Let’s Clay!
Building Community Through Clay
This is where the fun starts! Explore our list of upcoming classes, courses & workshops below to find one that is just right. We plan to offer classes for children and adults (our kids’ classes are currently in development).
If none of our regularly scheduled group classes feels like the place you’d like to start, you might want to schedule a one-on-one or private class with friends or colleagues as a way to get started, hone your skills or simply have fun and get to know each other better.
Are you looking for a place to keep playing after your class ended or a studio to practice your craft? Check out our membership options.
Still not sure what’s right for you? Browse our Upcoming Classes & Events Calendar for inspiration or call or write to us for more information!
We want to help you find the right fit! We are firm believers in “the more the merrier” here at the Staunton Clayground!
A Brief List of Our Ongoing and Upcoming Classes & Workshops
(Listed chronologically by start date - scroll down or click the links to read the more detailed descriptions below)
Pottery Wheel for All-Level Beginners – June 3–July 8, 2024 (IN SESSION): Six 3-hour sessions (18 hours total), Mondays, from 2:00–5:00 p.m.
Pottery Wheel for All-Level Beginners – June 25–July 23, 2024 (IN SESSION): Five 3-hour sessions (15 hours total), Tuesdays, from 5:30–8:30 p.m.
Pottery Wheel for All-Level Beginners – Sundays, June 30–July 28 and August 11, 2024 (SOLD OUT) : Six 2.5-hour sessions (15 hours total), Sundays, from 2:30–5:00 p.m.
Pottery Wheel for All-Level Beginners – July 8, 2024 – August 5, 2024 (SOLD OUT): Monday and Thursday, from 6:00–8:00
Vases & Carving - Wheel Throwing & Surface Decoration - Workshop Module 3 of 3: Three 3-hour sessions (9 hours total), 5:30–8:30 p.m.
Wednesday, July 10, Saturday, July 13, and Saturday, July 20, 2024
Sculptural Coiled Forms Workshop by Janly Jaggard: Five 3-hour sessions (15 hours total), 1:00–4:00 p.m. on Tuesdays and Fridays, July 16, 19, 23, 26 and August 6, 2024
Clay Slabbing and Hollow Forms – Intensive Workshop: Two 6-hour sessions + glazing day (approx. 15 hours total): 10:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m.
on Sat. and Sun., August 9 and 10, with glazing Fri., Aug. 30, 10:00 a.m. until finished
More classes and workshops coming soon.
Scroll down for detailed info about each listing!
Pottery Wheel for All-Level Beginners:
Sundays, June 30–July 29 and August 11, 2024
Six 2.5-hour sessions (15 hours total): Sundays, from 2:30–5:00 p.m.
Have you always wanted to try your hand at throwing pottery on the wheel and never had a chance? Have you spent some time on the wheel but want an opportunity to gain confidence and hone your skills? Over the course of six 3-hour sessions, we will focus on setting achievable goals and making them into a reality!
The newest potters will learn the basics of making classic vessels like cups and bowls. Those with some experience will focus on gaining confidence with foundational skills such as centering, pulling up the walls, creating consistent cylinders and more. Students who are already able to create simple wares on their own will instead concentrate on design and consistency by looking at strategies for more easily making matched pieces to form pairs or sets. We’ll also look at trimming and decoration, as well as how to add handles to our creations. Everyone will have functional food, oven, microwave and dishwasher safe wares to take home by the end of this class!
Instructor: Nicole Hill
Price: $175 (includes materials and all necessary glazes. There is no limit to the number of pieces each student can make and fire during this class.)
Vases & Carving - Wheel Throwing & Surface Decoration, Module 3
Three 3-hour sessions (9 hours total): 5:30–8:30 p.m.
Wednesday, July 10, Saturday, July 13, and Saturday, July 20, 2024
In this third of three 9-hour modules focusing on different surface decoration techniques applied to wheel-thrown pieces, students will focus on throwing small vases with slightly thicker than usual walls, making it possible to carve out faceting or other designs once the vessels are leather-hard. This is an interesting way to add interest to the surface of any piece, and can be done either on plain clay as a way to show off the effects of particular glazes or in combination with colored-slip or underglaze decoration applied before clear-glazing.
(Prerequisite: students joining this workshop must be able to throw a 4-inch-tall cylinder unassisted).
Students who sign up for all three workshops that are part of this wheel-throwing and surface-decoration journey will receive a 15% discount, to be applied to a future class or workshop within one year of the final module’s end date.
Instructor: Nicole Hill
Price: $125 (includes all necessary equipment and materials. There is no limit to the number of pieces each student can make and fire during this class.) Open to adults with prior wheel experience (age 14+).
Pottery Wheel for All-Level Beginners
July 8, 2024 – August 5, 2024
Monday and Thursday, from 6:00–8:00 p.m.
Have you always wanted to try your hand at throwing pottery on the wheel and never had a chance? Have you spent some time on the wheel but want an opportunity to gain confidence and hone your skills? Over the course of nine 2-hour sessions, we will focus on setting achievable goals and making them into a reality!
The newest potters will learn the basics of making classic vessels like cups and bowls. Those with some experience will focus on gaining confidence with foundational skills such as centering, pulling up the walls, creating consistent cylinders and more. Students who are already able to create simple wares on their own will instead concentrate on design and consistency by looking at strategies for more easily making matched pieces to form pairs or sets. We’ll also look at trimming and decoration, as well as how to add handles to our creations. Everyone will have functional food, oven, microwave and dishwasher safe wares to take home by the end of this class!
Instructors: Nicole Hill & Jennifer Delare
Ages 14+ There is no limit to the number of pieces each student can make and fire during this class.)
Sculptural Coiled Forms Workshop
Five 3-hour sessions (15 hours total): From 1:00–4:00 p.m. on
Tuesdays and Fridays, July 16, 19, 23, 26 and August 6, 2024
This short class will deal with several aspects of working with earthenware clay and has both the beginner and the experienced clay worker in mind. The focus will be on material and on the design skills that will build aesthetic discernment about handbuilding skills as well as shape, form, surface and texture. Students will begin with drawings or other found references, which will be the starting point for shape and form and then detail of texture and color.
Pieces created in this class are intended to be purely sculptural (nonfunctional).
Each class meeting will run for 3 hours. There will be 4 class meetings for building and one for post-bisque decoration.
Supply list for this class:
- Sketchbook/notebook
- Drawing tools: pencils or pens
- Apron or shirt
- Each student will come to class with drawings or photos of the following:
Images that are of plant and other natural forms such as seaweed, trees, sand dunes, clouds, leaves, legs, etc.
Instructor: Janly Jaggard
Price: $200 (includes earthenware clay and all materials and tools not listed above). Pieces created in this class are sculptural (nonfunctional). Open to adults (age 14+).
Clay Slabbing and Hollow Forms – Intensive Workshop
Two 6-hour sessions + glazing day (approx. 15 hours total): 10:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m.
on Sat. and Sun., August 9 and 10, with glazing Fri., Aug. 30, 10:00 a.m. until finished
Slabbing is a technique that uses leather-hard clay construction and recalls real-world angular shapes. These shapes are the inspiration for the project students will create in this workshop. Ideas will come from references to buildings, man-made forms such as machines, and manufactured forms.
We will make plans and drawings on paper then work on rolling out clay. Exploration of methods of joining slabs and developing surface decoration will be next, as the clay gets to leather hard and ready for building. Decoration and embellishment includes adding clay, piercing, carving, and using color.
Supply list for this class:
- Sketchbook/notebook
- Drawing tools: pencils or pens
- Apron or shirt
Instructor: Janly Jaggard
Price: $200 (includes clay and all materials and tools not listed above). Open to adults (age 14+).
An Introduction to Clay
This class is offered on a recurring basis and will be available again soon
Come and learn the basics of working with clay! If you are an absolute beginner or haven’t been back to the pottery studio since that class you took in school, then this course is for you. The goal of this pottery class is to learn the basics of functional pottery and have several pieces to show for it by the time the course has concluded. Over nine 2-hour sessions, students will experiment with hand building using slabs and molds and with using the wheel to make basic pottery shapes such as small cups, bowls and mugs.
Everything we make will be functional and oven, microwave, dishwasher and food safe!
Instructors: Cary Dahl & Jennifer Delare
There is no limit to the number of pieces each student can make and fire during this class.) Open to adults (age 14+).
Come on, let’s clay!
Pottery Wheel for All-Level Beginners:
This class is offered on a recurring basis and will be available again soon
Have you always wanted to try your hand at throwing pottery on the wheel and never had a chance? Have you spent some time on the wheel but want an opportunity to gain confidence and hone your skills? Over the course of five 3-hour sessions, we will focus on setting achievable goals and making them into a reality!
The newest potters will learn the basics of making classic vessels like cups and bowls. Those with some experience will focus on gaining confidence with foundational skills such as centering, pulling up the walls, creating consistent cylinders and more. Students who are already able to create simple wares on their own will instead concentrate on design and consistency by looking at strategies for more easily making matched pieces to form pairs or sets. We’ll also look at trimming and decoration, as well as how to add handles to our creations. Everyone will have functional food, oven, microwave and dishwasher safe wares to take home by the end of this class!
Slab Geometric Vases Workshop
This class will be available again in coming months
Join us and learn how to construct a large clay vase using the handbuilding slab technique. We will walk you through how to design and construct these geometric beauties, while also being able to personalize it using surface techniques like stamping and slip design. We will meet three total times for this class, two hours each, and take you from construction through glazing.
Instructors: Nicole Hill
Open to adults (age 14+).
Sculptural Slab Creations Workshop
Currently in session! This class will be available again in coming months
In this 4-day intensive workshop (3 days for creation plus 1 glazing day), you will learn how to design and create a complete work of art out of leather-hard slabs. Your creativity is limited only by your imagination. Day one we practice texture and building techniques using patterns on prepared slabs and learn how to roll slabs. Day two we create templates from your own functional or ornamental designs, and add texture and surface decoration to our slabs. Day three we complete construction and add finishing touches. A week later we return to glaze our bisque-fired creations. No clay experience necessary!
Instructors: Cary Dahl
Open to adults (age 14+).
Mugs & Sgraffito - Wheel Throwing & Surface Decoration Workshop
This class will be available again in coming months
In this 9-hour module focusing on surface decoration applied to wheel-thrown pieces, students will focus on making mugs with a design and shape that lend themselves to sgraffito decoration. They will then move on to learning how to use this technique to decorate their vessels, using a variety of carving tools on colored slips and underglazes applied to the surface of the clay body.
(Prerequisite: students joining this workshop must be able to throw a 4-inch-tall cylinder unassisted).
Bowls & Underglaze - Wheel Throwing & Surface Decoration
This class will be available again in coming months
In this second of three 9-hour modules focusing on different surface decoration techniques applied to wheel-thrown pieces, students will focus on making bowls with an interior surface adorned with painted-on underglaze. This is a fun and practical way to add decoration to the inside of a bowl while still allowing it to be used as functional tableware, if desired, since the underglaze is then sealed with a layer of clear mid-fire glaze to make it water-tight and food-safe.
(Prerequisite: students joining this workshop must be able to throw a 4-inch-tall cylinder unassisted).
Students who sign up for all three workshops that are part of this wheel-throwing and surface-decoration journey will receive a 15% discount, to be applied to a future class or workshop within one year of the final module’s end date.
Instructor: Nicole Hill
Price: $125 (includes all necessary equipment and materials. There is no limit to the number of pieces each student can make and fire during this class.) Open to adults with prior wheel experience (age 14+).
Get in touch! We’re happy to answer your questions.
“Every time I center the clay on the wheel, I feel like I am centering myself. Creativity comes from a place of inner stillness and joy.”
