and you value your time at even the current UK minimum wage (around £11.44 per hour for adults at the time of writing), that mug costs you roughly £10.58 to produce before you factor in kiln running costs, stall fees, or packaging. A selling price of £14 is almost certainly too low. A selling price of £22 to £28 for a well-made, individual mug is entirely reasonable and reflects what handmade pottery is genuinely worth.

Research what comparable makers in your area are charging. Visit craft fairs before you attend them as a seller. Look at prices in independent pottery shops in towns like Hay-on-Wye, Whitstable, or the Jewellery Quarter in Birmingham (which has a strong craft scene beyond just jewellery). You will usually find that good handmade pottery commands far more than new sellers expect.

Selling Online: Where to Start

Online selling opens your pottery up to buyers across the entire country — and indeed the world. The two platforms most commonly used by UK pottery sellers are Etsy and Folksy.

Etsy is the larger of the two, with a global audience and enormous traffic. It has a well-established category for ceramics and pottery, and buyers already come to it specifically looking for handmade goods. The trade-off is competition: there are tens of thousands of pottery sellers on Etsy, many of them international, and standing out requires good photographs, strong search keywords, and patience while your shop builds its reputation.

Folksy is a UK-specific platform, founded in Sheffield, and designed exclusively for British makers. It has a smaller but often more loyal audience, and buyers there tend to actively want to support UK craftspeople. Fees are competitive, and the community of sellers is generally warm and supportive. For a new UK pottery seller, Folksy is often the more encouraging place to begin.

You do not have to choose between them — many potters list on both simultaneously.

Getting Your Online Listings Right

Good photographs are the single most important factor in online pottery sales. Buyers cannot pick your pieces up, so your images have to do that work for them. You do not need professional photography equipment, but you do need good natural light, a clean background, and multiple angles. Show the inside of mugs and bowls. Show the base. Include a photograph that gives a sense of scale — a mug next to a hand, or a bowl with fruit in it. Lifestyle shots, where the piece is in a real setting (on a wooden table, next to a teapot, on a kitchen shelf), consistently outperform plain white-background shots for ceramics.

Your listing title and description should include the words people actually search for. “Handmade stoneware mug, UK pottery, wheel-thrown ceramic, gift for tea lover” covers multiple search terms without feeling forced. Think about what your ideal buyer would type into a search bar at 10pm when they are looking for a birthday present.

Be
specific about materials and process. “Thrown on the wheel from UK stoneware clay, fired to 1280°C, food safe and dishwasher tested” tells a buyer far more than “handmade ceramic mug” and filters out any confusion about what they are actually receiving. Mention dimensions and capacity — a mug that holds 350ml is a detail that matters to the person who drinks a builder’s tea in the morning. Include your location too; many buyers on Etsy and Folksy actively search for British makers, and “made in Yorkshire” or “Norfolk pottery studio” can be the deciding factor.

Pricing on online platforms needs to account for listing fees, transaction percentages, and postage costs from the outset. Folksy charges a listing fee and a commission, while Etsy takes a percentage of the total transaction including postage. Neither is unreasonable, but if you have not built these into your price you will find yourself absorbing costs that quietly erode your margins. Postage for ceramics in the UK is rarely cheap — robust packaging with bubble wrap and double-walled boxes adds both weight and cost. Offer tracked postage as standard; the small additional charge is worth it to avoid disputes over lost parcels.

Building a consistent online presence takes time, and it is normal for a new shop to sit quietly for several weeks before the first sale arrives. Regular new listings help, because platforms reward active shops with better search placement. Cross-posting to Instagram or Pinterest with a link back to your shop is straightforward and costs nothing beyond the time it takes to post. Returning customers are your most reliable source of income online, so include a small handwritten note or a postcard of your work with every order — it costs almost nothing and people remember it.

Conclusion

Whether you are loading your car for a craft fair on a rainy Saturday morning or photographing a new glaze test for your Etsy shop at midnight, selling pottery in the UK rewards consistency and honesty above all else. Know your costs, price fairly, present your work well, and treat every buyer — whether they spend £8 or £180 — as someone worth looking after. The market for handmade British ceramics is genuinely strong, and makers who show up reliably, in person and online, tend to find their footing sooner than they expect.