When Phillis McCulloch joined Clay Design in 1994 as the third in a trio of partners, she knew how special it was. Before she came to the studio. she’d been an independent potter, circling between multiple places where she fired her work, sold it and taught classes.
“It was crazy exhausting, ineffective, inefficient and I broke a lot of work in the process because I was trying to transport stuff that was very breakable in a car,” she recalls. “It made me all the more grateful to be here, and when I got here. I knew what I had because we had everything centralized. It was such a relief.”
Clay Design is an artist-run gallery and studio space for potters, housed on the ground floor of a two-storey building at the corner of Harbord Street and Brunswick Avenue. It has occupied the same address since it was founded in 1980 by Frank Trotz and Nancy Solway. “It feels like we’re part of the neighbourhood, and our neighbours are actual residents on the street nearby,” Phillis says.
Now owned by partners Mari Lise Stonehouse, Dennise Buckley, and Phillis, Clay Design offers pottery classes and events, ceramic painting, and also rents studio space to potters.
