On saturday, I made my regular after lunch trip to the mailbox, and was greeted with some junk mail throwaways, a bill for car insurance, and the latest Pottery Barn Catalog. It’s the fall 2010 catalog, and Jenn and I love decorating for the fall. Of course it’s 105° in Austin today, and not very fall like, but the catalog inspires us and gets us thinking about warm fires, apple cider, and trick-or-treaters.
The theme this season seems to be inspired by clear laboratory glassware.  My regular readers know that I love lab glass, and there are several parts of our home decorated with it.  Jars are filled with pumpkins and dried  grasses.
We noticed one strange thing as we browsed the catalog.  There is very little pottery in the Pottery Barn catalog.  In fact there was only one piece on page  5.  So I turned to the internet surfed over to the Pottery Barn website, and did a quick search:
- Pottery Search
seems simple enough, right? Â What would someone expect if they went to a store called pottery barn. Â Sure, you would expect some other stuff besides pottery, but wouldn’t the majority of your expectation to be pottery?
A couple of key-strokes later and a click of the mouse, and I had my answer.
7. Â Seven results for pottery at pottery barn.
Pottery barn search results
Sort of strange, don’t you think? So I clicked over to the results page, and took a look. Â Of the seven results returned, one was for paint, another for a CD, and a third for a coffee-related item. Â The holy trinity of decorating. Â Coffee, Paint, and Music. Â All the things that establish a mood, but don’t really do anything.
All in all there were four pieces of pottery at the Pottery Barn. Â Of the thousands of products they offer. Â Only 4.
What do you think about that?
Pottery Barn Search Results
I think its fun that you researched this and found out what all of us who have had an occasion to shop there already know; This store isn’t about pottery at all. Too bad, because I would love a great pottery store.
Haha! There’s no truth in advertising any more. Although that said, I did recently buy a pottery preserves jar from Pottery Barn, but yes, the vast majority of their wares are not pottery in the least. I can’t wait for warm fire, apple cider season…my favorite time of year!
I had to chuckle at this post, Eric. You have such a dry wit.
You bring up a good point: West Elm is not on Elm at all, Crate and Barrel will have neither, and Anthropologie is not a social science, HomeGoods are more like HomeMediocre, and Pier 1 is safely anchored in a sea of parking lots. The home design world is more than a bit misleading!