Pottery near Millcreek

Pottery Classes Near Millcreek, Utah

The Clay Hole is a community pottery studio in Draper, twenty minutes south of Millcreek. A room of wheels, hand building tables, slab molds and a glaze wall, on one monthly membership.

Millcreek is where this valley learned that clay comes in more than one color depending how deep you dig. Membership is the only way in here, and there are no drop-in classes.

See membership The drive from Millcreek
Three fired test tiles in different colors with the three raw clays they came from laid out beside them on a worktable, the old brickyard ground of Millcreek, Utah
Getting here

The drive from Millcreek

South. Either straight down 1300 East until it runs out of patience, or over to the freeway and down.

  1. West or south to I-215, then south to I-15. Or 1300 East south the whole way.
  2. I-15 south to Exit 291, 12300 South.
  3. West to Lone Peak Parkway, also signed 125 West, then south.
  4. Lone Peak Parkway runs into Pony Express Rd. We are at 12896, before IKEA.

About fourteen miles, roughly twenty minutes. Millcreek is long and thin, so the east end adds a few minutes and the west end takes a few off.

Nothing that lands close enough to walk from. Plan on driving.

When you get here

Parking is free and shared with a few other businesses. Anything not marked reserved is yours, and unlike the canyon there is no fee booth on the way out.

Full directions and map
Millcreek ground

The brothers who dug here got different colored brick by digging deeper

Edward Potter Hemsley and his brother Job ran a brickyard in Mill Creek that they called, with no ceremony at all, The Brickyard. The marker on Brickyard Road records their method in their own terms. For deep red bricks they would plow two rows of deeply laid yellow clay and one row of black top soil. White brick came from the clay near the top of the pit.

Same pit. Different depth. Different color out of the kiln. That is the whole of ceramic chemistry stated by a man in the 1870s who just wanted the wall to be the right shade.

Brigham Young rescinded Hemsley's mission call so that he would carry on making brick. The bricks were judged more useful than the missionary.

Where the pit went

Salt Lake Pressed Brick bought the land in 1891 and it eventually became Interstate Brick, which ran until November 1972. The site is Brickyard Plaza now. It sits in the middle of Millcreek but was annexed by Salt Lake City in 1979, so it is Salt Lake City land with Millcreek all the way around it. The 1902 kiln chimney is still standing on it.

What is actually here

A big room, and everything in it is included

The studio runs to nearly 10,000 square feet. Membership covers the room, the equipment, the classes and the glaze. You buy clay by the bag and you pay for firing by the size of the piece. Nothing else is metered.

29pottery wheels
650+brush on glazes
248slab molds
4kilns
  • Four instructors working the room in every instructed class, so nobody sits stuck for twenty minutes.
  • 150+ underglazes alongside the glaze wall, plus dipping buckets on the higher levels.
  • Bisque firing is free. Glaze firing is 5 cents a cubic inch, $4.80 minimum.
  • Clay starts at $28 a 25 pound bag, and the discount grows with your level.
  • Your own shelf to leave work on, which is the thing home potters never have.
See the Mold Room
Why the drive is not the cost

A city still building itself a downtown, twenty minutes from a finished room

Millcreek has only been a city since the end of 2016. Before that it was the most populous unincorporated area in the county. It is now building itself a center from nothing, with a loop that is ice in winter and roller skating in summer, a climbing wall and a public market.

That is genuinely good and it is also two years from finished. In the meantime the local answer to an evening is the canyon, and the canyon has rules: dogs off leash on odd days only, five dollars on the way out, and the top gated from November to July.

Twenty minutes south there is a room that has been finished for a while, has no gate and does not care which day of the month it is.

  • Four instructed classes a month at the lowest level, eight at the highest.
  • Open studio Friday evening and both weekend mornings, on top of the classes.
  • Your own shelf, which is the one thing a shared studio gives you and a canyon cannot.
  • Seven days a week, odd dates and even.
See membership Walk through the 360 tour
What it costs

Four levels, one monthly price

Every level gets the same studio, the same equipment and the same glaze wall. What changes is how many instructed classes are included, how much shelf you get, and how much comes off a bag of clay.

LevelMonthlyClasses included
Green Level$145 a month4 classes a month
Yellow Level$170 a month5 classes a month
Purple Level$200 a month6 classes a month
Black Level$275 a month8 classes a month

Open studio time is on top of the included classes, at every level. Clay discounts run from nothing on Green Level up to $6 off each bag on Black Level.

The membership rules

There are no drop-in classes and no single sessions. Membership renews on the 25th of each month and canceling has to happen before the 24th. Fired work has to be collected within two weeks of the kiln being unloaded. And the cheapest level shows you a real fraction of what a busy month here looks like.

See membership How membership works
The week

When the studio is open

WhenHoursWhat it is
Monday daytime10:30 AM to 2 PMInstructed class
Monday to Thursday evenings6:30 PM to 10 PMInstructed class
Friday evening6:30 PM to 10 PMOpen studio
Saturday and Sunday mornings10 AM to 1:30 PMOpen studio

Doors open 15 minutes before a session starts, and the studio closes for fourteen holidays a year. The full list, with this year's dates, is on the class schedule page.

The rest of the field

Other pottery near Millcreek

Millcreek sits between several options and none of them are in it. Here is the field.

  • Paint your own

    Color Me Mine Salt Lake

    2725 E Parleys Way, the closest of any of these to Millcreek. Finished pieces you decorate and they fire for you. Much the easiest option and not the same thing at all.

  • Make your own

    Salt Lake Pottery Studio

    965 E 900 S, north into the city. Wheel and hand building, kids, one time experiences, multi week courses and memberships. The broadest offering in Salt Lake and genuinely closer to you than we are.

  • Make your own

    Cottonwood Clay Studio

    7587 S State St in Midvale, south. Weekday taught classes with open studio limited to people enrolled in a current class.

Salt Lake Pottery Studio is closer to Millcreek than we are and it is a good studio. What we have that they do not is scale: a room of wheels rather than a few, and a glaze wall you could spend a year on.

Compare 14 Utah studios Every pottery studio in Utah
Nearby

The rest of the Salt Lake Valley

Same studio, same shelves, a different starting point. See every city in the Salt Lake Valley. Or by county, every city in Salt Lake County.

Questions

What people from Millcreek ask

How far is The Clay Hole from Millcreek?

About fourteen miles, roughly twenty minutes. Millcreek runs a long way east to west, so from Canyon Rim it is a little more and from the west end a little less.

Is the old brickyard chimney still there?

Yes. The 1902 kiln chimney from the Salt Lake Pressed Brick works still stands at Brickyard Plaza on Brickyard Road. Worth knowing that the plaza itself is Salt Lake City land, annexed in 1979, with Millcreek around it on every side.

Can I take a single pottery class instead of joining?

No. Monthly membership is the only way in. If you want a one time experience, Salt Lake Pottery Studio runs them and is closer to you than we are.

Do I need my own tools or clay?

No tools. Membership covers the wheels, the hand building tables, the slab molds, the glaze wall and the classes. Clay is by the bag and firing is charged by the size of the piece.

Do you take beginners?

Most of the room has been doing this under a year. Every instructed class has instructors working it.

What are the class times?

Instructed classes Monday through Thursday evenings plus Monday daytime. Friday evening and both weekend mornings are open studio. No odd and even day rules.

Starting

What happens if you join this week

You pick a level, sign the waiver, and turn up to your first class. Somebody shows you where everything is, you get a shelf, and you put your hands in clay the same night. Most people who come from Millcreek and join here have never touched a wheel.

See membership Read the FAQs

Questions are quickest by text. The studio line is 385-241-5528. We are at 12896 S Pony Express Rd, Suite 100, Draper, UT 84020.