Eric and Barbara Havill returned to upstate New York in June of 1972, buying a derelict farm house near Branchport (during Hurricane Agnes!) and spending the next several years making it habitable. He was born on the Bluff and the couple met in college, married and moved to New Mexico, where Eric obtained a masters degree in English and Comparative Literature. A teaching position for Eric at the University of Northern Colorado proved fortuitous for Barbara, since she was able to continue her Masters' study in Ceramics there with noted Colorado potter Herb Schumacher. Inevitably, Eric too caught the pottery bug. They moved back East and Eric taught English in the evening school at Rochester Institute of Technology. While they built their studio, their first pottery shop in New York was in his mother's barn, on the Bluff.

After paying their dues doing many years of craft shows, the Havills now sell their work directly to visitors at their studio and through a number of shops, including The Nest Egg in Penn Yan and Heron Hill Winery in Hammondsport. They have two children, Laura, a special ed. teacher in Ithaca, and Aaron, a music engineer in Manhattan. Both Eric and Barbara work on the potter's wheel and Eric also makes a wide variety of pots from rolled slabs of clay. Eric does all the glazing and firing, while Barbara decorates virtually every piece with a sumi-e style of Oriental brushwork. Most of her subjects are representational: birds, flowers, fish, while some are abstracts. The couple work in both stoneware and porcelain, firing the pieces to over 2300 degrees in a car kiln they built themselves. They specialize in production pottery and make a wide variety of utilitarian pieces from table lamps to cookware, including full dinners sets.