In 2022, work gave me something unexpected: a short pottery workshop. A couple of hours in a studio, hands in the clay, and I walked away with a ramen bowl I’d made myself. It was wonky but beautiful. It was satisfying in a way I hadn’t anticipated. And then I went home, put the bowl on a shelf, and didn’t think at all about what would come next.
Because for me, at that point, it was a one-off experience. A lovely detour. A nice bowl for my noodle soups. I’m not planning a career change — I work in tech, I love what I do. Pottery was a work gift, a pleasant afternoon, and that was that.
The detour ended. Life moved on. And for nearly three years, I didn’t really think about clay again.
Until 2025, when I was lucky enough to join weekly pottery classes. And something shifted — something I hadn’t seen coming. It wasn’t a detour anymore. It had become a practice. Every week, I went to the class, even when I wasn’t feeling sociable. Every week, I tried to tame a lump of earth into something tangible. Every week, I left with clean hands and my head still full of clay.
I spent many hours sanding sloppily built projects. I made things I’m proud of. I failed at plenty of others. And it was precisely that — not the successes, but the process — that got me hooked. The fact that I hadn’t mastered it yet. The fact that there was still so much to learn.
After two trimesters, I had to put classes on pause for personal reasons. And that’s when I realised something slightly uncomfortable, something I hadn’t really seen coming: I really, truly didn’t want to stop.
So I looked. For a shared studio. A space for serious amateurs who aren’t trying to become professional ceramists, but who still need somewhere to work. Something flexible, accessible, designed for people like me — living in a city apartment, without room for a worktable and shelves full of pieces drying at various stages, but wanting to practise regularly.
In Nice, that doesn’t exist. Not for us.
Studios offer courses with a teacher, structured sessions, programmes. And that’s exactly what they should do — it’s their craft, and they do it beautifully, and without them I’d never have discovered that I needed pottery. But once you’ve learned the basics? Once you no longer need guidance at every step, once you have your own projects in mind, once you just want to put your clay on a table and work quietly? There’s nowhere to go.
The idea started to itch.
It itched in the morning when I woke up. It itched in the evening doing the dishes. It itched every time I passed a closed studio or looked at my tools sitting neatly in their case. And at some point I stopped looking for a solution that already existed, and started asking myself: what if I built it?
What decided it for me, in the end, was a fairly simple thought. If I need this — and I’m realising more and more that yes, I do — then there must be other people who need it too. Pottery classes are designed to pass on a skill, a passion, a way of seeing materials and forms. They do exactly that. They get you hooked. But when the session ends, you’re left wanting to continue with nowhere to go.
Especially when you live in a city apartment with no studio. Hand building doesn’t require much space in itself — but it still requires something. A table. Tools. Shelves to let pieces dry without cracking. Somewhere to take your work for firing.
So. I decided to build that place.
Not overnight, not alone, and certainly not without you. Nice Pottery Club is starting small and honestly — a first casual meetup at a ceramic painting café, to see if other people feel the same way. If they do, we form the association, find a room, launch weekly sessions. And if enough of us show up, we go further: a real shared studio, with shelves, tools, wheels, and a kiln.
This isn’t a class. It’s not a school. It’s not a perfectly packaged project with a business plan and investors either. It’s just an idea that kept itching, and still does, and that I decided to stop resisting.
If any of this sounds familiar — welcome.