Well people I’ve never made it known to the foreign community but I’m kind of an Yingge insider.
About 3-4 years ago I started to frequent one of the pottery classrooms in Yingge and before I knew I was teaching people how to throw pots. Mostly in the weekend and preferably foreigners.
But about one and a half years ago I got to busy to keep it up but I still keep going to Ingge once in a while (about once or twice a month).
I know first hand that pots can break and it’s not always the fault of the people handling them. If they aren’t thrown well and contain a some air in the clay or for some other reason (not dry enough) they can burst (explode) in the killn.
As you’ve already seen there are a lot of people trying their hands on throwing pots and it’s kind off mass production, so you have to understand that something can happen to a pot anytime and it’s not because of mishandling.
As far as I know the assistants that work there are mostly art students that have a part time job and once in a while young people really don’t care enough about if let’s say the glaze color isn’t perfect. They should care more but hey this is Taiwan and we all know that service or quality some times is … well you know what I mean.
The store where I go is the biggest in Yingge’s old street and they have more than 40 wheel’s to throw and more than 15 tables to try your hand on working with clay.
As long as I know the manager and staff always try to be correct to the customer, and believe me even if it looks to you that they don’t care they really do care. If somethings broken and you want it replaced they try to accomodate you and in case you ask them they let you make a new one, free of charge.
I even know of instances that they tried to make a close copies of the pieces that were broken, what’s not always possible. I know because I worked there on my own pots and have seen them do so. Many times I helped them with the final clean-up and glazing of the pots thrown by tourists.
You probably don’t know that they need to handle every piece individually (clean up and enhance) before glazing and firing.
The latest inprovement they’ve done is making an inventory database on computer with digital image from every pot that’s thrown to locate the piece.
Anyway, I really was kind of surprised by some of your negative experiences. I understand that some stores care less than others because they get every week loads of people. But sometimes people can have a bad hair day too.
To finalize, if you want to go to Yingge and try some throwing and have fun drop me message.