Approaches to Clay with Ruthanne Tudball

Please find summer school details below additional information regarding this demonstration.

Ridge Pottery is pleased to announce a day-long demonstration from renowned potter Ruthanne Tudball on the 3rd of August 2025. 

Making soda-glazed pots from her studio in Norfolk, Ruthanne is known for her unique and playful approach to clay. 

“ Manipulating soft clay and feeling the material respond to the merest touch is like setting out on an exciting journey for me. The dialogue that goes on between the maker and the clay is carried out through the use of the pots. You pour, you eat, you store, you serve and you drink from them, and sometimes you just contemplate them. All of my work is manipulated and assembled while wet in an attempt to capture the softness in the finished piece. After firing and transforming the clay to stone, that softness can still be seen.”

Born and brought up in California, Ruthanne moved to the UK in 1968, and taught herself to throw on a potter’s wheel whilst studying English Literature at Reading University. In 1987 she began a postgraduate ceramics course at Goldsmiths University, where she spent her time researching soda glazing. In 1995 her popular book ‘Soda Glazing’ was published by A&C Black. 

Ruthanne is an Honorary Fellow of the Craft Potters Association of Great Britain, an elected member of the International Academy of Ceramics and a member of the Norfolk Contemporary Craft Society. 

At our studio deep in the Somerset countryside, Ruthanne will demonstrate her distinctive approach to making as she enters a new phase of her work focusing on handbuilding. 

The day’s workshop will focus extensively on Ruthanne’s practice, taking an in-depth look at her approach to clay, exploring various forms and vessels, capturing the soft, fluid quality she is known for. 

Participants are encouraged to be curious and ask questions; and are sure to come away feeling confident to experiment and expand their own practices in both throwing and handbuilding. 

Times are 10am – 4pm with breaks for lunch and refreshments. 

Cost is £60 per person. 

Refreshments are included in the cost however lunch is not. There is an option to go to the local cafe for lunch. Please let us know in advance if this is your preference.

Click HERE to register your interest.

Summer School dates for 2025

Dates:
JuneSunday 15th – Sunday 22nd
August Sunday 3rd – Sunday 10th (Potters Invite Club)

You can request to have your name put on our waiting list here.

Summer School Course Details 


Our aim is to develop your potting skills, decorative techniques, glazing and firing skills. We endeavour to foster an appreciation of form, its subtleties, and variations as well as developing an awareness of the long history and richness of pottery. All this in an enjoyable atmosphere, where the experience of the routine in a working pottery and our “from the ground up” way of doing things will ensure you go away with a sense of achievement. We are passing on the knowledge we have acquired over forty years of potting, both in the UK and enriched by experiences working and observing techniques across four continents.

In the course of a week, the full scope of a potter’s cycle will be covered, from clay mixing to firing. Individual tuition combined with excellent facilities and our working methods will make this an experience to remember.

Course Schedule

After an initial tour of the pottery on Sunday morning, 9.30 am start, you will begin the first of four making days. While tutoring ends at 17.00 hours, the studio remains open until 20.00 hours so the energetic can practise. There is a wheel for each student, plus some spare. Teaching is by group demonstration and by individual coaching. All manner of pots, from humble egg cups to giant storage jars, lids, spouts, handles, etc. will be demonstrated. Decoration at this stage can involve alteration of form, adding clay and working with slips. Students work at their own pace on individual projects, taking from the demonstration those elements that most suit their particular aims and objectives.

The workshop is closed on Thursday so pots can dry. This gives students a day off to visit other pottery in the area or to walk the hills and swim in the sea.

On Friday morning you will be finishing your pots and preparing them for glazing. All the glazes are prepared at the pottery using a mixture of our own and commercial materials. In the afternoon Jennie demonstrates and oversees the glazing and decoration of pots. She uses brushes, trailers and sponges with glazes and oxides. After glazing Douglas conducts the packing of the kiln. All of the pots will be once fired, an established specialty of our work here.

Friday is also the day for making raku. Using clay mixed here at the pottery we will spend part of the day making raku pots, both by hand and working on the wheel.

Saturday is full of action and excitement. Participants take an active part in the firings, often building and firing a raku kiln as well. We usually fire two kilns: the new 2 chambered wood-fired kiln to stoneware temperature, and a raku kiln, also wood-fired. The raku pots are glazed, decorated and fired. As with the whole course, the firing process is very much hands-on and a chance to discover for yourself the ancient and modern arts of the potter. Our experiments with Kakishimi firings are continuing and we hope to be doing more such firings during the summer weeks.

Sunday morning is a moment of high tension as the kiln is opened and your still warm pots unpacked. The finished pots are an opportunity for more lessons to be learnt and delights to be savoured. After coffee and farewells, students take their leave around midday.

Coffee breaks are usually taken out in the garden. Lunches are no longer provided, as Jennie has finally retired, however some of our B&B providers will make packed lunches and there are local cafes available. These arrangement choices are all up to students making for themselves. Good evening meals can be found in a variety of interesting pubs within easy reach.

We can arrange bed and breakfast accommodation for you. Our students stay in private homes and farmhouses in or near the village. Alternatives are camping, hotels and inns (Lists can be supplied on request).

The fee for the 6 day courses, which includes all finished pots, tea and coffee, is £730. A non-returnable deposit of £150.00 is payable on booking, the balance being due one month before your date of arrival. Cheques (in sterling) should be made payable to J. D. Phillips. Electronic payments are preferred.

Ground breaking weekly courses since 1970’s

Holistic intensive approach to pottery

Douglas started his ground breaking weekly courses in the 1970’s, pioneering the holistic intensive approach to pottery. He built on his training at Harrow and worked with the likes of Michael Cardew, Mick Casson and Gwyn Hanssen and his studies of the workings and production of indigenous potters in many parts of the world. 

With the energy of youth, he covered what others thought was an impossible span of the potters experience, history and techniques in the long days of summer. The students responded to his enthusiasm and came from all over the world to take part. 

Douglas Phillips established the pottery in Queen Camel in the late ’70s with the aim of making beautiful and useful pots of all kinds and sizes; also to continue with the summer school he had started in Devon. The summer school, with its strong international following, had become a corner stone in Douglas’s working life. The enthusiasm of these students, who travel often thousands of miles, to spend one week or several or a whole summer, to work long hours learning from Douglas, was very uplifting. In partnership with Jennie, and with the help of many assistants, the studios, kilns, clay mixing etc, quickly became a reality.

Unique idea

The summer courses are based on the unique idea of completing a potters working cycle each week. Using the well tried traditions of millenniums, including once firing in wood-burning kilns, has proved very appealing to aspiring potters (and to people who just wanted to get their hands dirty in a creative way) who continued to beat a path to Queen Camel in increasing numbers. Student numbers rose to 120 in one season, coming from 11 different countries. Wonderful though it was to have the world come to their door, Douglas and Jennie were feeling their energies and time for potting running low, so scaled back the number of weeks of teaching and varied the format.

Over the years they have held advanced 2 week courses, workshops on porcelain, salt glaze, kiln building and glaze technology. Numerous master potters have been to the pottery in Queen Camel to demonstrate and give workshops and this tradition continues. The list includes David Leach, David Eeles, Mike Dodd, John Maltby, Sven Bayer, Clive Bowen, Nigel Wood, Caroline Whyman, Walter Keeler, Colin Pearson, Mike Bailey, Jane Hamlyn, Paul Stubbs, Kevin Crowe, Christine Ann Richards, etc