Give it a spin and learn a craft from the masters
THE third Cork Craft Month, which runs until Sep 9, is not just an occasion to view beautiful crafts. A new initiative is ‘meet the maker’, classes in textiles, ceramics, jewellery, painting, and more, taught by master crafts people. The classes will be at Cornmarket Street and Kinsale Pottery and Arts Cent re. There will also be demonstrations at Blarney Castle, West Cork Crafts in Skibbereen, The Courtyard in Midleton and at open studios throughout the county.
Adrian Wistreich, of Kinsale Pottery and Arts Centre, was a businessman in publishing in the UK. He wanted to be an artist. After training in ceramics in London, he moved to Kinsale in 2000 a nd set up his crafts business. Last week he offered to show me how to make a bowl at his premises, the outbuildings of the 18th century Ballinacurra House. I attended pottery classes as a child, but had never worked on a wheel. Wistreich demonstrated, throwing the clay onto the wheel, turning a lump of it into a perfectly shaped bowl. I messed up building u p the walls. This involved squeezing the clay and pulling it up — in one motion. The faster the wheel is spinning, the faster you can pull up. My clay collapsed into a soggy heap. But just handling the clay is therapeutic and making a bowl becomes easier with practice.
