“It’s not the pot we are forming, but ourselves” — MC Richards
I’m clasping a spinning, fist-sized chunk of clay between my slippery wet hands. I’m doing my darndest to ensure it rotates smoothly around the centre of a metal wheel, but try as I might, the ball of clay keeps going off-kilter. My instructor made it look so easy to create a small pot. After about an hour, I succeed in emulating her actions to a tiny, doltish degree — and the process takes both effort and ease in applying pressure, as well as constant reminders to myself to breathe calmly.
It’s my first attempt at throwing a pot in The Melville Mudroom, and it’s just one of several techniques Kate and Nina Shand offer. They also teach hand-building, which entails making pinch pots, coiling, working with slabs and sculpture, and various ways of combining these methods.
Kate, who recently completed her MA in art therapy and describes her own journey with clay as “profoundly transformative and almost alchemical”, began an informal working-with-clay group about five years ago. Nina met master potter Paul de Jongh at pottery classes at the Kim Sacks Gallery and Ceramics Craft Art School while studying for her MA in industrial sociology at Wits, and then ran Millstone Pottery in McGregor in the Western Cape with him for nearly 30 years. When Nina moved up to Joburg, the sisters formalised the Mudroom in 2022, starting with three classes a week that soon became six.
Pottery classes, which last for two-and-a-half hours, take place in the bottom rooms of a semi-mansion on a hillside near the Melville Koppies. The sessions — characterised by the intense concentration of students busy shaping, carving, glazing and decorating their clay creations — are punctuated by occasional chit-chat and guidance from one or both of the Shand sisters. The students are of all ages, sexes and colours — a welcome relief from the lily-white, middle-aged, 90% female self-help classes I attended in the past.
Pottery has become sexy of late, not only because musician Nick Cave enjoys crafting various fiends and devils out of clay to help him process his grief (he lost two sons), but also because of the British TV series The Great Pottery Throwdown, which has run since 2017 and is now in its eighth season.
“I’m an avid fan of the show, which introduced me to some of the techniques I am now learning how to do,” says Mudroom student Greg Homann. “I come to classes because it’s two-and-a-half hours during which I can be off my phone. I can just focus on a pot or sculpture and make something beautiful I can hopefully take home.”
“People come to pottery classes for different reasons,” say the sisters. “Some are looking for a creative outlet, but many just want to disconnect from the noise of the city and the clatter of their keyboards. The idea is to help them find their own way with the material, and we have an intuitive and informal approach. We both get very excited about the various possibilities of clay, so we’re exploring at the same time our students are.”
Buhle Olifant says, “I came because I wanted a hobby and a break from my day job. I’m in finance, so I needed something to take me out of my head. Kate and Nina don’t look over your shoulder or nag you — they just let you do your own thing.”
“One of the joys of working with clay are alternative firings,” says Nina. “We do live firing workshops — including raku, saggar and smoke firing — where students can see how firing affects what they have made. Students are often disconnected from the firing process and don’t know what it involves, so showing it to them is really beneficial.”
The firing process, which takes place in the tree-filled garden of the Mudroom, includes protective gear and is quite “edgy” — there’s a sense of danger involved in it, according to Kate.
Handling clay is healing
Clay has multiple healing properties. Working with it to produce an aesthetic or practical result takes time, so it’s all about learning patience — something I realised as I wrestled with the wheel. Wheel work is bilateral, meaning you use both hands at the same time, which is soothing for the brain.
“Our students usually leave our classes in a good mood, and for some it really is like therapy. In fact, one of our students stopped therapy and started coming here twice a week, because she felt she gained more from pottery classes,” says Kate.
Clay is a mirror: it will reflect if you’re impatient, if you can’t let go, or if you let go too easily. Some people take months to finish a pot, while others want to make lots of pots quickly. Clay teaches you about impermanence and loss: a firing can go wrong, or you can take your beautiful finished product home only for the cat to knock it over. On the other hand, clay products can last for thousands of years and are regularly dug up at ancient archaeological sites.
Clay is tactile — it is touching you at the same time you are touching it. “We have so many nerve endings in our fingertips — it’s almost as if that’s where our eyes are,” says Nina (I was told not to look at the clay on the wheel, but to use my body instead of my mind). “Clay is embodied: many terms are used for it that correspond with our bodies, such as the ‘lip’ (edge), the ‘ear’ (handle) and the ‘foot’ (base) of the pot.”
Clay yields a physical product, which is rewarding. The invitation with clay is to go on a journey — both with the material and oneself — and there are no shortcuts. Where you start with it is not where you end with it.
“Clay also has a memory, known as a ‘plastic’ memory, so if you bend a piece of clay before you straighten it, it remembers that. When you fire it, it will get a little kink where you bent it, so you have to be mindful of that when you work with it,” says Nina.
Kate says, “Clay positions you in space and time, and provides its own rhythm. It’s a long process, as the time between starting a piece and having it fired can take six or more weeks. It involves presence (dancer-turned-potter Paulus Berensohn calls it ‘radical presence’), problem-solving, learning from mistakes, learning to not repeat mistakes, and, most challenging of all, being gentle with oneself.”
The Mudroom offers corporate and family events, as well as weekly classes and drop-in sessions where participants can come and have a one-off, fun and non-threatening working-with-clay experience. Their creations are glazed and fired for them, and they can collect them three or four weeks later. “It’s about curiosity, seeing what happens, letting go of expectations, and not being wedded to outcomes,” say the sisters.
There are also monthly workshops involving the different types of firing and surface treatments, such as monoprinting.
Visit www.melvillemudroom.co.za
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