Wagga Potters Club members (front, from left) Rosemary Tucker, Dawn Smith, and Dianne and Brian Mahoney; (back, from left) Lina Wood, Belinda Whyt and Di Maloni. Photo: Erin Hee.
When a group of student potters from the Wagga Wagga Technical College gathered in 1969 for an informal Wagga Potters Club, they certainly did not expect it to become a fully fledged club that’s still operating 56 years later.
The club started out with members selling their pottery on Saturday mornings from the little pink cottage in Morgan Street.
When it was demolished in 1978, the Red Shed at the showground became their temporary base for about three years before they moved to the Association of Riverina Cultural Clubs (ARCC) Hall in Tarcutta Street in 1982, where you can still find them today.
Wagga Potters Club president Dianne Mahony said the group started out as a shop in 1994, but had since expanded. It now offered lessons for beginners and a space for other potters to keep honing their craft.
Currently, there are only four men in the club of 56 potters (including Mrs Mahony’s husband, Brian), but they are keen to see that number grow.
Brian doesn’t see himself as a token.
“They treat me when I come in handy to fix things,” he said.
It’s difficult to make a living from pottery, but life member Dawn Smith, who has been a potter since 1968, has managed to do that with her slip casting business, Studio Australia. She found success in a niche market making slip casts of different animals for around 30 years before eventually selling her business.
She explained that slip casting was a pottery technique to create different shapes.
Having majored in pottery herself, Ms Smith noticed that more places offered pottery lessons back then compared with today.
In her limited spare time, Ms Smith comes in to play with clay with Mrs Mahony and the rest of the Wagga Potters Club, something she has more time for after retiring “from that side of potting” two and a half years ago.
“Prior to the university and TAFE courses, there were places where you could get certificates,” Ms Smith said.
“But that all disappeared and nobody was teaching anything.”
But the pair noticed a “revival” during COVID, with a few places offering pottery lessons popping up in the past two years around Wagga.
Mrs Mahony also noticed a shift towards handmade and unique pieces, and an odd fascination with mushrooms.
There is a shift towards handmade, unique and off-centre pieces. Photo: Geng Min Kuan.
“If they’re making a cup, they put a mushroom as their handle and things like that,” she said.
“That’s what I noticed. There’s more interest in doing things slightly off centre, even if they’re doing domestic things [like teapots].”
Ms Smith said: “There’s so many other different ways to pot.”
Aside from being a potter, she’s also a painter. Having painted for a lifetime, she still enjoys it, but says she finds more variety in pottery.
She and Mrs Mahony think the beauty of pottery is in how “endless” the possibilities are. Mrs Mahony said 100 potters could be given the same brief, but would produce 100 different pots.
“You’ll never ever stop learning,” Ms Smith said. “It’s always something new and always something to go wrong.”
The Wagga Potters Club hopes to share the joy of pottery, but is currently limited by space, availability and teachers.
“We’re trying to get other people involved and build up to a point where they can take on classes,” Mrs Mahony said.
The Wagga Wagga Potters Club can be found in the Association of Riverina Cultural Clubs (ARCC) Hall in Tarcutta Street from 10 am to 4 pm on Fridays and Saturdays. In addition to holding pottery lessons, members also sell handmade ceramics.
For more information, check out the club’s Facebook page.
