Business Profile: Time to Kiln, Yorktown
Photo credit: Neal Rentz
Yorktown resident Ximena Barbuscia has enjoyed making crafts since she was a youth.
But she had not translated her enjoyment of making art into her profession until last November when opened Time to Kiln in the Parkside Corner shopping center in Yorktown.
“I feel like ever since I was little I was crafty, before it was cool,” Barbuscia said last week For example, she recalled making origami Christmas ornaments as a youngster. “I was always into crafts,” she said.
Prior to opening her new business, Barbuscia worked in marketing and advertising in Manhattan before she had children. After taking off eight years to raise her children she considered starting her own craft shop for two years before formally doing so last fall after prodding from her husband, Joseph. The northern Westchester area did not have a place where people could “just drop in” and create crafts, without joining a club or signing up for a scheduled program, she said.
“We give you all the tools. We help you out,” she said. “I feel like everybody’s got an artist in them.”
A customer does not need any experience to create a craft at Time to Kiln. Currently the business offers customers opportunities to paint pottery that they select. In the near future the options will expand to include glass fusing, which is creating glass on glass items, and candle making.
The unpainted pottery is called bisque, which has a sandpaper feel, Barbuscia explained. A customer will paint the item with lead-free glaze and the pottery will then have a flat and dry exterior, she said. After drying she will dip the item in clear glaze in a machine that resembles a large kitchen food processor she has dubbed “sir mix a lot.”
After the clear glaze has dried, the item is placed into a kiln, an oven that heats up to about 1,800 degrees. After the heated pottery is cooled the pottery is completed. The finished product features shinny paint, she said.
The pottery can also be created with bisque ‘n’ frits, which are fine glass crystals that melt in the kiln. “It looks like a stained glass window,” Barbuscia said.
“Everybody comes in here as a customer, but you leave as an artist,” she said.
The pottery items that can be selected include many functional items including plates, piggy banks, cups and containers for small objects.
Time to Kiln is not a play on words from the John Grisham novel “A Time to Kill,” which was later adapted into a hit film, Barbuscia said. The name of her store is more of play on the phrase meaning having free time to kill, she said. Barbuscia said she wanted her establishment to be a place to get away from the hustle and bustle of life and be a spot to create and relax.
“You’re killing time and you’re doing it here and you’re making a nice functional item,” she said.
“I’m just very grateful for the response that we’ve received from the customers.”
Time to Kiln is located at 3565 Crompond Rd. in the Parkside Corner shopping center in Yorktown. For more information call 914-737-5456 or visit timetokilnstudio.com. The business is also on Facebook.
