John Vigeland is the former CFO and co-founder of East Fork, a dinnerware manufacturing company based in Asheville, NC. In 2009, he moved to North Carolina to serve a 3-year apprenticeship with a traditional potter in the Piedmont. Through that apprenticeship, he met Alex and Connie Matisse, and in 2013, they combined their efforts to found East Fork. After 10 years as CFO, John stepped down from the role to get back to hand-throwing traditional pottery. In 2025, John released his first form through the East Fork Workshop — the brand’s small-batch, wheel-thrown program — The Pitcher. Learn more about John’s return to hand throwing in today’s Maker Monday.
The Pitcher marks co-founder John Vigeland’s return to hand-thrown pottery and his first collaboration through the East Fork Workshop.
Andrew Joseph: Can you describe a project that you’re particularly proud of?
John Vigeland: The creation and growth of East Fork as a whole has been my main project over the past 10 years, and I am quite proud of the results so far. It’s wild to go back and read through early letters Alex and I exchanged where we were sharing visions of what could be possible and looking around now to see how much of that has come to pass. It started with the hypothesis that the traditional North Carolina pottery we had trained to make could appeal to a wider audience if we pared down some of the folksier, vernacular details while retaining the fundamental concepts of form and function. We wanted to grow something that could include a lot of people…