Pottery in Australia Vol 17 No 1 Autumn 1978

Martin Kelly was the first trainee in the new workshop-a school teacher,
twenty-one years of age. He heard 1 was looking for a trainee in June 1975 and
started with me in J anuary 1976. A true pottery "freak" who gave up his secure
job with a future to settle for a doubtful one on a trainee's wage. He is now in
his third and final year. Martin has received Crafts Board assistance for each of
his three years of training.
rt rains a Jot on Springbrook. We can spend days at a time drifting in and
out of low, saturating cloud that reduces the landscape to a series of greyed backdrops-one
fading behind another. For this reason at least we have to build
enclosed workrooms. The workshop was up but not enclosed when Martin arrived.
I was building the kiln and he had to put in his five hours a day practising on the
wheel. After that he helped with the kiln. It was the wet season, everything was
damp. The kiln's foundations filled with water seeping down from the mountainside.
The mildew was rampant. Eventually the kiln was completed with the help
of a local, Barry Walsh, who would wander in and put in a few hours' work. Two
firings before the year's end and then without a break headlong into the new
year. Barry joined us as the new trainee. He was a wood joiner by trade but had
become disillusioned by the way his trade was losing all its hand skills and
quality of product. Things weren't so good. We didn't have sufficient outlets for
our wares and we were getting a certain amount of reaction against what we were
doing. We were being " knocked" for producing a "workshop article". Nobody, it
seemed to us then, wanted to know about Lyrebird Ridge Pottery. They would
have much preferred to sell the individual personality of Errol Barnes. All wares
The workshop at Lyrebird Ridge Pottery.
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