The ceramics studio will be taking a break from classes for the summer and plans to resume operations in the fall of 2023. This will give us time to prepare for exciting changes to our course offerings! Please watch this website to stay tuned for updates.

Mission

DeCordova’s Ceramics Studio provides artistic access and education through hands-on experience with clay. Continuing the legacy of the deCordova Art School founded in 1965, the ceramics studio offers classes and workshops for students of varying ages and skill levels. Through the unique properties of the ceramic medium, our course offerings encourage students’ aesthetic engagement with their surroundings and a deep inquiry of three-dimensional form. By developing foundational ceramic techniques for both sculptural and functional forms, students learn how to be curious about the art, objects, and world around them.

“Our present methods of education which put a premium on accumulation of knowledge have rarely reached out to include a training in creative habits of observing, seeing, and shaping our surroundings…. So [students] should be introduced right from the start to the potentialities of their environment, to the physical and psychological laws that govern the visual world, and to the supreme enjoyment that comes from participating in the creative process of giving form to one’s living space.”

Remarks by Walter Gropius at the ground-breaking ceremony for new classrooms, DeCordova Museum, September 19, 1965

Facilities

• Stoneware and porcelain clay bodies
• Library of shop-mixed glazes, slips, and stains
• Commercial underglazes
• 9 electric wheels
• Brent slab roller
• hand extruder
• glazing spray booth
• hot box for fast drying
• 3 electric kilns
• Gas kiln, reduction firing
• Raku firings on occasion
• Communal hand tools

All studio participants pay firing fees, calculated by volume, for each firing to cover material costs. These fees will be charged at the end of each session.