February Weekend Evening Sessions

Throughout February we are opening up some limited weekend evening sessions as well as all our normal daytime slots. You can come and join us on Friday and Saturday nights throughout the month. So whether you want to come with your special someone for a date night or with a group of people you love in an evening session, February is the month for you. The spots are first come first served and can be either of our lessons. All day sessions are also running as normal.

New Year crafting resolutions for all.

New Year resolutions? Many people use the new year to set some new life goals and resolutions, if pottery is one of them for you or someone you know then we can help. Crafts can be used as a great escape from everyday life, something to keep your brain active, a new life skill or possibly a whole new direction in life. Wheel-throwing can often seem exclusive or something beyond reach but we believe it can be for anyone at any age. 

Clay provides an involved haptic experience and a pottery wheel-throwing lesson makes you fully concentrate and become fully immersed in the spinning clay and the creation of a vessel. Most people say they lose themselves in the process and completely forget the world while they are throwing and achieve a state of mindfulness.

Our sessions are tailored for just you and whoever/ comes and as they are just for a single booking and whoever/ you bring you can be sure you will always get the right level of teaching and time on the potter’s-wheel, no sharing our potters guidance with many other people you don’t know or waiting for them to be finished helping others, they are all for you. So if you are looking for pottery lessons in Cornwall for a 2024 activity then we are an easy to reach studio for all of Cornwall.

Pottery Wheel Throwing

Welcome 2024!

Bledhen Noweth Da! Happy New Year!

As 2023 spins into 2024 it’s a time to appreciate all the lovely people we have met in 2023 and all the pottery wheel-throwing fun we’ve had. A massive thank you to everyone we have met in 2023 and for all your support. 

For 2024 we hope for much of the same with lots more awesome people. Pottery wheel-throwing lessons are so much fun and it is a joy to introduce people to it and help others with previous experience along with their ceramic journey. As each session is tailored to the students, it provides us with lots of varied and fun sessions. Since we moved to our teaching studio in Hayle it has opened up the opportunity for many more people to come and have a go. Our studio is easily accessed from such nearby towns as St. Ives, Penzance, Newquay, Truro and Falmouth. With plentiful parking, easy train and public transport links really nearby it is just much easier for most to visit us. Of course it means people often get to discover the wonderful town of Hayle and its surroundings for the first time. The beaches from the bluff to Godrevy really are some of the best in Cornwall. Hayle now has great independent shops and cafes throughout. You can of course get back over to our place of origin, St Ives, very easily with the most scenic rail journey you can imagine. 

Pottery Van Adventures!

A few days to relax and feel inspired with some sundown pottery in the New Forest. Dappled sunlight and birdsong created a very relaxed setting. This was a slightly more extreme test for our mobile pottery in which for Angela to create wherever she wants and for us to be able to offer lessons and parties at locations away from our studio. 

We can offer individual lessons in your garden or party options in a garden or for example village hall. See our dedicated page coming soon.

Journey through lockdown restrictions lifting

Even though Covid restrictions have been lifted, as we have a small studio which is a confined space, we are asking people coming for lessons to continue to wear masks, and Angela will continue to wear a mask while teaching. 

If Angela were to catch any illness during the next few months and had to have time off, then we would have to cancel a lot of lessons; as we know some people have been looking forward to throwing pots throughout the lockdowns, we will continue to do what we can to make sure everyone stays healthy and we can stay open.  

Fresh aprons and towels will be provided for each customer, and washing facilities and the pottery wheels will be cleaned down between lessons.

Let’s continue to look after each other.

Lockdown and beyond…

Here we are at the start of the second month of 2021, for most so far living in lockdown again and trying to look forward to… well anything. 

We have been using the time settling into our new workspace and rearranging the shop and pottery studio working on ideas and learning some new skills. One benefit of relocating and growing during a lockdown is there has not been much time to think and we are keeping busy. Angela has been spending time creating in the pottery studio.

Due to the national lockdown we are obviously closed for now, and with the uncertainty of the coming months/year we are currently playing it by ear for being able to offer lessons in our new studio. We have had to make the decision, for now, not to take any new bookings for lessons. The future, with lockdowns, tier systems and anything else that might come along, is unknown. We will update our website and social media when things change; we hate not being able to give people something to look forward to but until things change we cannot offer anything inside a small studio. The best thing to do will be to keep an eye on our channels and if you are hoping to come for a lesson then contact us up to 6 weeks before and fingers crossed we will know more by then.  

If you have a gift voucher from us then we will strive to have you come in when it best suits you and we are once again allowed to welcome people into our new studio. 

For now please keep safe, look after each other and look forward to the day we can safely welcome you back for some pottery fun.

Please only contact us up to six weeks in advance as we are unable to plan any further ahead. We hate not being able to plan and book people in but until we know more this is the best course of action for now.

Moving to a New Teaching Studio

Big news!!! We have been quiet recently as we have been busy behind the scenes. 2020 has been a strange year and it has been great being able to see and teach some of you, albeit at a much lower capacity than last year. Finding ways to adapt and work through Covid has meant we took a fresh look at what we were doing, our set-up and offerings for people wanting to try pottery. With this in mind we decided that having a better dedicated space for pottery lessons which we have more control over during Covid (and also to be able to have big groups again once it is safe again) was the best direction to go in… and also somewhere with heating.
We are very pleased to announce we have moved to a new teaching studio just over St. Ives Bay in Hayle Foundry Farm. More details will follow, Angela will continue to make pottery in a private studio in St. Ives and once the world is a bit closer to being back to normal we plan to offer a different type of pottery experience in St. Ives as well as continuing lessons in our warm new studio in Foundry Farm. We will spend the next few weeks setting up the new space and hope to be up and running soon. The location is a very short walk from Hayle train station and multiple car parks as well as two Philps pasty shops….the pasty shops have nothing to do with the new location…honest 😉
We hope this means people from all over Cornwall can access us much more easily and it will be easier for some of our regular visitors that stay in holiday parks around St. Ives Bay as well as giving an excuse to those staying in St. Ives to enjoy the most picturesque train ride from St. Ives to Hayle or just to pop over by car.
So easy parking, close to the train station and bus stops, awesome pasties and Angela’s new favourite thing, working heating! In our old premises we had been waiting for 6 years for the heating to be fixed, so working heating seems like a whole new world and means customers don’t have to freeze over the colder months; throwing a pot with cold hands is not fun.
We look forward to welcoming people into the new studio space some time soon.

Moving Forward

Hello all, we hope everyone has been doing as best as they can during these times. We have been quiet recently, for obvious reasons, as there have been so many unknowns. Moving forward, we currently are unable to say when we might be able to start lessons again. The building we are situated in has a list of problems to overcome to be able to confidently reopen. Currently only having one wheel causes some social-distancing issues and we need to reconfigure our workshop space quite radically. We are working behind the scenes on new plans, from some slightly out-there ones to more subdued ideas to make it possible to allow people to enjoy wheel-throwing pottery lessons again, but in a safe way following the official guidance. 

We have missed you all and the kind messages we have been receiving have really helped pick us up. The world is always changing and we will do everything we can to keep evolving with it. Fingers crossed we will have some more news soon but until then keep safe and look after each other.

Summer in the Pottery

Wow what a busy few weeks, it has been an absolute delight meeting so many lovely people who have tried their hands at wheel thrown pottery. Lots of amazing pots have been made and hopefully ceramic journeys started for them. 

We have been so busy we haven’t had a chance to update social media or on here. Over the summer booking in advance via our website is advisable but it is always worth popping in. We will try to accommodate as many people as possible and have had a few early starts and lots of evenings so far. 

We have freed up some days over the next month when the pottery wouldn’t normally be open to try to let as many people as possible create fun memories and hopefully start new pottery lives.

Pottery times.

Wow, time is flying at the moment; lots and lots going on and we have been covered in clay quite a lot so our blog has been quiet.

We had a full and fun-packed Easter and May. It has been a pleasure meeting so many people and getting them on the potter’s wheel for the first time. It’s also been really great having people come back for longer lessions after trying for the first time last year. Fingers crossed, lots of future potters have now gone back all over the UK.

The pottery area has undergone a lot of rearranging and planning to make space for our brand new kiln. We have just completed its second firing and are now playing with glazes in between lessons. We will also be offering more options with our pottery lessons including firing customers’ masterpieces. Something we keep getting asked to do is a block of lessons which could be split up over a week or two for people who want to have more time on the wheel. This is something we have thought of and will be working on options to share soon.

© 2024 St. Ives Pottery and Chris Roberts Creative
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