Paul Haigh spent a career as a PhD chemist. Then he quit to make punk rock pottery - face jugs in the old American folk tradition, except realistic, mythological, and occasionally horrifying, glazed with formulas he engineers himself because he's the rare potter who can. This August he's showing at the 93rd Annual League of NH Craftsmen's Fair at Mount Sunapee, the oldest craft fair in the country. This page is an advertisement for my friend. It also happens to contain more useful marketing instruction than most consultants charge for, because Paul's second act is a masterclass.
See Paul at Sunapee His InstagramThree decisions built Paul's second act, and every one of them is a marketing lesson wearing an apron.
Paul didn't abandon his first act - he weaponized it. Most potters buy glazes or follow recipes. Paul formulates his own, because underneath the punk rock potter there's still a PhD chemist who knows exactly why a glaze does what it does at 2,300 degrees. Nobody can copy his surfaces without copying his education.
The lesson: the best second acts don't discard the first one - they convert it into a moat. A defense lawyer who becomes a marketing consultant should still smell like a courtroom.
Face jugs are an old American folk form - usually rendered cartoonish and safe. Paul makes them realistic, mythological, and dark. Some people find them unsettling. Those people are not the customers, and their discomfort is doing valuable work: it makes the right customers feel found.
The lesson: "the punk rock face jug guy" is a one-sentence identity, and one sentence is exactly how referrals travel. Nobody ever described a generalist to a friend.
Paul lives near Seagrove, North Carolina - the pottery capital of the United States - and shows at Sunapee, the country's oldest craft fair, where he's a juried League member. He put himself physically inside his market's gravity, twice, in two different states.
The lesson: location is a marketing decision. Potters go where pottery buyers already gather; lawyers should think just as hard about which courthouses and counties they plant themselves in.
Here's my disclosure of interest, and it's a good one. After my courtroom years, I taught - computer science, famously timed to the exact day ChatGPT came out, and chemistry, which required a certification exam that a middle-aged lawyer does not simply walk into. Paul got me through it. The PhD chemist who was busy turning himself into a potter took the time to coach a trial lawyer who was busy turning himself into a teacher. Two men mid-reinvention, each lending the other his first act. I passed. He glazed. Everybody's second act shipped.
The best second acts don't erase the first - they're built on it. Paul's glazes are chemistry. My marketing is cross-examination. Yours would be whatever you've spent twenty years being right about.
I call what Paul makes punk rock pottery, and I mean that precisely, not decoratively. Punk was never really about volume - it was about total commitment to a specific identity, indifference to the people it repels, and doing it yourself down to the last detail. Paul commits to the dark face jug the way the bands I came up with committed to their bits, except his version survives kiln firing and gets collected. Same ethos, better shelf life.
And of course there's a song. Rap and ska, two minutes and one second, and every word of the title is accurate.
If you're anywhere near New Hampshire the first week of August, go. The 93rd Annual Craftsmen's Fair runs August 1 through 9 at Mount Sunapee Resort in Newbury, ten to five, rain or shine - hundreds of juried craftspeople, and one punk rock chemist. Tell him the lawyer he got through the chemistry exam sent you. You can also find his work at his Etsy shop year-round.
And if you're a criminal defense lawyer whose first act deserves a better second one - a practice with twenty years of courtroom credibility and no marketing built on top of it - that's the conversation I have every day.
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