Find Your Fire: Urban Clay Brings the Ancient Craft of Ceramics to Bayside

There is a particular hush that falls when a lump of clay first meets a spinning wheel. Hands wet, breath slowed, the world outside Advantage Road drops away. That is the atmosphere founder Rebecca Withington has spent years building at Urban Clay, the artist-run ceramic studio serving Cheltenham, Highett and the wider Bayside community.

Urban Clay is not a paint-your-own café and it is not a drop-in novelty. It is a working teaching studio for people who want to learn the real craft: preparing clay, centring on the wheel, throwing useful and beautiful forms, trimming, glazing and taking home pieces they have made themselves.

“Create the things you wish existed,” the studio says. The line is more than a slogan. It is the brief Rebecca gives every student who walks through the door.

A potter’s life, brought home to Bayside

Rebecca Withington completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts, majoring in Ceramics, in 1991. Straight after graduating she co-founded Fireworks, the Australia Pottery Company, designing and making ceramics for domestic tables and the catering trade.

Then came the chapter that still shapes the studio. Rebecca travelled through Japan and Korea and was offered an apprenticeship in traditional pottery-making in Mashiko — one of Japan’s great ceramic towns — working with renowned artists Euan Craig and Koji Usaka. The apprenticeship taught her far more than technique. It taught her the tempo of a craftsperson’s life: repetition, humility, the long conversation between hand, clay and fire.

Back in Australia she imported ceramics from around the world and later worked as a buyer in the manchester industry. Urban Clay is the chapter in which those years are given away. “Urban Clay is an opportunity for Rebecca to indulge her passion for pottery and to share her skills and the joy of clay-making with others,” the studio’s own story reads.

That joy is the point. Classes are led by tertiary-qualified potters who know the craft from the inside and who would rather see a student find their own voice than copy a template.

Why the process matters as much as the pot

Urban Clay’s philosophy is unusually clear for a suburban studio:

There is nothing quite like the pleasure of making something by hand, and at Urban Clay we believe the process of creating is just as important as the final pieces you will take home.

In practice that means classes are unhurried. Beginners are not rushed towards a “perfect” mug in week one. They learn clay preparation, how a wheel actually behaves, how to centre, how to lift a wall without collapsing it, how to trim a foot so a bowl sits honestly on the table, and how glaze can either flatter or fight the form.

Students leave a course with several fired pieces — objects they can use, give or keep. The more lasting souvenir is the habit: slowing down, using both hands, making something that did not exist that morning.

The studio formulates its own exclusive glazes for students. Layering and experimentation are encouraged, so two people in the same class rarely take home the same surface.

What you can learn

Urban Clay runs wheel-throwing and hand-building courses for beginners through to intermediate and more advanced makers. You do not need to arrive “creative”. You need a few hours, an apron and a willingness to get your hands dirty.

Typical courses run for six or eight weeks across the school term.

A beginners / intermediate wheel class covers:

• clay preparation
• using the wheel
• centring
• throwing basic forms (bowls, cylinders, mugs, simple vessels)
• trimming
• glazing

Hand-building classes open a different vocabulary — slabs, coils, altered forms — for students who prefer building at the table or who want both skills.

Published course fees (as listed in Melbourne guides) have been in the region of $449 for a six-week course and $549 for an eight-week course. Confirm current pricing and inclusions when you book, as materials, firings and glaze use are part of the offer and can change by term.

Classes are designed so you leave with work you can treasure. They are also designed so you meet people. Urban Clay talks openly about connection: a warm, supportive clay community that, in the studio’s words, “will quickly become your new healthy addiction.”

2026 term dates

Bookings open online and popular sessions sell out.

• Term 1: 27 January – 23 March
• Term 2: 20 April – 14 June
• Term 3: 13 July – 6 September
• Term 4: 5 October – 1 December

Term 4 2026 is the final term of the year and starts the week commencing Monday 5 October. Existing students are invited to re-book first; new students book through the website.

Join the mailing list on urbanclay.com.au if you want first notice when a new term opens.

Advantage Road: Bayside’s hidden makers’ street

The studio sits on Advantage Road, Highett — an unassuming industrial street that Bayside locals have long known as a pocket of painters, printmakers, textile artists, milliners, sculptors and ceramicists. Council has even run Advantage Road Open Studios days so the public can walk the laneway and meet the makers.

Urban Clay previously worked from Unit 2, 37 Advantage Road and, in 2024, moved next door to a street-front space at 35 Advantage Road — French doors, northern light, and the same short hop from Cheltenham, Highett station and Southland. For anyone living in Cheltenham, Mentone, Sandringham, Hampton or Moorabbin, it is a local studio, not a city excursion.

That matters. Pottery is a weekly practice. The easier it is to get there after work or on a Saturday morning, the more likely the habit sticks.

 

Who it is for

Urban Clay suits:

• complete beginners who have never touched a wheel
• returning makers who want structure and better technique
• Cheltenham and Bayside residents looking for a screen-free weekly ritual
• people who want a handmade gift season with work they have thrown themselves
• anyone who has been meaning to “try pottery one day” and needs a proper studio rather than a one-off party

It is less suited to someone wanting a single two-hour novelty session with no follow-up. This studio is built around terms, skill and community.

A quiet argument for making things

Melbourne’s bayside suburbs are well supplied with cafés, gyms and screens. They are less well supplied with rooms where adults are allowed to be beginners in public, to fail a cylinder, laugh, wedge the clay again and get it right on the third attempt.

That is the service Urban Clay actually sells. The pots are the evidence. The hours at the wheel are the product.

If you live in Cheltenham or the surrounding Bayside suburbs and you have been looking for a craft that is physical, social and useful, this is the studio to try. Book a term, wear clothes you do not mind dusting with slip, and give the clay a few weeks. The pieces you take home will have your fingerprints in them. That is the whole idea.

Urban Clay — contact details

Studio
Urban Clay
35 Advantage Road, Highett VIC 3190
(formerly Unit 2, 37 Advantage Road — now next door, street front)
Serving Cheltenham, Highett and Bayside Melbourne

Phone
0432 394 009
Ask for Rebecca

Website
www.urbanclay.com.au

Classes & bookings
www.urbanclay.com.au/pottery-classes/

Instagram
@urbanclaystudio