Factory Tours
Artbydgr
In Cobble Hill, Daisy Gebbia-Richards is reshaping how people see ceramics and small-scale manufacturing through her brand, Artbydgr. What began as a personal passion has grown into a business rooted in grit, creativity, and community.
Daisy has always been “the art kid.” After graduating college in 2020 into the uncertainty of the pandemic, she spent several years in a corporate role but knew her true love was elsewhere. “I was always going to end up here, loving pottery, wanting to make a business of it. So I just cut the middle man out,“ she says, of leaving her job. "And I just went for it.”
Her first encounter with clay came during COVID, when she took a pottery class that sparked an obsession. “I was just like, Oh my god, this is so much better than painting—like you’re gonna use the thing, yeah? And drink your coffee from it. I became infatuated with it. I would go all the time, after work, on the weekends.” What had once been painting canvases turned into a practice of creating objects meant to be lived with. Soon she was spending all her free time at the studio, eventually moving to Brooklyn and joining a ceramic studio.
Today, Daisy creates everything from mugs and plates to seasonal pieces like “little, tiny tea light ghosts” for Halloween or menorahs for Chanukah. “Basically, any ceramic you see in my house I have made,” she says. Her mix of functionality and earthy design has quickly built her a following.
What makes her work stand out is less about technique and more about persistence. Daisy taught herself by going to the studio daily, pairing her painting background with ceramics to create distinctive pieces. That combination of grit and artistry now drives her business edge: if a coffee shop needs dozens of mugs in a matter of weeks, she can deliver.
But for Daisy, the magic of ceramics lies in its temperamental nature. “The thing about clay is it’s so fragile. You might have hairline cracks and have to start over, because it can’t be a final product. So just appreciating the luck needed that this even exists, and how intentionally it was made, and the skill it takes to make something—like if you’re talking about a set of 30 mugs—for them to look okay and clearly a set, you know?” Each piece that survives the process feels a bit meant to be, even if the glaze color is a little off.
Beyond products, Daisy is expanding into teaching. Last year, she launched in-person hand-building sessions and now teaches corporate team building workshops at companies from AESOP to Salesforce. “I do love teaching it, and I think it would be so stressful to just have the product. So I like the product and the service.”
Joining Made in NYC has been pivotal to her growth. She points to our organization’s classes and community connections as invaluable in helping her navigate everything from business structure to marketing. For many small makers, she notes, the toughest hurdles are financial management and promotion—time-consuming tasks that often compete with production. Thanks to Made in NYC, Daisy has now connected with an amazing intern-turned-assistant and hopes to continue building her support system to help shoulder those responsibilities as she continues to scale.
In her view, manufacturing in New York comes with steep challenges. Studio space is scarce and expensive, and setting up independently means investing in kilns, a great deal of electricity, and new glazes. “There’s not a lot of space. And that equals a really high cost for everything,” she explains. But she pushes back on the perception that manufacturing is cold or detached. “When people think about manufacturing, people think about things that are impersonal. And I think for a lot of the makers in the city, it’s incredibly personal,“ she says. "And literally handmade!”
Despite the hurdles, Daisy is thrilled to be in Brooklyn. The neighborhood has embraced her, from bookstores to breweries and coffee shops that host her pop-ups. Investing in her community, she says, has been as rewarding as growing her business. From picking up clay for the first time during the pandemic to running a flourishing ceramics brand, Daisy is proving that local manufacturing in New York can be intimate and deeply creative. “Since I made that choice, the universe has just kept giving, giving and giving to me.”
Peruse Daisy’s work on her website.