For the past few weeks, the Pottery Center has been even more busy than usual. A solar panel system has been set up in the Center, giving a long waited electricity for the running of some essential equipment, providing lighting during cloudy days and very importantly providing cold drinks! And more importantly, two extremely experienced, positive and excellent spirited potters have joined the crew to assist in teaching, developing new products, improving quality and last but not least building a new Kiln!
Just after Easter Peter Korompai a potter from Hungary arrived and will be spending a whole month volunteering in the Center, assisting with various testing of clay and glace as well as organizing the teaching, but most importantly he has been busy building the new kiln. With great assistance from the local potters and some of the students, he has created the kiln brick by brick over the last few weeks. This kiln will have at least three times the capacity of the old kiln, so the capacity of the Center is improving vastly.
Last week he was joined by Guðbjörg Káradóttir, a potter from Iceland who is coming to the pottery center for the second time now volunteering for around a month as well. She developed with another Icelandic potter Halldóra Þorláksdóttir and the local potters Brima, Mohamed and Fatmata, the curriculum of the school during the last visit as well as reorganizing the Center and preparing it for the opening of the school. Now she is assisting with the teaching, improving some production lines, doing more testing of clay and glazing and finalizing the layout of the Center to name just a few.
Their arrival has given the resident potters a significant boost, and the productivity and enthusiasm of both the potters and the students are fantastic. The center busses with life every day, and the humor and happiness in the air are very tangible. We are really positive about the development of this project and have full belief that the team at the Lettie Stuart Pottery will make this project a huge success and the sustainability of the Center will finally come true.
