Starter Kit. Idea 25 of 500. Cluster 2
Pottery workshops, your own signature on the base
The mechanism, from the book
The craft cannot be copied and the object can. In Europe people queue to watch glass being blown and then buy the glass.
The first step
Visit a potter who still throws by hand and ask whether visitors could sit at the wheel for an hour and sign the base of their own pot. Offer to bring the first guests and handle payment. Run three sessions, collect honest feedback, and ask each guest what they would pay. The potter's agreement and three paid sessions are the proof.
- Who pays first
- Families and couples travelling with time to spare, who want an hour of making and an object with their own name on it.
- What leaves today
- A pot sells for little at the roadside; the hour at the wheel sells the potter's skill at the price of an experience.
Ask first
- National Crafts Council. Ask whether they know potters willing to teach visitors, and what support exists.
- the local council (Municipal Council, Urban Council or Pradeshiya Sabha). Ask whether a kiln on the premises needs any approval.
Check before you spend
That the kiln is safe and permitted at the site, how fired pieces can travel home unbroken, and what insurance covers visitors at the wheel.
Find out these three numbers
- What will a visitor pay to throw and sign their own piece?
- How many days does firing take before a piece can leave?
- What does shipping one fired piece abroad safely cost?
A comparison from the book
Dambulla hub. Appendix
"The hub is the clay and the kitchen: pottery, the cooking"
The book makes pottery part of a hub, so join with the kitchens nearby.
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
From the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? by Dr Maheshika Halbeisen. The idea and the mechanism are the book's; this kit was written for the site.