Exploring Catalunya: Portrait of a Potter in Villefranche-De-Conflent

Following this post covering my visit to Villefranche-de-Conflent, I wanted to share with you a few more photos from “La Poterie De La Citadelle”.

I’m always curious to know how things are made so when the owner, Pierre Saudin, gave me access to his workshop for a few minutes while he was working, I was thrilled to be able to document his process!

I really liked the mood of the workshop and immediately found interesting details to photograph.

As illustrated below by his son, on the first step, the pressed body is de-aired and extruded to the required size through a pug mill, which is pretty intense on the arms.

After that, the clay is cut and then put on a wheel to create the form of the ceramic. A string is then use to cut the piece off the hump. The whole process takes less than a couple of minutes, especially with someone as experienced as Pierre.

Then once the pieces are dry, which takes a day or two, they are polished and inspected to remove any imperfections and hard edges.

Next step is pretty straightforward: painting.

Finally, the last step I was able to observe was the glazing, which seals the surface and gives the product its glossy finish.

It’s worth noting that I wasn’t able to witness the ceramics being fired in an oven.

Thanks for viewing!

David Giral is a published Montreal/Toronto based editorial and commercial professional photographer specialized in architecture, interiors, portrait and travel photography.

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Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright David Giral (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without permission from David Giral.