Author Archives: Ninette Hartley

Unknown's avatar

About Ninette Hartley

Author: First publication Dear Tosh a memoir

A Week in the Lot

Posted on by
5
The Pottery at Mas Sarrat

At the beginning of May I spent a whole week on a pottery course at Le Mas Sarrat, Lherm, in The Lot. It’s about a 3 hour drive from where I live in the South of France. I set off on the Sunday afternoon and arrived in good time to settle in to my little apartment and then join everyone, both those running the course and those attending as students, for a wonderful barbecue.

My little apartment
The Gang (credit Jennie Gilbert)
My Breakfast!

We were to have two tutors, Jennie Gilbert and Emily Myers you can read more about them if you click on the links. They are both very talented potters with different styles and I felt honoured that these two experts were happy to share so much knowledge with us.

Jennie Gilbert
Emily Myers

There were 7 of us on the course and we came from all over the world. A woman from Canada was attending with her best friend from England and another women from Australia was there with her best friend also from England. What a wonderful way to meet up and catch up from across the globe. Not sure how they managed to get their pottery back home though.

The course ran for 4 days — we had Wednesday to ourselves. We could work in the pottery on our own if we wanted to but I chose to go into Cahors and have a look around. Probably should have stayed back as a couple of weeks later I got a speeding ticket from Espère which was a small town I had driven through on my way to Cahors!

CAHORS

The Market
A street
The indoor market
Always plenty of pastries in France
Pont Valentré

I had booked for bed and breakfast and we were given lunch each day as part of the course. The set-up at Le Mas Sarrat is wonderful. It’s a great place for a family holiday. Fiona runs the gites and the B&B and she is Jennie Gilbert’s sister. Fiona has lived in France for a long time and apart from being the most amazing cook speaks French fluently. I believe she also runs French immersion courses. But it is her sister Jennie who is the potter and she comes to Le Mas Sarrat a few times a year. Jennie also teaches in England and you can see that on her website HERE.

Below is just a very small sample of the food that we were served by the lovely Fiona. I am gluten and lactose intolerant and Fiona went out of her way to deliver the most delicious meals for me. We had home made soup each day and there was always the call of, ‘This one is for Ninette!’ How kind she was.

Home made Crumble with home grown plums
A wonderful salad
The 11am cakes didn’t last long!

There are quite a few stages to making a pot, bowl or any item in pottery. You can handbuild with coils, slabs or pinching or you can throw on the wheel. The latter is the hardest thing to master, in my opinion of course. First you have to centre the pot on the wheel and if you can’t get on with that then the rest of the process is impossible. I enjoy all aspects of the make. I found I was quite good at ‘pulling’ handles but I’ve not tried again since the course and in my limited experience with clay, I reckon next time I won’t be able to do it at all! After the creation you then have to decorate with underglazes, glazes, oxides…there’s no end to what you can do. It was absolutely amazing how much all of us created in just four days.

Raw mugs drying
Decorated but not fired (glaze is brown)
Fired (glaze is blue)
starting the coil pot (credit Jennie Gilbert)
nearly there
shaped and scraped
Before firing
Finished
the little bird begins…
waiting to be fired
cooked and looking good

Me looking as pleased as punch with my creations. Not perfect but not bad for a beginner!

I cannot recommend Jennie and Emily highly enough. If you’re a beginner at this pottery lark then I suggest you sign up for a two-day or four-day course. You will learn so much and in such good company. I’m going back in October for two days and I cannot wait to get there. In the meantime, I’m putting into practice all that I learnt – at least I’m trying to!

At the end of the week, I wrote a little poem. There’s a lot of water involved in pottery, especially on the wheel.

My Creative Journey is Changing

Posted on by
7

For a year or so, I’ve been posting on Substack, but recently I feel it’s changing and becoming more like Facebook, with so many people posting notes. I’m beginning to wonder if it was a mistake to hand myself over to that platform instead of staying here, on my blog, with my faithful followers.

Here, you’re not asked to pay for anything or sign up to anyone else’s content — there’s a little less pressure, I think. Besides, as the title of this blog suggests, my creative journey is evolving. I’m still writing, but these days it’s mostly poetry, and my other great love now is pottery. Poetry and pottery roll off the tongue rather well, don’t you think? In fact, so much so that I often find myself saying one when I mean the other!

I also love to paint, and watercolour is my favourite medium. I do try with acrylics, but I’m not sure it’s really for me. I’ve also discovered a fondness for drawing. In fact, I think I’ve tried almost everything there is to try in art — pastels, watercolour pencils — and this week I’m having a go at collage painting. Who knows how that will turn out!

I’m inspired by the people I meet at the art and pottery sessions I attend. We’re a mixed bunch in experience, artistic style, and background — a wonderfully diverse community united by a shared love of art in all its forms. I find the sessions therapeutic, relaxing, and socially enjoyable. I also have to speak French quite a bit, which is good practice for me.

That said, I sometimes find I work better at home, alone, where I can give myself fully to the creative process without worrying about the brief, whether I’m doing it ‘right’, or what others might think. At home, I can simply let go and create.

Art, like all creative pursuits, is subjective. You can learn the techniques and understand your medium, your colours, your style — but eventually, perhaps after many years, you begin to create for yourself. Not everyone will like what you produce, and that’s perfectly fine. It’s just like writing: you have to learn not to ‘compare and despair’. So the fact that my pottery mouse apparently looks like a toffee apple with ears (according to one of my sons) is clearly subjective — and what does he know anyway? In my defence it was one of the very first things I made.

Perhaps he did look a little better before I painted him. . . 🤔

Below is probably my best piece so far. Hand built and painted.

I had a little taster of throwing on the wheel when I was back in England in September 2025 and I made this pot:

The little knob on the top is a stone we found on a driveway, we picked it up (with permission) and then glued it to the lid. I loved using the wheel so much that I’ve now found somewhere local to experiment and learn more about it and hopefully get better.

It’s not really possible for me to create pottery at home as there is nowhere for me to make a mess — and pottery is very messy — I’m working on it though. . . at least I’m working on The Man to do something about it. 😊😊

More on that subject later . . .