Tour the Pottery Studio That Sculptor Sequoyah Johnson Calls Her 'Inner Child's Playground'

Sequoyah Johnson is the owner of The Coy Collection, a ceramic brand specializing in "everyday rituals and joy." Sequoyah, a former art teacher, began working with pottery in 2009, but she didn't launch The Coy Collection as a business until 2018. As the world shut down in 2020 for the COVID-19 pandemic, Sequoyah found her business booming as people sought to connect with the items in their homes.

Sequoyah's approach to self-healing and happiness via her pottery leaves plenty of room to embrace the lows of life as well as the highs. "I don’t want my work to just be like, ‘oh be happy,'" she explains. Her creations, while endlessly cheerful, aren't meant to pressure their owners into fake happiness. Instead, she says, it's about “knowing the smiley is there when you’re ready."

Sequoyah describes The Coy Collection as her "inner child's playground" where she is free to experiment and express herself. As a child, she was not allowed to do her nails or wear her hair in certain ways, so The Coy Collection is the product of completely free self-expression.

Her self-expression started with earrings before advancing to sculpture. Drawing and painting never appealed to Sequoyah, but pottery did. “There’s just something really otherworldly about [being able to] transfer energy from your body into another medium," she says.