Clay Foundations: Spring Vessels: Form, Texture & Colour - Sunday 2pm

Clay Foundations: Spring Vessels: Form, Texture & Colour - Sunday 2pm - Image 2

Lia Tajcna stands in a pottery studio beside playful ceramic pieces on a bench

Clay Foundations: Spring Vessels: Form, Texture & Colour – Sunday 2pm

$540.00

This spring step into a playful handbuilding class exploring planters, vases and vessels made to celebrate the world coming back into bloom. Create architectural or organic planters, sculptural vases and colourful forms while experimenting with stamps, carving, slips, stencils and layered underglazes. Guided by Lia Tajcnar, this course encourages creativity, experimentation and personal expression in clay.

Date:	Sunday 18 October 2026
Time:	2:00pm - 5:00pm
Teacher(s):	Lia Tajcnar
Location:	Workshop Two

6 SPOTS LEFT

Description

This immersive ceramic course invites participants to develop a body of work centred on planters and vases. Working within a supportive studio environment, students will be encouraged to follow their own ideas while building confidence in combining form, texture and surface.

Projects may take the form of architectural or organic planters, sculptural vases, wall-hung vessels or other imaginative forms that push beyond the everyday. Techniques will be introduced through live demonstration and adapted to support each student’s individual vision.

A key focus of the course is integrating decoration into the making process itself. Students will experiment with handmade stamps, bisque press moulds and layered textures that become embedded within the structure of the work. Surface approaches will focus on building richly coloured layers using slips and underglazes and include carving, sgraffito, slip trailing, newsprint slip transfers, stencils and underglaze layering to create depth, atmosphere and tactile richness.

The class will primarily use slab, coil and pinch construction methods, with flexibility for students to combine techniques – wheel throwers are welcome to include altered thrown forms.

Our well-resourced workshop provides a comfortable and creative environment.

What to Expect:

Demonstrations in handbuilding, texture-making and surface techniques
Support to develop personal ideas and individual projects
Exploration of layered and atmospheric ceramic surfaces
A flexible class structure suited to experimentation and creative enquiry
Access to a fully equipped studio during class time

Teacher Bio:

Lia Tajcnar has degrees in painting and ceramics and loves to combine colour, pattern and imagery with tactile textured form in her ceramics practice. She is ever curious and experiments with techniques gleaned from other mediums to tap into the vast range of creative possibilities inherent in ceramics.

Lia’s teaching philosophy is to support students in developing their own vision through experimenting, testing and playing and critically evaluating their work with creative enquiry.

Notes:

Bring your usual pottery tool kit
A notebook and pencil
Clay and firing are to be paid for separately

What to Bring:

Bring your usual pottery tool kit,
A notebook and pencil

Important Information

Course Details:

Duration: 9 weeks, 3 hours per session
Skill Level: Intermediate. Basic hand building skills required
Materials: Clay, glaze and firing are an additional cost and can be paid through the shop or during class.
What to Bring:
- Sturdy covered shoes
- An apron
- Your toolkit
- An old towel or microfibre cloth

Studio Clean-Up: To maintain a safe and healthy environment, it is a requirement of class attendance that participants clean their workspaces and assist with the general clean-up of the workshop at the end of each class.

Health and Safety: Canberra Potters is committed to providing a safe environment for all our staff, members, and students. We ask that you keep our community safe by following all safety protocols and signage while on site. Your adherence to these guidelines ensures a productive and enjoyable experience for everyone involved.

Terms and Conditions

Refund Policy – Classes & Short Courses:

Class fees will be refunded, less a 10% admin fee, if cancellation is notified more than 10 business days before the first class date.
If less than 10 business days’ notice is given then a refund, less 10%, will only be given if the place can be taken by another student otherwise the full fee is forfeited.
Please view your booking as a commitment to attend.
Classes cannot be transferred from one term to another or one year to another.
If a class is cancelled due to lack of enrolments, 100% of your class fee will be refunded.
All changes to bookings and refunds incur a 10% administration fee.
Canberra Potters will not issue refunds for missed classes or missed emails. Please ensure you have saved the following Canberra Potters emails to your contact list.
Canberra Potters is a teaching facility and students attend our classes to learn about pottery. Imperfect, broken and cracked items are part of the learning process. We do not provide refunds for work that cracks or breaks while drying, during firing or in general class activities.