Try your hand at pottery at one of these local studios

With the start of the New Year, there’s no better time to develop a new hobby. If you’re looking for an opportunity to use your hands, be creative and connect to Cincinnati’s past, consider taking a pottery class. Cincinnati’s history with pottery dates back to the 1800s, when Rookwood Pottery first opened its doors. The region is now home to a variety of places where you can take a hand-building class, try your hand at the wheel or learn more about the region’s history with clay.

Whether you want to try hand building, the wheel or decorating, there’s a class for you in the Tristate. Queen City Clay in Norwood hosts classes and workshops for children, beginners and advanced potters. It also offers kids camps during the summer.

Core Clay, also in Norwood, is another place where both beginners and more advanced students can take classes in hand building and the wheel. But Core Clay offers special Date Night wheel and hand building classes, too, for those who want to try making pottery with a partner.

In Northern Kentucky, you can take classes at Covington Clay. It offers hand building and wheel classes for beginners and experts, but it also offers corporate team building workshops, where groups can spend time away from the office while building something together.

Up north in Loveland, you’ll find Whistle Stop Clay Works. There you’ll find a variety of classes to match your skill and experience. If you don’t know whether you want to try hand building or wheel pottery, try a ceramic sampler class, which lets you try both.

If you’d prefer to learn more about pottery before you start working with it, take a trip to Over-the-Rhine to visit Rookwood Pottery’s showroom and factory. In addition to viewing the items for sale, you can take a behind-the-scenes tour of the factory. The hour-long tour is led by Rookwood’s resident historian and will detail the process and history of Cincinnati’s famous pottery company.

For more pottery history, spend some time at the Cincinnati Art Museum in Eden Park. The museum is home to pottery pieces from a variety of cultures, including Indigenous American and East Asian, but it also has a large collection of Rookwood Pottery pieces. You can learn more about Rookwood’s place in pottery history here.

Want more pottery? You can also take a class at one of our region’s many art centers, including ArtsConnect in Springfield Township, the Baker Hunt Art and Cultural Center in Covington, Kentucky, and the Kennedy Heights Arts Center in Kennedy Heights.