I’ve written a couple of times about the Mark of the Potter located on GA Hwy 197 between Clarkesville and Helen. It is just a fun place to visit. The drive to get there is beautiful winding through rolling mountains and paralleling pristine trout streams. The shop opened in 1969 in an old mill on the banks of the Soque River. It is the oldest craft shop in the same location in the state of Georgia. They have four potters who work at their wheels and chances are if you are there, especially on a Saturday, you will have an opportunity to see them at work.

Fact is: watching a potter work at his or her wheel on weekends remains a part of the Mark of the Potter experience. You can also shop for unique crafts, explore Grandpa Watts’ Mill, enjoy picturesque scenery and sit on their back porch and feed their pet trout in their natural habitat.

 

The trout hate being “rocked.” My guess is that children (big and small) without thinking have picked up pieces of loose gravel in the parking area and thrown them into the stream.

The trout are so accustomed to being tossed handfuls of food from the sheltered balcony at the back of the shop that a handful of gravel could be deadly! So if you visit the Mark of the Potter, enjoy the drive there, relax with the view, talk with the absolutely welcoming people who run the place, and feed the hundreds of rainbow trout that hang out in a pool at the bottom of a small waterfall only fish food.

I promise that if you visit the Mark of the Potter, you will come away saying it is one of your favorite stops in northeast Georgia.

 

 

 

 

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