Fire Playce rises from the ashes
Recent months have brought new challenges for The Fire Playce Paint Your Own Pottery Studio at 517 W. 5th Street; including challenges that have nothing to do with COVID-19.
The morning of December 9, 2020, a recycle bin stuffed with cardboard near the Pueblo Metro Plaza caught fire. Flames scaled and entered the eaves of the plaza building the studio shares with other businesses including Squawk Coffee, Springside Cheese Shop, Euphoria Salon, and Full Body Wellness.
“We have been having to reinvent everything,” said Lara Craddock, owner of the Fire Playce. “We have been closed since Christmas Eve so we are really anxious to get that going.”
The Fire Playce, which fully remodeled and reopened on January 13, has attracted Pueblo’s creative community since 2013. Customers choose a piece of pottery from the studio’s large collection, select paints, paint their pottery, and have the pottery fired in the studio’s kiln before the pottery is returned to the customer for personal use.
“It’s a great first date… we’ve actually had proposals in here,” Craddock said. “It’s just a really nice place to come in, relax and chill out painting. Even our customers who do it at home; they just take their time to paint and just completely forget about the rest of the world for a little while.”
Prior to being closed for remodeling, the studio was allowing a maximum of eight people as part of COVID-19 protocol. To-go pottery boxes became increasingly popular during this time as customers were able to order their pottery and paints online, have orders ready for pick-up in 15 minutes, paint at home, have pottery fired in the studio, and returned in about a week.
Craddock said she is keeping an eye on post Christmas and New Year’s COVID numbers to determine the next steps for the studio now that remodeling is finished.
“We are playing it by ear,” Craddock said. “If we can open up, we will; but just kind of playing out all the factors. We will definitely be open for to-go boxes. We literally have hundreds of items out in the community right now that people have been painting and will want to return to get fired. We got to get open for those folks.”
“We have Valentine’s Day coming right around the corner which we are really going to be pushing because we are going to have all kinds of great things that people can make,” Craddock said. They can make them together as a family or they can make them for their sweetheart.”
Those interested in ordering a to-go box or learning more about the Fire Playce can visit www.thefireplayce.com.