The Potters’ Guilt (New Bahru)

The Potters’ Guilt at New Bahru is the collective’s second studio, on level four of the creative cluster on Kim Yam Road in River Valley, a few minutes from Fort Canning station.

The way in is a ninety-minute session on the wheel: centring the clay, coning it up and down, then pulling a piece of your own with an instructor beside you. What separates this studio from the collective’s Pearl’s Hill room is what sits beyond that — this is the one that brings in guest ceramicists to teach, and the techniques run past throwing into work like slip casting, which looks straightforward until you try it. If you want to keep going there are eight-session beginner and intermediate courses on the wheel, and the studio takes private family bookings, children’s programmes and team sessions. The instructors are practising potters and they do not rush anybody; people who have never touched clay are the norm here rather than the exception, and nobody is working to a clock.

Firing and glazing are charged separately, at $10 a piece, and are not part of the session — you leave empty-handed and come back for your work later, which catches out anyone expecting to carry a mug home the same afternoon. The hours move around more than most studios — a noon start on Tuesdays and Fridays, ten o’clock the rest of the week, and an early finish at six on Fridays and Sundays — so check the day before you set out. It closes on Mondays.

There are hefty discounts available on Klook, which you can find through the pink button on this page.