accounts with B.C.Hydro who demanded $89 deposit, and with the
City for garbage collection and water - all these must be paid for

in a commercial zone. By this time it was late August; we'd spent a
lot of money, the day was rapidly approaching. We still worked
every day painting, decorating the coffee room, organizing the glaze
room, cleaning windows (they haven't been cleaned since), check-
ing supplies. And Ross-Huyghe School of Pottery Ltd. opened on
time, on September 22nd, 1966,

The University's formula always seemed to us a good one; twelve
students in a class, twelve wheels. It doesn't do as a money-
maker, but it works. Other things we changed: no more jars of
glaze, crusty like old port and mostly unlabelled, cluttering
every shelf in sight. No more glaze-spraying, a sure-fire cause
of acrimony at the end of term. All pieces to be signed. And a
limit to the number of pieces to be kept, to promote a more
critical attitude among students to their work.

In the earlier Extension days, not much had been demanded of
students. If they never progress beyond ple-dishes an inch
thick, that was O.K. But slowly things improved: a variety of
instructors, resident and visiting, brought and taught new skills,
and by 1966 all students’ sights could be set a lot higher. Our
philosophy was that if people were joining the school to learn to
work on the wheel, they were entitled to be taught thoroughly the
basic skills, and in their turn expected to accept the discipline
which technique demands. Class projects help; it is both inter-
esting and instructive to see the various solutions students
present in answer to a demand for, say, a footed textured planter,
a thrown box, a coffeepot, a set of ramekins. Similarly, the
limitation of glazes to 3 or 4 means that students learn to explore
and control them through constant experience. Those people
interested in glaze experiments can make them, but any success-
ful results will be made up in quantity for general use. Students
from beginners onwards are expected to take turns in making the
batches of glaze, packing and unpacking kilns, making firing
"biscuits". From time to time there is a special event - raku
firings on the final day of class, or a group project such as the
4'x6" glazed sign that decorates the outside east wall of the
building. On this one the students and instructor got an education
in a larger piece of work than could be done during term time.

8.