Clay Monoprints with Mitch Lyons - July 30th -
August 13th This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity
to study a printmaking method developed by the
instructor himself. Students will create their prints on
clay and then transfer the print on to paper. This is an
excellent way for printmakers, ceramists, and painters
to explore new techniques. Costs not to include hous-
ing is $1,400. An early bird special is offered by regis-
tering no later than April 30th. College credit may be
obtained through West Chester University, Weschester,
PA. Please contact the instructor for further details at
clayprint@ yahoo.com. You may see Lyons’ work at
www.mitchlyons.com.

Water-Based Screen Printing and Ceramic Transfer
by Dave Fortune- August 22nd - 26th This will be an
intensive, hands on, solvent free summer school which

Travel Dream

will suit teachers and lecturers in the mediums of
printmaking and ceramics. It will also be of great help
to those who wish to set up and organize their own
screen printing area using a completely water based
system. By using fine meshes and sensitive direct sten-
cils, delicate hand rendered marks can be printed on
paper, fabric, and ceramics. The water based ceramic
transfer process will be of great interest to all who are
interested in ceramics and printmaking. Contact Dave
Fortune at fortune.eden@virgin.net. Cost of the pro-
gram not to include housing is $588. View from the
Studio The Skopelos Foundation for the Arts.

The Skopelos Foundation for the Arts RO.
Box 56 Skopelos Island, Greece 37003
wwwskopart.org
info@skopart.org

Humble Beginnings

Fifty years ago, in 1955, a group of pioneer potters estab-
lished the Potters Guild of British Columbia. While very
little history from this time was documented, there are a
few potters from the era who are still with us and who still
love to talk about those halcyon days. Two of these are
Stanley Clarke and Zoltan Kiss.

Kiss immigrated to Canada via Denmark from his native
Hungary. Fleeing his homeland after the Russian invasion
in 1944, Kiss first went to Denmark where he found work
in a ceramics factory. After five years Kiss and the ceramic
factory's daughter married and came to Canada where Kiss
had hoped to establish a ceramics company. Of course
when he arrived, he found a fledgling society with very lit-
tle ceramic activity and certainly no major industry in his
field. Kiss still has the kick wheel he built out of driftwood
collected on the North Shore, and the kiln he used then
was a rudimentary electric kiln he made himself out of an
old refrigerator. Unable to make a living as a potter, Kiss
returned to the studies he had started in Hungary and pur-
sued a degree in architecture at UBC. Throughout his high-
ly successful architecture career he was one of a hand full of
potters who faithfully practiced his craft at the old Pottery
Hut at UBC, hub of the nascent Vancouver ceramic cul-
ture. To this day Kiss is a practicing ceramic artist who has
highly successful yearly shows at the Ferry Building in West
Vancouver.

Another Pottery Hut student was Stan Clarke. He was a

January 2005

full-time flight dispatcher with Trans Canada Airlines and a
part-time potter with a passion for experimentation with
clay and glazes. Clarke was fortunate enough to have land-
ed a week-long study session with Bernard Leach, with the
help of the British Council. Using Leach's "A Potter's
Book", Clarke fondly recalls going into the countryside
with fellow potters and digging up clay that they would
sieve and process into workable clay bodies. In 1958, with
the help of a Koerner Foundation grant, Clarke convinced
Len Fairey, of Fairey & Co., to produce a clay body for pot-
ters. Fairey & Co. only produced clay for insulating bricks
at that time and making the clay for potters was a special
order that eventually spawned a line of clay that existed up
until the mid-1990s. Seeing a business opportunity in mak-
ing clays for potters, Stan Clarke established Greenbarn
Pottery Supplies in 1973 and at 94 years of age, Stan still
works part-time at Greenbarn.

The Potters Guild of BC had a small but dedicated group
of members in its earliest days. There were national shows
and international speakers brought in for the betterment of
the struggling ceramic culture growing in the Lower
Mainland in the mid-fifties. Clarke and Kiss are only two
of several fascinating figures who laid the foundation for
what has become a thriving clay culture all over British
Columbia.

Rachelle Chinnery

Potters Guild of British Columbia Newsletter 11