After retiring from making custom jewelry at his shop, Allen’s Designs in downtown Warsaw, Bill Allen and his wife, Susan, now spend their time creating one-of-kind, hand-built ceramic artwork. “Making the transition to clay and rekindling our love affair with ceramics has been great,” said Bill. Their ceramic artwork is on display at JB’s Furniture in Warsaw and Creative Fish Art Gallery in Syracuse. (Photo provided)

Bill Allen retired from the art business — making and selling custom jewelry for over 20 years — into, well, another art business. He and wife, Susan, now spend their golden years creating custom ceramic pieces, an art form Bill says is much less tedious than placing precious gems into forged metal rings or bracelets.

Allen’s Designs was a mainstay on Center Street in downtown Warsaw for 20 years until six years ago when the Allens retired. Bill, who’s 70, began his fascination with making jewelry long before that: in the seventh grade.

“That year, my art teacher mom took a jewelry class at Ball State. I was fascinated with the tools and the pieces she took home, so I asked to finish the class with her,” he said. “I made a piece during the class and still have it. I kept making jewelry throughout high school and college.”

From there, Bill became an art teacher, but when he began spending more hours on jewelry than teaching, he opened the jewelry store instead.

“I never knew how people heard of our shop in Warsaw, but they did,” said Bill, “and my jewelry went across the country and even overseas. We even sold a piece to a royal family in Europe.”

Susan also comes from a family of art teachers, and always liked to paint. She and Bill met through a mutual friend and have been married for 32 years, having three grown children between them.

“We were both really interested in pottery, but didn’t have time to pursue it,” said Susan. “I took ceramic courses in college. Now, we get to go to town making pretty things.”

The Allens hand-build ceramic sculptures, bowls, wall hanging and vases among other items. Each piece starts as a lump of clay before it is shaped, fired in the bisque kiln, glazed and fired again into a finished artwork. The process is lengthy, but the creative process is never ending.

“I could live three lifetimes and not be able to express all the ideas I have,” says Bill. “My mind is never closed to new ideas. I’m thinking of new pieces all the time.”

The Allens spend a few morning per week at their rented studio space inside the Spinning Fish Pottery Studio, 200 E. Pickwick Drive in Syracuse. They sell some of their work there as well as at JB’s Furniture, 2101 E. Center St. in Warsaw.

“People love the Allens,” said Jon Blackwood, owner of JB’s Furniture. “When Bill’s father-in-law turned 80, Bill hand designed and built a 1940s style Corsair plane out of fiberglass and wood. I asked him what he was going to do with it. He replied, he was going to probably just dispose of it. I said ‘no way’ and it has been hanging in the kid’s section of my store for 10 years now.”

“Who knows what Bill will create next!”