About

Katie Coughlin opened Ovington Pottery in 2025, fulfilling her dream to create a small and welcoming clay community in the heart of Bay Ridge. Tucked away in a third-floor walk-up, natural light and birdsong fill the pottery studio. Katie’s family has lived here for decades, and she built Ovington Pottery’s classrooms in her grandparents’ onetime living and dining rooms. 

A Brooklyn native, Katie discovered clay at fifteen, when her mom registered her for a ceramics class in Carroll Gardens. Soon, she spent her summers upstate, weeding in exchange for use of a professional potter’s studio. She earned her BFA at Alfred University and her MFA at The Ohio State University, which sealed ceramics as her lifelong pursuit. 

“My love of ceramics is a love of community,” Katie says, “You can’t do ceramics without community – without sharing materials, tools, tips – that’s why I’m still in it, the people in the ceramic field created my whole world.

A Pottery Studio in her Apartment
“I have always wanted to create a space for artists,” Katie says, “Once I started to make my own personal studio somewhere for others to visit, I realized it was possible to use the space I have. That’s what artists do – create the life you want with what you have.”

Teaching Philosophy
Beyond its classrooms, low teacher-to-student ratios distinguish Ovington Pottery from other studios. Among the smallest in New York City, Ovington Pottery classes offer students focused instruction without the distraction of many students – hand-building classes number at most seven students, wheel-throwing classes are limited to three. Ovington Pottery students typically learn at a faster rate. Bookable open-studio access is similarly small. Often, students find themselves working alone on their projects during open studio. “It allows you as a student to have your own space for making, to develop your own practice and habits, and find out what it might be like to work in your own studio practice,” Katie says.

Katie models her teaching philosophy after her own education. “I am training students in my style of making. I want people to understand how to use their hands and also how to understand the material – its history and the history of the practice.” She seeks to cultivate shared enthusiasm between teacher and student, and shared satisfaction in making things. “I think the more people who know the difference between a good pot and a bad pot, the better,” she says. 

History 
The studio resides on Ovington Avenue, a street central to Katie’s family’s history, and the artistic history of Brooklyn. Katie’s great-uncle first moved to the block in the early 1900s. When her grandfather emigrated from Ireland in 1928, he too made Ovington Avenue home, raising a family here with his wife, Mae. The Coughlin family has lived on this block ever since—more than a century of continuous presence.

The artistic legacy of Ovington Avenue extends even further into the past. Originally known as the Ovington Artist Village after the family farmland the village then occupied, the area became a refuge for artists fleeing Manhattan during the yellow fever outbreak. Two of the Ovington brothers even ran a chinaware company in Brooklyn, designing pottery and importing the wares from France. Their creations—labeled “Ovington Pottery”—can still be found in thrift stores and antique shops today.