The 10 week block of Summer evening classes are now upon us. A most enjoyable term for the light evenings  and the warm gently breeze that predominates over Wobage’s microclimate! Perfect conditions, we anticipate but don’t guarantee, for much quicker drying and pot turnaround of an evening. Wednesday and Thursday class numbers are already up to maximum, however there are still places available for Josh’s Friday class. Any budding amateurs or complete beginners, keen to improve skills, or try their hand for the very first time with soft clay on the wheel, please get in touch asap to reserve your place.

Looking forward to the Autumn term, beginning September 2011, at least one place will become available on Jeremy’s Thursday’s class. It also seems likely that due to popular demand, Josh’s class will change from a Friday to a Tuesday. We look forward to welcoming some new students to Wobage over the coming months.

You’ll find more detailed information about our evening classes on our course pages. For availability you can contact us from our booking page, following which someone will contact you. The image above features salt-fired pots made and decorated by evening class participants on Jeremy’s Thursday course.

Wobage pottery evening classes are now in their 5th year, their popularity creating a thriving, creative, productive and sociable community of makers on each of the three evenings. With priority of place offered to existing students, new places not often become available. Such a last minute opportunity arises here, for two students to join Josh’s new 10 week term, held on a Friday and beginning on Friday 28th January.

The course offers unlimited use of high quality clay, an electric potters wheel for each student and one to one tuition from a professional maker. The throwing studio is fully equipped and now very cosy indeed. Recent insulation upgrade to the building along with a new high efficiency wood-stove will ensure that you are warm at the wheel, even on the chilliest of winter evenings!

Our page on evening classes offers further details. For availability and booking, e-mail Josh now at: courses@joshredman.co.uk

Josh is offering secure payment through PayPal, or a cheque is also fine. The deposit of £50.00 secures your booking, the balance of £130.00 is payable on the first evening of term.

Watch out, you saw it here first, the new look for the Wobage tutors for 2011!

Thank you to all Wobage students and Makers Gallery customers who have supported us in 2010. It has been a most rewarding and enjoyable year. Some great students and some inspirational fired pots to match, through the season of Summer courses and the full year of evening classes.

Here’s wishing you all a very Happy Christmas & New Year and our best wishes for a successful 2011. A reminder that Wobage Makers Gallery is officially closed for January and February. However, we shall all be grafting away at the Workshops through the harshest of inhospitable Winter conditions. Our greatest inspiration……. a recently insulated throwing studio and new wood-stove! So if you need to buy a gift or fancy a New Year treat for yourself from the newly refurbished gallery, please don’t hesitate to ring and make an appointment to visit.

….for the Wobage pottery christmas party, thank you to our hosts Graham and Linda at the Alma Inn in Linton.

“She’d an ankle like an antelope

and a foot like a deer

A voice like a blackbird

so mellow and clear

And her hair it hung in ringlets

so beautiful and long

And I thought that she loved me

but I found that I was wrong”

The Wobage course programme for 2011 is now live with some new additions promising to make for a busy and exciting Summer. Clive Bowen visits the 5 day jar-making course for two days of demonstration and tuition. Designer maker Tavs Jorgensen leads a plaster workshop with hot trade tips on profiling & sledging hump moulds. Josh Redman demonstrates his inimitable techniques in softly thrown sculptural pot-making on a new long weekend workshop suitable for all levels of ability. For full details, prices and availability, please browse our course pages.

Patia and Jeremy will be exhibiting new work at the CPA (Craft Potter’s Association) Christmas Fair in Oxford, on the weekend of 30th & 31st October. For full details and directions to get to the event, please visit the Oxford Ceramics Fair website.

With Mick’s exhibition and book launch fast approaching, find attached the press release for the event.

Mick show press release

Marking a year of apprenticeship to Jeremy as part of the ‘Adopt a Potter’ trust scheme, Sheila Herring will be exhibiting her new body of wood-fired salt-glaze at the forthcoming Autumn Wobage show. In the way that Mick Casson supported and nurtured new young talent, it seems fitting that the exciting and spirited work that Sheila has been developing over recent months will be exhibited adjacent to Mick’s retrospective and book launch. The September exhibition forms part of ‘H’Art’, Herefordshire’s annual artweek. If you are out of county and considering a visit, rest assured that alongside the Wobage exhibitions, there is an abundance of artist’s open studios and galleries to visit. We open at Wobage on the evening of Friday 10th September with live jazz and refreshments, 6pm-9pm, then continuing until Sunday 19th, 10am – 5pm.

The planning for Mick’s retrospective exhibition this Autumn is now well under way at Wobage, touring from Ruthin Craft Centre, North Wales, which has also now published Mick’s biography written by Emmanuel Cooper and Amanda Fielding. The book will be available for sale at £20 from Wobage Makers Gallery. The biography is beautifully illustrated throughout,  and celebrates Mick’s life and work; from Arts school in 1945, to their first pottery in Marchmont St. London, then Prestwood and finally the move to Wobage in 1977. Amanda Fielding writes of Mick’s international influence, afterwords from Philip Hughes of Ruthin, Sheila and Ben Casson.

The exhibition will be held in the Wobage threshing barn, the ‘cathedral’ as Mick called it, featuring as part of Herefordshire Council’s Art Week, ‘H’Art’, opening evening of Friday 10th with live jazz and refreshments, and then until Sunday 19th September 2010, 10am – 5pm. We hope that you can join us in celebration.

The Wobage makers warmly invite you to join us for our exhibition this weekend. Beginning this Saturday 29th May and continuing every day until Sunday 6th June, 10am-5pm. Enjoy the sunshine, the Wobage lawns and Spring flowers, bring a picnic and relax with a glass of Wobage ‘Early Griffin’ perry and a slice of our delicious home-made cakes.

The Wobage makers will be around for most of the week.  If you’d like to meet one of us in particular, or talk about any one of the many forthcoming courses this Summer and Autumn, please e-mail or telephone to check we are at Wobage to meet you. We all really look forward to seeing you over the nine days of exhibition.