{"id":137178,"date":"2026-01-30T03:50:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-30T03:50:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/137178\/"},"modified":"2026-01-30T03:50:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-30T03:50:10","slug":"st-petersburg-ceramics-studio-destroyed-after-an-early-morning-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/137178\/","title":{"rendered":"St. Petersburg ceramics studio destroyed after an early morning fire"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. \u2014 The St. Petersburg community is coming together after a local clay studio caught on fire earlier this week.<\/p>\n<p>Beth Miranda is co-owner of St. Pete Ceramics. She said a fire broke out around 4:00 a.m. on Wednesday. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There were five or six fire trucks, a lot of firefighters out back. At that point, I was like oh my God, it&#8217;s totally gone. It&#8217;s all gone. I didn&#8217;t know what to think. I didn&#8217;t know if I was going to pass out or throw up. I wasn&#8217;t sure what was happening,&#8221; said Miranda.<\/p>\n<p>She opened the clay studio nearly two years ago. She ran her business, The Muddy Walrus, out of the studio. She also hosted pottery classes. <\/p>\n<p>The building provided a space for other artists to work.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It sounds crazy, but people just have these jobs, or they have these lives that are so stressful and then they&#8217;re like &#8216;I can come here and be in the community. I can make things and just be,&#8217; and that&#8217;s what this place was,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p>Miranda said firefighters have not determined an official cause of the fire, but she believes it was electrical. <\/p>\n<p>A <a class=\"Link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.gofundme.com\/f\/rebuild-our-beloved-community-studio?attribution_id=sl:b048f187-a625-4bd5-97f3-c3083b099eaa&amp;lang=en_US&amp;ts=1769648849&amp;utm_campaign=fp_sharesheet&amp;utm_content=amp17_ta&amp;utm_medium=customer&amp;utm_source=copy_link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">GoFundMe<\/a> page is raising money online to help rebuild the studio. The fire caused extensive damage to the structure. It also destroyed equipment like kilns.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Everything in the back hallway is gone, which is the expensive things like the kilns, all of our tools&#8230;the structure has to be replaced,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p>Miranda said volunteers showed up just hours after the fire to help clean up the mess. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;St. Pete is literally the best place. I can&#8217;t even tell you. St. Pete is magical. We had people in and out of here all day yesterday from 8:00 a.m. until it was dark. We had so much food, so much coffee and so many hugs,&#8221; said Miranda. <\/p>\n<p>Miranda said she is grateful to the firefighters from St. Pete Fire Rescue who worked to put out the fire. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We had pottery for sale everywhere in the front windows. They moved it so carefully and did not break anything so beautiful&#8230;that was art that didn&#8217;t get destroyed,&#8221; she said. <\/p>\n<p>Miranda hopes to find a short-term rental while the building gets repaired. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The entire building has smoke and soot damage. It&#8217;s definitely going to take a while to rebuild,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p>Share Your Story with Julie<br \/><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/JulieSalomone.png\"\/><br \/>From the courtroom to your commute, Julie Salomone works to share the issues that matter to you. She also focuses on the day-to-day issues in Sarasota County, so be sure to reach out to Julie to start a conversation.<br \/>.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/ADAM.WALSER.png\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Terri Schiavo&#8217;s family seeks to unseal guardianship records 20 years after her death<\/p>\n<p>More than twenty years after Terri Schiavo&#8217;s death sparked a national right-to-life debate, her family returned to court Tuesday seeking to unseal records from her guardianship case.<\/p>\n<p>Terri Schiavo&#8217;s family seeks to unseal guardianship records 20 years after her death<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. \u2014 The St. Petersburg community is coming together after a local clay studio caught on&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":137179,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[205,7083,67024,7084,7085,7086,7087,276,7088,1338,202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":{"0":"post-137178","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-st-petersburg","8":"tag-abc-action-news","9":"tag-citrus-county","10":"tag-clay-studio","11":"tag-desoto-county","12":"tag-hardee-county","13":"tag-hernando-county","14":"tag-highlands-county","15":"tag-hillsborough-county","16":"tag-manatee-county","17":"tag-pasco-county","18":"tag-st-pete","19":"tag-st-pete-headlines","20":"tag-st-pete-news","21":"tag-st-petersburg","22":"tag-st-petersburg-headlines","23":"tag-st-petersburg-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137178\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}