Anybody here into pottery? I haven’t thrown anything on the wheel since I was a child, but I’d love to get back into it. I hear the city of Inggo (Yingge) is the place for that. Anybody here gone there and done that? Is it worth it, both in travel time and the cost of materials? If it is, I’d be willing to get a group together to go there.
Please share details with us if you get any. I’d like to take my 11 yo there this summer, perhaps the 5 yo too.
Some colleagues went and it cost them $300 each to throw a small pot, have it fired, and then posted to them.
Didn’t throw a pot while in Yingko, but saw people who did and it looked like fun.
Don’t miss the Yingko Ceramics Museum - it is very informative and interesting. Probably one of the best museums in Taiwan in terms of layout, flow and information. Good giftshop too! Plan on at least 2-3 hours there.
Had our foot printed on the pottery last time we went there.
Nice place though.
ax
We went to a brilliant place down in Shui-li called the Snake Kiln. Supposed to be the oldest working kiln in the civilized world, or in that town or something. Anyway, it was built 70 years ago and is a wonderful labyrinthine maze of old brick and wood buildings with hidden courtyards full of plants, trees and water features, the original kiln is no longer in use and you can walk right inside – its enormous – also has a photo exhibit of the 921 earthquake, a lovely coffee shop where you can keep your cup and saucer afterwards, open studios where you can watch the potters at work, classes for adults, play areas where little kids can have fun…
The pottery was responsible for building what’s supposed to be the biggest glazed vase in the world or something. Its on display and is, well, large – about 20 feet high.
Definitely worth a visit. Here’s a link with full details and pics
The Museum was officially established in January 2000 and Inauguration Ceremony was held on November 26. Have a look [url=http://www.ceramics.tpc.gov.tw/][color=darkred]
Sandman, how did you get to that place? By car? Train? We’re in Muzha. I’ll have another baby in July, so I probably shouldn’t be going up any mountains during that time.
We went by car on the way back from a trip to Sun Moon Lake. It’s on route 16, about a little over an hour from Taizhong City. The town has a train station, but I don’t know about train/bus schedules. Its a very pleasant part of Nantou County and not really in the mountains, although the mountains are very close, but traveling from Muzha and heavily pregnant, it would need to be a weekend trip, I think. Just do a google search for Snake Kiln – there are lots of links and I’m sure you can get all the info you need.
Best way to Ying-ge is to take the train. The train stops almost right in front of that whole area that you want to be in, for your pottery shopping or taking classes.
The classes are relatively cheap - anywhere from 300-500, depending on what you want to make. Also, the products they sell there are top quality ceramics at the best prices anywhere!
Last year we went there to get a set of dishes - actually some really cool soup bowls that can double as large salad bowls. They only cost us NT$50 each and you can pick and choose whatever you want.
There is one main street where all this is located, and that’s right as you step off the train. If you take the bus, you still have to find a way to get there and it’s a hassle if you don’t speak Chinese.
My husband and I would be interested in going with a group of expats. Please email me at rpcc@ms67.hinet.net if this is going to be organized.
I went into a shop almost next to the train station to try my hand at pottery during the 2002 Yingge pottery festival. Some of the earlier posters have implied that this is a pottery class. It isn’t.
Costs were NT$100 if you just want to play with the clay on the wheel, NT$200 if you want to have your result fired and will collect it yourself, and NT$300 to have the fired, glazed result sent to you.
You don an apron, wet your hands, and get a lump of clay which is placed on an automated wheel. Then you shape it to your liking - within limits. You’re only supposed to make container-shaped objects - they don’t seem to entertain anything more complicated, say something with handles, or if you want to break off pieces of clay to decorate the surface. When you’re finished, you get a bamboo skewer with which to incise patterns on the clay, and that’s it.
I notice that some shops don’t really help their customers, and saw people carrying some pretty weird-looking bowls around, whereas at mine the staff practically made the whole thing for me. I would have preferred to do it myself, but it wouldn’t have turned out so well, on the other hand.
Several things to note:
You can choose what colour you want for the glaze, out of a selection of five or so colours. You can only have one colour, though I’d’ve preferred more.
I chose a greeny glaze which came out grey in the end. I’m not sure whether this is because I/they got the colour wrong, or if they had adjusted the thickness of the glaze because I hadn’t made my incised patterns deep enough (they pointed this out very early) and that had affected the colour.
If you ask for the result to be sent to you, be prepared to wait quite a while. It can take several weeks, or perhaps I should say more than a month.
I also assumed it would be sent by normal mail. The shop I went to uses a courier service, but it does come very well-cushioned in a little box and wasn’t damaged at all.
I have pictures of my pre- and post-glazed effort at community.webshots.com/user/shimmertje in the Intl Kite Festival/Yingge album.
Great photos and nice bowl!
Can someone please help me figure out how to get to Yingge via train? This will be my first train ride and I really don’t know where I should take the train (I live in Xinyi) and the name of the train station in Yingge? Thanks.
Yingge (so named, though I won’t vouch for the spelling on the station’s sign) is the last station before Taoyuan on the western line. The stations are Taipei, Wanhua, Banqiao, Shulin, Shanjia, and then Yingge (
Thanks so much for the detailed information!
Once went to a little town out of Taipei (or little it seemed) and there was a cobbled street with shops running on either side. Almost all the shops sold pottery - A couple stores looked like (and were) restuarants, but also had a few wheels in the back people could use to make their own pots. I have no idea what this place is called and/or where it is, but would like to go back. If you have any idea what I’m talking about (yes yes I know I’m being rather vague), then please tell me where the place is. Would be greatly apreciated. Thanks.
I went there too and it was a nice change from Yingge. It’s easier to explore the “artist within” amidst all that nature.
Re: Yingge. Here’s one problem: You pay to make a pot and have it mailed to you after it’s dried, and guess what? Someone else’s pot shows up three weeks later. Another one: Instead, you go back three weeks later to pick up your pot? Uh oh. Somehow your pot got broken and, since you’ve already paid, nobody cares.
It’s a drag.
Did both these things happen to you?
I would have expected that if you got someone else’s pot by mail, or if yours got broken, that the shop would allow you to do another for free.
In fact, if it had been broken, they could probably have repaired it or copied it - you’re not allowed to make anything fancy and the clay used doesn’t look very high-quality.
The catch would be that you have to go back to Yingge in the first instance, but you’d already be on the scene in the second case. You shouldn’t even have to make a fuss.
Of course if they aren’t willing to do so, you’d need to tell us the name of the shop so we don’t go there…
[quote=“shimmers”]Did both these things happen to you?
I would have expected that if you got someone else’s pot by mail, or if yours got broken, that the shop would allow you to do another for free.
In fact, if it had been broken, they could probably have repaired it or copied it - you’re not allowed to make anything fancy and the clay used doesn’t look very high-quality.
The catch would be that you have to go back to Yingge in the first instance, but you’d already be on the scene in the second case. You shouldn’t even have to make a fuss.
Of course if they aren’t willing to do so, you’d need to tell us the name of the shop so we don’t go there…[/quote]
None of these things have happened to me, but they have happened to people I know. For example, my friend took her relative to make a pot in Yinggo and I accompanied her back there a few weeks later to pick it up. We got to the shop and a staff member went off to find the pot and returned a while later to say that somehow it had gotten broken and been thrown away. My friend was quite disappointed, especially as her relative had visited from China (he was 75 and this was his first, and probably last, visit to the island) and she wanted to send the pot to him as a souvenir. The pottery shop owner didn’t care. His attitude was that shit happens and his shop was packed full of people so he didn’t need our business, and he also didn’t care if we complained because he knew a lot of people in the media who would write good stories about his shop and bring in the customers. In the end, he did attempt to placate my friend, as her increasingly loud voice was having a rather negative reaction on the people who were making their own pots that day: He said a lot of people never come back to pick up their pots and my friend could choose one of those to send to her relative.
I went to Yingge last year and did the whole pottery package. Made a gruesome bowl, did some inscriptions and paid to have it glazed a nice greenish color and baked in the oven.
But… when it was sent 3 weeks later it seemed as if they had run out of the glazing color or something. It had a few spots of glaze inside, but 90% had no glaze at all.
Don’t remember the name of the place I went to. Just remember it was on the left side of the main road.
Except for this disappointing pottery place, I highly recommend Yingee for anyone looking for a daytrip. It’s convenient with the train from Taipei Main Station. And it has a nice main street that is blocked for cars and motorbikes. (And it looks like they enforce this block as well).