Andretta, Kangra, Himachal Pradesh
Thrown in Andretta
Two potters, one kick wheel, a wood kiln behind the house, and the glazes of the Kangra valley.
THE POTTERS
Mohan learned to throw in Andretta in the eighties, in the workshop that made the village a potters' village, and Leela does the glazes, which she learned from the ash of the kiln itself. We built our own wood kiln behind the house in 2004 and have fired it about six times a year since: two days of stoking, a day of cooling, and a morning of opening it that we still find hard to sleep before. Everything here is made by the two of us and our apprentice Ritu. There is no second workshop and no wholesale; what is on this page is what came out of the last firing.
How it is made
From the riverbed to the shelf
The clay is dug from a bank of the Neugal below the village, dried, slaked and sieved twice, then wedged by foot on the workshop floor until there is no air in it. A bag of clay is a month of that before it is a bag of anything.
Mohan throws on a kick wheel: no motor, the weight of the flywheel and the leg. A chai cup is a minute; a serving bowl is a morning, because it is thrown, left to stiffen, and trimmed on the wheel the next day so the foot is thin.
The glazes are Leela's. Celadon from iron and the ash of the kiln's own wood; tenmoku from more iron and a hotter shelf. Every piece is bisqued first, glazed by dipping, and fired to 1,250 degrees over two days of stoking. The kiln cools for a day. Opening it is the morning the whole village drops by for.
The pieces
Out of the kiln this month
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Pottery & clay
Chai cups, set of four
Thrown thin, no handle, the way chai is drunk here. A set of four in one glaze; the celadon is the valley's, the tenmoku is the…
₹1,400 from 13 left
Buy -
Pottery & clay
Serving bowl, 28 cm
A wide bowl for the table, the rim left unglazed so the clay shows. Oven-safe; goes from the kiln to the dal without complaint.
₹3,200 4 left
Buy -
Pottery & clay
Tea set, one firing
A pot, a jug, a bowl and six cups from one shelf of one firing, so the glaze matches across the set. There is one; the…
₹9,800 Sold out
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Andretta, Kangra, Himachal Pradesh
Andretta: the potters' village
Andretta is a village of artists in the Kangra valley below the Dhauladhar, a painter's and a playwright's houses and a pottery that taught most of the potters in the valley. The workshop is behind the gallery, the kiln behind the workshop, and Palampur and its tea gardens are twenty minutes down the road.
Andretta sits in the Kangra valley under the Dhauladhar, between Palampur and Baijnath. The painter Sobha Singh and the playwright Norah Richards made it a village of artists; the pottery that came after taught most of the potters in the valley. The workshop is behind the gallery, the kiln behind the workshop. Palampur and its tea gardens are twenty minutes down the road, Baijnath and its temple twenty the other way, and Dharamshala an hour up the valley.
Getting here 3 ways in
- Nearest airport
- Gaggal (Kangra), 45 km, about an hour.
- Nearest rail
- Paprola on the Kangra narrow gauge, 8 km, or Pathankot on the broad gauge, 120 km.
- By road
- Delhi to Palampur is 480 km, ten to twelve hours on the overnight Volvo, then a taxi to Andretta in twenty minutes.
Drive in and park on the lane below the workshop.
Parking
On the lane below the workshop
When to come
The workshop is open all year but Mondays. Firings are roughly every two months, with the two after the monsoon, in October and December, the largest; the week after a firing is when the most pieces are on the shelf. The afternoons at the wheel run from March to November.
Nearby
The Sobha Singh art gallery
1 kmThe painter's house and gallery, five minutes' walk. Andretta became an artists' village because of him; the pottery followed.
Palampur and the tea gardens
13 kmThe nearest town, and the gardens that run along the road to it. The tea is Kangra tea, and it goes in our cups.
Baijnath temple
14 kmThe ninth-century Shiva temple at Baijnath, stone the same colour as our unglazed rims. Twenty minutes east.
Dharamshala and McLeod Ganj
45 kmAn hour up the valley: the Tibetan town, the monastery, the Norbulingka workshops where the thangkas and the woodwork are made.
Ask about a piece
A glaze, a set, the date of the next firing — write and we answer the same day. Écrivez-nous sur WhatsApp.