Raku Workshop – 2 Day Make Glaze & Fire: October/November 2026
Join us for the last (probably) of 2026’s two day raku workshops that uses a variety of hand building techniques to take you from raw clay to finished, fired, glazed work ready for you to take home. This fun and relaxed workshop, led by local ceramicists Richard Jeffery and Jayne Cunliffe, is suitable for absolute beginners, or for those with some ceramics experience who want to see the raku process through from start to finish. The workshop will have a maximum of six students and is run in Jayne’s pottery studio in the old chicken shed (better than it sounds!) at Sandy Hill Arts in Corfe Castle.
Day One Sunday 18th October – Make a number of pieces using basic hand building techniques: slab building (making work from rolled out flat slabs of clay), pinch pots and coiling. These are two of the earliest ceramic techniques, allowing you to build up simple or complex shapes by forming clay with your hands and then adding thin ‘sausages’ of clay to expand the form.
Day Two Sunday 1st November – Help prepare a variety of glazes to decorate your work in whichever way you choose, with support and suggestions from your tutors if needed, and help fire the work outdoors in the raku kiln. The raku firing is the culmination of this workshop – helping load the kiln and manage the firing, smoking and washing your beautiful pots ready to take home…
Cost – The two day workshop costs £140 (£115 tuition fee plus £25 materials costs, including clay, glazes, bisque and raku firing) per person. Each day runs from 10 – 4. Please wear old, warm clothes. There will be tea and coffee, and maybe biscuits. We break for around 45 minutes at lunchtime. Bring a packed lunch or get something in the village centre – a 3 minute walk away.
Tutors
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Richard JefferyCERAMICS | PHOTOGRAPHYRichard Jeffery is a Dorset photographer and ceramicist.
“Photography is often about surface and texture, the passage of time and water across the seen environment; about landscape and unseen human interaction, the small detail of landscape often overlooked. Images from rather than of the landscape, often analogue, shot on medium or large format cameras.”
Richard’s ceramic work is hand built using stoneware and sometimes porcelain clays, usually raku or smoke fired. His recent work explores early memories of children’s tin toys from the 1950s and 60s.
Richard has taught both subjects in Further Education for twenty years, and is keen for students to learn through exploration as much as possible. He is a trustee of Sandy hill Arts.
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Jayne CunliffeCERAMICSCERAMICS
