Morty Bachar and Patty Storms, artists and owners of Lakeside Pottery Studio
How a change in career became a place for artists, a classroom for thousands, and a studio devoted to preserving the things people love.
Lakeside Pottery Studio began with a need to create, to work with our hands, and to turn ideas into something real. Over the years, the work changed, but our love of art, learning, and solving problems remained.
Morty Bachar and Patty Storms, artists and owners of Lakeside Pottery Studio
Before Lakeside Pottery Studio, Morty Bachar worked in engineering, technology, and business. It was a world of planning, precision, and problem-solving.
After years in technology and business, Morty felt a growing need for something different. He wanted to be surrounded by creativity, to work with his hands, and to experience the satisfaction of turning an idea into something real. Clay gave him that opportunity. It was more than a change of career. It was a way of finding a part of himself that had been waiting to emerge.
Lakeside Pottery Studio grew into a ceramic art teaching facility offering adult pottery classes, children's classes, special needs classes, and hands-on workshops. Students explored clay, learned to throw on the wheel, hand-build, glaze, fire, and discover what they could make.
The studio became a place where beginners felt welcome and experienced artists could keep learning. Children's programs, camps, special needs classes, adult workshops, and special events brought people together around a shared creative experience.
The teaching facility also became a working studio for ceramic artists. Different people brought different approaches to clay, different ideas, and different kinds of work.
It was a place to exchange knowledge, learn from one another, and enjoy the energy that comes from creating alongside other artists.
Teaching did not end when the physical classroom closed. What began as printed handouts for studio students grew into a free online learning library with over 100 ceramic art and three-dimensional art restoration lessons, tutorials, videos, and articles.
Today, hobbyists, teachers, ceramic artists, schools, and colleges use these resources to learn about wheel throwing, hand-building, glazing, firing, children's pottery projects, studio practices, ceramic repair, sculpture restoration, and Kintsugi.
Morty and Patty continue sharing techniques developed through years of hands-on work, helping knowledge reach people far beyond their studio.
Another part of the studio's work gradually became its main focus: repairing and restoring objects people could not easily replace.
A damaged sculpture. A broken ceramic heirloom. A missing hand, chipped surface, or shattered vessel. Each brought a different technical challenge and often a deeply personal story.
Today, Lakeside Pottery Studio restores ceramics and three-dimensional art in materials including porcelain, pottery, stone, plaster, resin, and metal. The goal is not simply to join broken parts, but to respect the original work and the meaning it holds for its owner.
Seamless restoration seeks to make damage disappear. Kintsugi offers another choice: allowing the repair to become part of the object's appearance.
Working with gold and gold-effect finishes, Lakeside Pottery Studio developed its own approach to this Japanese art of visible repair. The broken lines are no longer something to hide. They become part of the object's new story.
Some pieces are repaired because of what they are worth. Others because of whom they remind us of. Kintsugi can speak to both.
In 2021 and again in 2024, Lakeside Pottery Studio created Kintsugi works selected as presidential gifts for Japanese prime ministers.
In 2024, Morty attended the White House welcome ceremony for Japan's prime minister. Lakeside Pottery Studio had made the Kintsugi presidential gifts for the prime minister and his wife.
It was an unexpected recognition of a journey that began with a love of clay, teaching, and the art of repair.
Patty Storms joined Lakeside Pottery Studio in 2005. A ceramic artist, instructor, and painter, Patty brought her own artistic experience and perspective to the studio. Her painting and pencil drawings add another dimension to the creative work they share. Explore Patty's artwork
Today, Morty Bachar and Patty Storms operate Lakeside Pottery Studio in Lewes, Delaware. Together, their work brings together art, engineering, painting, drawing, sculpture, restoration, and decades of teaching experience.
The physical teaching studio belongs to an earlier chapter, but its spirit remains in the free lessons they continue to publish. And each new restoration brings another opportunity to solve a problem, honor an artist's work, and help someone keep a meaningful object in their life.
We began by teaching people how to create with clay. Today, we help people preserve what matters to them, while continuing to share what we have learned. Different chapters, connected by the same belief in the value of art and the stories behind it.
Wheel Throwing
Handbuilding
Glaze Preparation
Studio Projects