Product Description

This book is a handy guide to setting up a pottery workshop. It covers not only fundamental questions such as types of premises, design and layout of the workshop, equipment and materials, and how to make simple tools, but also questions of marketing and promotion, legal considerations and finance. To illustrate these points, the author discusses how various potters have tackled the issues raised and gives illustrations of a wide range of different workshops. The book draws on the experiences of an international group of artists, and so it will also be pertinent for potters outside the UK. This book is a must for those setting up a pottery for the first time, as well as the established potter who is experiencing difficulty in one of the areas covered, e.g. promotion and marketing.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #248631 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-31
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 128 pages

Review
'A useful book for the potter stepping up from "hobby status".' KPA Newsletter (May 2007)

About the Author
Alistair Young has taught courses on setting up potteries for a number of years and is a well-known potter.

Customer Reviews

Setting up a pottery workshop
This guide gives both practical advice and an interesting insight into all kinds of pottery workshop. I enjoyed how the book reveals a variety potters/ceramists in their studios, whether it be in an idyllic country location, or in an upstairs front room of an ordinary house. It helps make the dream of having ones own studio a reality with good common sense advice about equipment,layout and health and safety.

Few useful specifics
Phil Rogers' Throwing Pots book in this series I found very useful, so I had similar expectations for this. Unfortunately, it covers too wide a range of subjects in too few pages to go into any topic in useful detail. I wanted real specifics about what clays, glazes and equipment to buy, where to get them, how to make tools, what furniture to buy/make and and, well... how to set up a pottery workshop. Too much of this book is filler: murky photographs or inane comments like 'home-made packaging can be made from supermarket carrier bags filled with crumpled paper.' A waste of money.

Useful guide to setting up a pottery studio
Alistair Young's book is an excellent guide, full of practical suggestions and covering a wide variety of important considerations, including firing methods and building techniques. No two studios are the same. Pottery is not an exact science, there is therefore not always just one way of going about constructing a pottery. Given that the authour has had personal contact (through teaching, as well as running his own pottery) with many of the very well known potters mentioned in this book, he is able to show you examples of their work and how they have gone about things. Lots of useful little wrinkles (tips). It is an instructive and helpful book. It is not for those who want a list of instructions as if building a plastic kit, it is a source of inspiration.