Saltings Pottery Guild pairs young makers with master potters

The red clay dug from the banks of the Saltings has a habit of cracking if it dries too fast. Learning to stop that from happening, according to the guild's oldest members, takes about a decade. The Saltings Pottery Guild now wants to compress at least the first year of that learning into a structured scheme, and has paired twelve young makers with eight master potters.

The participants, aged between 18 and 27, were chosen from 96 applicants. Each will spend four days a week in a working studio for nine months, receiving a stipend of €400 a month and free use of materials. Their mentors will teach throwing, glazing and the slow business of firing the guild's shared wood kiln, which is lit only four times a year and burns for three days at a stretch.

From the marsh to the shelf

Much of the guild's work is functional: terracotta planters, bread crocks, jugs and the heavy flowerpots that sell steadily at the Old Quay market. Margit Rees, who chairs the guild, said that commercial side was as important to teach as technique. "A beautiful pot that takes eleven hours to make and sells for twenty euros is a hobby, not a living," she said. "We want them to leave knowing both."

The first week I threw forty bowls and kept one, and my mentor said that was a good week.

Callie Ndlovu, at 19 the youngest of the group, joined from a graphic design course at the University of Wrenhaven. She said the scheme had given her what an evening class never could: time at the wheel every day and someone watching her hands.

• The scheme is funded by the regional arts council and sales from the guild's own shop.

• Mentors are paid for their teaching hours for the first time.

• Work by the young makers will be shown at the Asher Arts Centre next summer.

The guild's members have watched their numbers fall for years. In its busiest period the Saltings supported more than thirty working potters; today there are eleven, and the youngest of the mentors is in her fifties. Without new makers, several studios would have closed within the decade, members said.

The guild plans to open applications for a second group once the first has finished, provided it can secure funding for another year.