Pottery Store to Replace Random Harvest

The much beloved Random Harvest closed up shop earlier this year. And signs on the windows announce what is to follow: East Fork.

East Fork is a Asheville, NC-based ceramics shop that specializes in home goods. So in that sense, it’s a nice continuation of the legacy of Random Harvest, which also aimed to fill your home with nicely crafted goods.

But in another less obvious way, this store is very much of the zeitgeist in Georgetown, circa 2026. It is a DTC (direct to customer) store that is just now branching out to a small number of stores in various chic neighborhoods across the country. (In this particular case it is just Brooklyn and Georgetown so far; Suck it Back Bay!). This is a description that could fairly describe just about 95% of all the retail stores that have opened in Georgetown since 2020. The spin here is that it’s ceramics, not clothing or eyewear.

And there’s nothing wrong with that! Georgetown circa 2015 or so was a neighborhood with the exact same shops you could find in any mall in any dreary suburb of America. The rebirth that came after the wildfire of 2020 has allowed all these wildflowers to bloom.

But there’s a risk in going too deep with these types of stores. That’s because the (often private equity) owners of these brands surely would love to one day be in every mall in every dreary corner of America. I’m not saying that will happen with this particular brand, which seems lovely. But in general the novelty of these types of stores may ultimately be fleeting by design.

Once a tourist approached me on M St. asking where the stores were. I pointed all around. She replied, “but we’ve got all these at home.” To which I shrugged. I don’t think that scene would happen today. But in 2030? We’ll see…