Brand New Clay – Clay Temple.Co | Tamborine Mountain Real Estate & Property Management - Professionals

Brand New Clay – Clay Temple.Co

Professionals Tamborine Mountain Community Insight 1st May, 2024 No Comments
Clay Temple.Co

Dyllan Joyce has only been part of the Gallery Walk business community for just over a week at time of writing, but Clay Temple.Co has already become a huge hit. Filling a brand new niche on Tamborine Mountain, Dyllan has created so much more than just a pottery supply store with the variety of incredible workshops he offers— he was delighted to sit down with us today and discuss the impact he hopes to have on the future of creativity on the mountain.

by Kyle Hitchmough

For those who are yet unfamiliar with Clay Temple.Co, what is it you offer here?

We’re a pottery supply store, so we offer boutique supplies, things that are hard to get in Australia, all revolving around pottery and the ceramic world. We’re also teaching numerous classes, from kids all the way up to seniors. There’s marbling classes, terracotta classes. I’m also selling some of my own pots for the first time too!

Clay Temple.Co

What was your inspiration to open Clay Temple.Co?

I’ve been teaching pottery for years, since COVID. I had found pottery and it gave me a lot of clarity, it was very calming. It helped me with a lot of mental stress that was going on. Wheel throwing is a very grounding exercise, it keeps you in the moment. It’s almost meditative. That got me hooked into it, and I want to bring that to the mountain. There’s a lot of potters up here, but they all do handbuilding. Wheel throwing is a different thing, you get a different feeling from it.

What’s the difference between handbuilding and wheel throwing?

With handbuilding, it’s very much just you and the clay, it’s very spontaneous. With wheel throwing, it’s almost like you’re connected to this element that spins around and you have to work in sympathy with it to keep the clay centered. There’s a bit of an art to it. When you get it, it should be almost therapeutic.

Do you specialise in any particular brands of pottery supplies?

We carry Keane Ceramics, they do beautiful clays. They have a really big range, their porcelain is some of the nicest I’ve ever worked with! Starting up and being a boutique supply, I wanted to focus on the things I really loved and give that back to other people wherever they are in their journey. I’ve also teamed up with a few other Australian companies like Clay Sydney Co. to stock their recycled plastic pottery tools, which is really cool. They’ll last forever.

What are the different workshops that you offer?

There’s the beginner’s class where they make two pots and glaze them. If they’re more advanced, we have six-week workshops where they’ll make numerous things and create different types of vessels and techniques. Then we’ve got a marbling class where they get to come along and choose from about 14 different types of colours and stains, which is something else we sell. The stains are from all over the world, so they’ll come in, pick a clay, and make two marbled pots which will be covered in a translucent glaze, that they can then take home and use! Then we have our terracotta class, which I like to steer towards getting back out into the garden. There’s things called olla pots, which are like a porous vase which only receives one fire. You dig a hole next to a plant, put your vase in the ground, cover it with soil except for the tiny hole at the top, and if you fill it with water. It’s a self-watering mechanism for a plant that lasts up to two weeks! We’ve also got a painting class where you take a piece and, while it’s spinning on the wheel, you’ll paint it with your choice of 60-80 different colours. The kids love this one especially! I’m trying to create a family-friendly zone, since a lot of studios don’t offer that. We sell the wheels here too for very cheap prices, or you can rent one.

Clay Temple.Co

Are you a local? What’s your opinion on the Tamborine Mountain area and community?

I live at the bottom of the mountain. So far, I love it! Everybody here has been so lovely and supportive, all the business owners of Gallery Walk and all the locals too. The community seems really supportive and interested. I’ve had so many homeschooling groups contact me, which is really awesome. I’ve actually noticed that when I’m working in the shop, making things, a lot more people will come up, interested in what I’m doing. It’s really fun to see people interested in this thing that I’ve always done privately. There’s always lots of questions and curiosity.

What’s your favourite thing to do on the mountain?

I love a good pie, I’m pretty obsessed with Picnic Real Food Bar on Main Street. They do great pies with this little relish. Those pies have my heart! Hemp Hinterland, my neighbour, is doing some really cool things too.

What do you think Clay Temple.Co really provides to the area?

There’s not a lot of studios that offer teaching for kids, so I’m trying to bring that to the forefront. My little boy is only 4½ and I’ve really seen how this has changed his behaviour. It calms him down a lot and it’s good to get kids away from the screen. I also think it’s a meditative service, bringing families or couples together to create craft. It’s a very sociable service. If you had any anxieties or anything like that, I think this is a good craft to take on. You’ll find that other people in the class are of a similar mindset to you and are wanting the same thing from the class.

What do you enjoy most about doing this?

Meeting the people! You meet so many different types of people with so many creative ideas, and it’s cool to be able to be a midpoint for all of those people and ideas and learn what they’re doing. It’s inspiring to me. Albatross from Jungle Ink Studios popped in the other day and did a beginner’s pottery class. She made this bowl and then handbuilt a snake around it, it was really cool to see that and just talk to another creative. It’s just meeting people and being inspired by what they’re doing in their creative lives.

What are you most looking forward to in Clay Temple.Co’s future?

I’d love to start a little Tamborine pottery community. I think this place could be a really good beacon for that. There’s a lot already, but I think with all the people I’ve met so far, that if I were to suggest we have little meetups or something like that, it’d be great. It’s cool because we’re all working together, there’s been a lot of talk between me and a lot of other businesses about that. There’s candle-making workshops, and I teach people how to make candelabras, so we’re thinking how we can work together. I’m looking forward to all the possibilities of what will happen once I’m a little more established and staffed up.             

Clay Temple.Co
161 LONG RD, TAMBORINE MOUNTAIN QLD 4272

We are always looking for new topics for our blog. If there’s something you like to see more of, send your suggestions to: social@professionalsserendipity.com.au, or email the writer at kyle.hitchmough@hotmail.com.