At first glance, Andretta in Himachal Pradesh presents an array of familiar visuals associated with a place that borders tourist towns — steel-framed momo stalls, travel counters with colourful paper stamps to ferry you to the farthest reaches of the Himalayas, and general stores that sell everything from local soaps to souvenirs.
However, this nondescript village, around nine kilometres from Palampur, is home to one of India’s oldest pottery studios, Andretta Pottery. Last year, in October, I stumbled upon it accidentally, after navigating a few alleyways and rundown shops. The studio was a world of its own — young students worked dexterously on calcified kilns, structuring vases and pots into ovoid, pomiform and pear shapes. The history of the place dates back to the 1980s and the efforts of the late Sardar Gurucharan Singh, who was among the first studio potters in India.
Shubham Sankhyan, 27, who now runs the pottery studio-cum-school, has been immersed in the world of clay ever since his father joined the studio in the late 1990s. And, of late, he’s been observing a marked change. “When we started teaching around the year 2000, we used to have 90% foreigners and 10% Indians. Now, it’s 96% Indians and 4% foreigners,” he says, adding that they have students aged between 20 and 70 participating in their three-month residential courses and seven-day retreats.
“When I set up my studio in Alibag in 1999, I had to start from scratch — build my kiln, get wheels from Pondicherry. You couldn’t get a slab roller, so I found a fabricator who worked at Bombay Mills. You couldn’t go out and buy clay, which meant you had to buy silica, feldspar, kaolin, and ball clay and mix it. Everything was grassroots, start your own, make your own, DIY. The ease of access in the last few years particularly has helped studio pottery grow tremendously.”Anjani KhannaCeramic artist
Everyone’s fired up about ceramics
In the last few years, the slow uptake of studio pottery in the country has transformed into a sharp rise. The impact of the pandemic and people’s desire to find new ways of living, social media, easy access to materials and equipment (until recently, potters had to build their own kilns and import clay, glazes and wheels), and new retail opportunities are all factors in the explosion of interest.
Adil Writer, partner at Mandala Pottery in Auroville, Tamil Nadu, states that the pandemic, in a way, was a blessing because it showed him a “different way” of working. “During the lockdown, when regular orders for ceramic tableware were not coming in, we started making murals and installations of our choice, and not what a client was ordering. There was great artistic freedom in doing this, and it was all validated when most of the items sold off as soon as I posted them on social media. The last one-two years have been busier than any other time during my 20 years at Mandala,” he says. “Post-pandemic, things have picked up so much that I have to [sometimes] tell clients I can give them their dinner set only after six months. And they are willing to pay in advance and wait to get their orders processed.”
Social media has, undoubtedly, been a game changer. When studio potters showcase their process — moulding clay, glazing and firing it to make a unique piece — as photos, Instagram lives, reels and YouTube shorts, “people watch it, get curious, and either want to buy it or sign up for classes”, says Sankhyan of Andretta.
This is true for Thomas Louis, 46, whose design background from the National Institute of Design informs the way he looks at pottery. “My work has always been related to the oceans,” says the Goa-based potter, who opened his second studio (and gallery), Thomas the Potter, in 2021 in Fontainhas to meet the growing demand.
A recent Instagram reel — replete with sharks, starfish, stingrays and sea anemones — that had people reaching out, was a commission for the Indian Navy, for its base in the Andamans. Another quick video has him throwing at his wheel while gypsy jazz artistes Robert Kres and Buland Shukla perform at his studio. Such posts have ensured engagement and sales, and he says, “after the gallery opened, all the designs I’ve been working on for years have sold out. It’s been crazy”.
Some wheel and retail therapy
Although pottery is expensive — it costs a minimum of ₹3-₹5 lakh to set up a studio — potters are finding innovative ways to present their art: collaborating with chefs, making commissioned pieces, and bringing heritage craft into pottery.
“Newer avenues of retail are helping. Potters in Auroville, for instance, are getting large orders; there’s interior design collaborations; and online sales have transformed the market,” says Mumbai-based ceramic artist Anjani Khanna. Sometimes, it’s also the little things, “even something simple like the ability to transport work. People have learnt how to pack, the courier system is better — all of which is helping studio potters”. Khanna, who has been observing the steady uptick studio pottery’s enjoyed in the last few years, is one of the members behind debuting the Indian Ceramics Triennale in 2018 (see box) — which has helped show the public “what ceramics can be, what is possible” with the craft.
Mixed media experiments are gaining traction today, too. Louis, for instance, is collaborating with a furniture designer to make lamps that marry wood and ceramics, and with a jewellery designer to create murals that juxtapose his ocean-themed ceramics.
Sales aren’t the only thing booming; applications for classes are pouring in at studios across the country. “A lot of people have realised that working with their hands is the perfect antidote to the digital world,” says Louis. And pottery does this really well — the messiness of working with wet clay, the need to follow a process to get results, and the satisfaction of holding the final creation forces people to put their phones aside. (Louis charges ₹16,000 for a seven-day session.) According to Writer, Golden Bridge Pottery classes in Auroville have taken off after the pandemic, so much so that resident artist Aarti Manik says they are sustaining the studio more than the actual pottery they make there!
“I sense a rise in the need to connect with oneself, with nature, to work with one’s hands, to have and share experiences. Clay is all of this and much more,” says Mumbai-based ceramic artist Rekha Goyal. “It engages our visual sense, our sense of touch, and helps us de-clutter our minds and focus. This makes clay therapeutic, relaxing and a creative outlet that many of us are missing in our everyday life. I find that many young people are taking it up as a form of meditative and creative practice.”
Art for the table
“Many Indians still have a hard time understanding the labour, technique and logistical constraints involved to make even a simple spoon. [After initially working on tableware] I realised people could not fathom why a ceramic art plate was ₹5,000, regardless of the intricate design that had gone into it.”Kritika Soni Delhi-based Karasabi studio, which now works largely on commissioned pieces
Slow down, it isn’t hard
In her mango orchard in Andhra Pradesh, Nikita Dawar’s Slow Pottery has been gaining a strong foothold. Her ‘Clay Play Friday’ series on Instagram, where she demonstrated how to make everything from soap dispensers to incense smoke domes, boosted her online following (now a respectable 38.6K) and gained her students.
While Dawar, 32, believes that Indian consumers are no longer isolated with their knowledge about materials and techniques, as opposed to a decade ago, she says there’s an urgent need to underline the fact that pottery is a slow medium — so that people understand that it’s not a machine-produced medium with quick hacks that can be sold for a few hundred rupees. “You have to slow down, there is no other way. My teachers didn’t have to tell me this back in the day but now I have to tell my students. There is a challenge to get them to dive deeper. Some people open a studio and within three months start selling [which is not a good thing because the work will not be of high quality].”
Mumbai-based ceramic artist Rashi Jain echoes the sentiment. “Studio pottery took off during the pandemic. But the drawback is, Instagram and other social media can make pottery look easy. People expect fast results; they want to start earning money quickly. A lot of the works I’d seen online, when I saw them in person, I didn’t want to buy them! Online, it’s a bubble. You might be selling due to your algorithm, but it’s not quality work. So right now, in the studio potters’ movement, there is also a requirement of artists who teach [and learn] slowly, instead of just trying to just make money out of it.”
‘ Clay is a layered medium’
The writer is an author and editor based in Mumbai.
With inputs from Surya Praphulla Kumar and Neha Mehrotra.
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