Home › Places › Unexpected Japan › La Bottega del Tornio
RAKU AND POTTERY WORKSHOPS IN VICENZA
Make your own ceramic piece and try Japanese Raku in a working studio
Pottery courses, wheel throwing and a monthly Raku firing day
A working ceramics studio in Vicenza lets beginners and ceramicists get close to Raku at its most physical: glaze the piece, watch it leave the kiln incandescent, and discover the metallic colour and crackled surface that emerge afterwards. The studio also teaches pottery basics and wheel throwing throughout the year.
You have saved two places. Leave your email and you will find them on any device, plus the next drop.
kasia-sikorska-unsplash
Know before you go
In Marostica, in the province of Vicenza, La Bottega del Tornio offers Raku workshops, pottery courses and wheel throwing throughout the year. The studio connects a practical ceramics experience with the long ceramic tradition of nearby Nove, one of the historic ceramic centres of the Vicenza area.
TRY RAKU FIRING ↓
Decorate a ceramic piece, watch it leave the kiln incandescent, then follow the reduction in straw and cooling in water that reveal its metallic colours and crackled surface.
LEARN THE POTTER’S WHEEL ↓
Courses for beginners cover clay preparation, hand building and wheel throwing, from centring the clay to shaping the finished piece.
FOLLOW THE JAPAN CONNECTION ↓
Nico Toniolo began exploring Raku after meeting Japanese ceramicist Norio Shibata at the international ceramics symposium in Nove in 1978.
AT THE KILN
The studio currently describes its Raku workshop as taking place on the last Saturday of each month. Participants decorate refractory ceramic pieces before the rapid firing begins. The pieces are removed while still extremely hot, placed in straw for reduction, then cooled in water. Only afterwards do the metallic reflections, colour changes and crackled surfaces fully appear.
The objects made during the courses remain with the participants, so the piece you work on in the studio comes home with you.
For visitors looking for a Raku workshop in Vicenza, this is one of the few places in the province where the firing itself forms part of the experience rather than remaining behind the scenes.
FROM FIRST LESSONS TO CONTEMPORARY RAKU
For visitors looking for pottery classes in the Vicenza area, the studio also offers courses by request for beginners, covering clay, stoneware and refractory bodies, slab and coil building, and the potter’s wheel. Wheel sessions begin with preparing and centring the clay before moving on to shaping vessels by hand.
Alongside the courses, La Bottega del Tornio produces contemporary Raku bowls, plates, vessels, jewellery and small objects. Toniolo develops his glazes in the workshop, with metallic and iridescent finishes forming a recurring part of the collection.
The combination of workshops in Marostica and Toniolo’s long connection with Nove gives the studio a direct place within the wider ceramics culture of Vicenza, where historic manufacture, teaching and contemporary practice still exist within a few kilometres of one another.