Workshops-at-Wobage

Sheila Herring

Workshops — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 23:19:28 +0000

Many of you will already have met Sheila on previous Summer courses at Wobage. Apprentice to Jeremy for 2009-2011, Sheila received the first grant under the ‘Adopt a Potter’ charity, initiated by Lisa Hammond.

Sheila was a professional basket maker for over thirteen years, before changing her path towards the materials of clay and fire. Her current pots are predominantly wheel-thrown with some hand-built additions. The work is visceral and impassioned, combining a kind of abstract expressionism with subtle and robust functional shapes.

Since the beginning of her apprenticeship at Wobage in September 2009, she has participated in packing and firing gas and wood-fired salt-kilns, in which a selection of her work has been fired alongside Jeremy’s. She has recently altered the direction of her own practice, developing a range of slips and glazes in earthenware. From 2012, she has been invited to join the Wobage studios as an independent maker.

To view more information and current images of Sheila’s work, please visit her own website.

Petra Reynolds

Workshops — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 17:08:08 +0000

Petra Reynolds trained in the South East and then on degree at Cardiff before joining Wobage in 1995.

Petra’s innovative techniques in slab-building and decorating have in recent years earned her a reputation as one of the leading contemporary makers in the UK. Construction begins with one of many paper templates. Clay slabs are then cut around, mitred, bent and folded into a range of domestic shapes.

The inspiration for her decoration is many fold. From playful experimentation with line, pattern and composition, sketches evolve firstly on paper into monochrome or colour monoprint and collagraph. Decoration on pots takes place at the leather hard stage using slips and glazes. Initially slips are layered with brushwork, pouring and paper resist. This provides canvas for a more linear decoration which is achieved by a form of printmaking.

Motifs are drawn from an array of different objects and observations bringing to life a new and ever-changing vocabulary of marks and compositions. The pots are once-fired to 1300C with salt & soda in a wood-fired kiln.

Petra is currently working at home as a full-time mum to her son’s Alfred and Sidney, and will return as one of the tutors on the course programme in future years.

3 day throwing, stoneware – Improvers: Jeremy Steward

Workshops — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 23:42:13 +0000

This course offers opportunity for makers across all levels of ability to improve upon their range of skills and techniques in thrown stoneware. More experienced makers will have the opportunity to improve upon specific aspects of their throwing, turning and handling. On the third day of the course students may wish to experiment with raw-glazing and various methods of slip-decoration. If you are an absolute beginner with no experience at all in wheel throwing, then please view details on our beginners course. If however you have had a little experience, for example on an evening class, and you are getting to grips with the basics of centring and opening out small pieces of clay, you will benefit a great deal from this improvers course.

A small selection of the very best pieces, a maximum of 6 pots, which have been slipped and glazed within the duration of the course can later be gas salt-fired. Any unfinished pieces can be taken home or will be biscuit-fired at Wobage for you to collect at a later date. A charge will be made in addition to the course fee for fired pots: £1.00/lb for biscuit and £2.80/lb for gas salt-glaze.

The studio invites a maximum of 8 students for this course. Each participant will enjoy unlimited access to a power wheel for the full duration. These are a selection of different models; Rayefco, Alsager and Shimpo.

The course begins at 10am on the first morning, completing at 4pm on the last day. Tuition hours are otherwise 9am – 5pm. Home-made vegetarian lunches along with morning and afternoon refreshments are included in the price of this course.

More information about Jeremy Steward is available on the Tutors Pages. To find out about availability or to book a place please visit the booking page.

We currently have just one remaining place available for this course 2012.

5 Day throwing stoneware and porcelain: Patia Davis and guest Matt Blakely

admin — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 19:27:26 +0000

Throughout this five day course, led by Patia Davis, you will master some of the intrinsic qualities particular to working with stoneware and porcelain. Focusing on throwing, the course will demonstrate the need for a directness as well as a lightness of touch towards the beautiful material of Limoges porcelain. Beginning with simple form and basic approach, tuition and demonstration will advance towards more complex technique and form.

Wobage is a quiver with excitement to announce a new guest demonstrator for 2012 Matthew Blakely. He will in the second half of the course, demonstrate his own widely respected wheel-thrown porcelain. Matt, a fervent glaze wizard, will also be offering students a practical approach to making their own glazes for high firing.

Finished work can be taken home at the end of the course, or will be biscuit-fired at Wobage for you to collect at a later date. In addition there will be an option for a small selection of the best of your work which can be left behind for Patia to glaze and gloss fire. A per kilo materials/firing charge will be made in addition to the course fee, to cover the costs of green-ware taken home or quantity of biscuit and glaze fired work.

The studio invites a maximum of 10 students for this course. Each participant will enjoy unlimited access to a power wheel for the full duration. These are a selection of different models; Rayefco, Alsager and Shimpo.

The course begins at 10am on the first morning, completing at 4pm on the last day. Tuition hours are otherwise 9am – 5pm. A home-made vegetarian lunch along with morning and afternoon refreshments are included in the price of this course.

Patia Davis joined the Workshops at Wobage in 1991 after training at Harrow and Cardiff. She is a Professional member of the Craft Potters Association of Great Britain. More information about Patia Davis on her tutors page. Further information on Matthew Blakely will be available shortly.

To find out about availability or to book a place please visit the booking page.

We currently have just two further places available for this course 2012

Plant pot demo’

Workshops — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 22:13:37 +0000

Adam Keeling heads the production team of plant-pot makers at the world renowned Whichford Pottery in Warwickshire. An audience of 24 packed into the Wobage throwing studio earlier this month; it included evening class students and UWIC Ceramics undergraduates as well as the Wobage crew. All of us greatly enjoyed Adam’s large-ware demonstration, where he threw a number of huge pots, several of them in multi-parts. The ease with which he handled substantial amounts of clay was awesome and captivating. He spoke confidently about technique, answering questions mid-process and discussing his life and work at Whichford. Thank you Adam and to all that helped make for such a successful and educational event. Many thanks to J.P.Kavanagh who has very generously donated the images on this post.

Josh Redman

Workshops — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 09:35:47 +0000

Josh was invited as a new member to the Wobage Makers group in the Autumn of 2009. He has during the Summer course programmes at Wobage in 2009 & 2010 been drafted in for occasional demonstration and he now runs his own evening class which invites students across all levels of ability, on a Tuesday night. The traditional apprenticeship which he served in production throwing before graduating with a First Class Hons Degree at Cardiff University(UWIC), offered a very firm, practical foundation for his now experimental and dynamic pot-making and sculpture.

“I’m trying to show something true to the tension and excitement of uncertainty. For practical reasons I am hoping to do this in the shape of a pot. Sometimes they are not at all pot shaped and take on ambiguous sculptural forms that have evolved over days of exploratory modelling. I tweak, destroy and reconstruct, until something appears that is oddly crystallised but still a surprise to me. My pot shapes are made in much the same way as the sculptures, but it is the evolution of the series rather than the singular objects that I think about the most. In this way, each pot is like a layer of paint on top of another layer of paint in the canvases I sometimes cover. They are also like the gestures that get jumbled into all of the other gestures in my sculptural forms. The mind, by it’s nature, never stops until we are dead, which is why it excites me so much to show in physical form the movement of the live mind as it goes from one thought to the next, never finishing and without obvious conclusion.

To really get to grips with the fact that my pots are a series, I have started a project that will not finish for a very long time. I will be writing on each pot a word from my favourite dictionary. Without discretion, I will be going from A right through to Z. There are over 64,000 words in the dictionary I am using. My favourite transcribed word so far, has been ‘AB’ which has two meanings: ‘able bodied seaman’ and ‘Alberta’.”

For further current information and photos of Josh’s recent work, take a look at his own website

From June 2012, sadly Josh will be leaving the Wobage studios and teaching programme, to live and work in London. We all wish him the very best of luck.

Patia Davis

admin — Fri, 09 May 2008 21:38:17 +0000

Patia Davis was invited to join the workshops at Wobage in 1991 following graduation from Cardiff and previously Harrow Studio Pottery Course.

Her gentle porcelain forms evoke a sense of quiet and calm. It is the beautiful smoothness of the thrown material which emphasises the directness of the maker’s touch; hand against rib, inner tension with lift and softness of rim. With crispness, fluidity and care in the making, these qualities are relinquished to the glazed pot upon firing, captured underneath the subtle pale hues of transparent glaze. The porcelain is bisqued and then gas-fired to 1300C.

The warm, rich colours and strong forms of Patia’s domestic earthenware pots reflect her motivation towards utility and the joyful role that these pots play from kitchen to table.

They are raw-glazed and once-fired to 1120C. Not unlike the rural English terracotta potters of earlier centuries, Patia’s creative response to living and making evolves steadily and confidently. Her deft lightness of touch on the wheel and the influence of the natural world surrounding her home and workshop, brings a contemporary edge to a range of pots which also assert a deep respect for tradition.

For further details and information, here’s a link to Patia’s own website.

Jeremy Steward

admin — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 09:59:20 +0000

Jeremy Steward trained in Cornwall and then in Cardiff before being invited to join Wobage in 1995. Since then he has made wheel-thrown, wood-fired salt-glazed stoneware and porcelain.

“Alongside a driving motivation to make functional pots, I am inspired by the soft fluidity of the materials themselves; clay on the wheel, slip and raw-glaze.

My work is decorated in various ways; I often draw, a sort of wet scragfitto, while the pot is still on the wheel, or after the pot has been slipped. Otherwise they might be embellished with stamps, roulettes or finger-wipes, a vocabulary of abstract marks which are forever changing, but which consistently provide movement and fluidity in their accentuation or distortion of form.

My involvement with wood-firing and salt & soda-vapour glazing, forms an intimate and dynamic aspect to my making. Subjected to the vagaries of kiln atmosphere and flame movement, the pots celebrate a meeting between the conscious and unconscious. Control and intention exercised in the studio, is tempered by the inevitability of a certain unpredictability in the kiln-fire.”

“Jeremy is a potter content to take his time to develop skills and experience but adamant that these will arrive due to ways of working suited to him. These include: making clay bodies, slips and glazes of his own composition; throwing on a momentum wheel, raw firing with wood & salt/soda.

The work emerging from these conditions is therefore undergoing a constant honing for form, colour and function. What I most admire is the ‘bone and muscle’ of the throwing. But equally I like the fact that there is a quite distinct ‘track of events’ evident in his work. I have called it the fourth dimension – time. I can see and feel the time and rhythm of these pots from clay, through forming and firing, to the finished work ready for use in domestic surroundings.” Mick Casson.

Jeremy is a Fellow of the Craft Potters Association of Great Britain.

For more details and images, here’s a link to Jeremy’s own website.

Long weekend throwing, stoneware – Beginners: Jeremy Steward

Workshops — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 08:06:23 +0000

This course is designed specifically for those with little or no experience of wheel throwing. If you are considering adopting clay as a hobby or you are interested in exploring wheel-throwing as a process to extend an existing creative practice, then this course is perfect for you. It is equally suitable as a taster for Herefordshire locals who might be considering enrolling on a 10 week term of evening classes at Wobage. We will focus on the very basics of throwing clay, centring, opening out and lifting the clay. Following this, students will move on to trim and turn the leather-hard pots that they have thrown previously.

A small selection of the very best pieces, a maximum of 4 pots, can be slipped and glazed and later gas salt-fired. Any unfinished pieces can be taken home or be biscuit-fired at Wobage for you to collect at a later date should you so wish. A charge will be made in addition to the course fee for fired pots: £1.00/lb for biscuit and £2.80/lb for gas salt-glaze.

Tuition hours are 2pm – 5pm on Friday, then 10am – 4pm on Saturday and Sunday. The studios are available for use early and late, should you wish to extend your hours of potting during your stay. Home-made vegetarian lunches along with morning and afternoon refreshments are included in the price of this course.

More information about Jeremy Steward is available on the Tutors Pages. To find out about availability or to book a place please visit the booking page.

Adam Keeling

Workshops — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 09:30:48 +0000

Adam is eldest son of Jim and Dominque Keeling who established Whichford Pottery in 1976. Adam is a highly skilled thrower of terracotta, both plant pots and domestic ware. He works across a wide range of scale, right up to the seriously large garden pots made at Whichford.