Pottery Classes Near Saratoga Springs, Utah
The Clay Hole is a community pottery studio in Draper, about half an hour from Saratoga Springs. Throwing, hand building, slab molds, glazing and firing, all under a single monthly membership.
There are only two roads over the Point of the Mountain and you have the quieter one. Membership is the only way in, and there are no drop-in classes.
The drive from Saratoga Springs
Take Redwood Road and skip the freeway entirely. SR-68 is the other of the two roads that cross the Point, it lands you in Bluffdale, and Pony Express Road carries you the rest of the way to the door.
- North on Redwood Road, SR-68, over the Point of the Mountain.
- Stay on it into Bluffdale, then east to Pony Express Rd.
- North on Pony Express Rd, past IKEA and Living Spaces.
- We are on the left. If you would rather take I-15, Pioneer Crossing to exit 282 works too.
Call it half an hour on Redwood Road, longer if you go around by Pioneer Crossing and the freeway at the wrong time of day. This is not a short trip and we are not going to pretend it is.
None that helps. There is no rail from Saratoga Springs and the bus does not make this trip in a sensible amount of time. It is a car.
When you get here
Free, shared, and nothing like the Neptune Park lot on a July Saturday. Anything not marked reserved for another business is yours.
The springs the town is named after are still there, warm and muddy and nobody's
John Beck built a resort on the hot springs here in 1884 and named it after the one in New York. It was the reason to come to this side of Utah Lake for decades. The resort is long gone.
The springs are not. They are a short walk from Inlet Park, undeveloped, warm rather than hot, shallow, muddy, and they smell like sulfur. A hundred and forty years of town history sitting in the weeds with no sign on it.
Then the city was incorporated in December 1997 with almost nobody in it, hit a thousand people in 2000, and has passed sixty one thousand. The state's own numbers make it the fastest growing city in Utah, by raw gain and by percentage both.
Which is why nothing here is old
Almost every building in the city is younger than twenty five years. That is not a complaint, it is just the reason a hundred and forty year old set of muddy springs is the most historic thing inside the city limits.
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.
- 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.
Every road out of here is somebody's bottleneck, except this one
Redwood Road, Pioneer Crossing and the Cory Wride Highway all jam at peak, and about one and a half billion dollars of road work is underway to do something about it. Living here means thinking about traffic more than most people do.
Redwood Road north over the Point is the exception, because almost nobody uses it to get to Draper. It is two lanes of not-the-freeway and it drops you a few minutes from the door.
That matters more than it sounds. A drive you have chosen is a different object from a drive you are stuck in, even when the clock says the same thing.
- Open studio Friday evening and both weekend mornings, which suits a half hour drive better than a weeknight does.
- Your own shelf, so one longer trip a week is a working rhythm rather than a compromise.
- Four instructed classes a month at the lowest level, eight at the highest.
- Clay is bought by the bag here, so the trip out is never about supplies.
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.
| Level | Monthly | Classes included |
|---|---|---|
| Green Level | $145 a month | 4 classes a month |
| Yellow Level | $170 a month | 5 classes a month |
| Purple Level | $200 a month | 6 classes a month |
| Black Level | $275 a month | 8 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 part we would rather you read now than find out later
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.
If that list makes membership the wrong shape for you, it is better to know in the first minute than in the fourth week.
When the studio is open
| When | Hours | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Monday daytime | 10:30 AM to 2 PM | Instructed class |
| Monday to Thursday evenings | 6:30 PM to 10 PM | Instructed class |
| Friday evening | 6:30 PM to 10 PM | Open studio |
| Saturday and Sunday mornings | 10 AM to 1:30 PM | Open 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.
Other pottery near Saratoga Springs
There is no pottery studio in Saratoga Springs. The nearest places to make something yourself are all a drive, so here they are by direction.
- Make your own
Bella Rosa Pottery
In Herriman, which Redwood Road gets you to without the freeway. Family owned, in a studio behind the house. Eight week wheel and hand building classes plus shorter Clay Nights. They say plainly that they cannot take walk ins, and the eight week classes had a waitlist.
- Make your own
Copper Kiln
Also Herriman. Eight week courses running Monday through Thursday evenings, $270 including clay, glazes, firings and a weekly open studio day. You can join any week, which is unusual and useful if your schedule moves.
- Make your own
The Kreative Kiln
In Pleasant Grove, south and east instead. Six week wheel throwing at $299 and a kiln that will fire work you made elsewhere. A membership is listed as coming soon with no price and no date on it.
Herriman is the shorter version of this drive and both studios there are worth your time. If a fixed course with an end date suits you better than a membership, start at one of them instead of here.
What people from Saratoga Springs ask
How far is The Clay Hole from Saratoga Springs?
About half an hour, and the good route is Redwood Road rather than the freeway. SR-68 is one of only two roads across the Point of the Mountain, it lands in Bluffdale, and Pony Express Road runs the rest of the way to us.
Is half an hour worth it?
For some people no, and that is a fair answer. For the ones it works for, the thing they say is that a half hour on Redwood Road in the evening is the quietest part of their week before anything else has happened.
Can I take a single pottery class instead of joining?
No. Monthly membership is the only way in, with no drop-in classes and no single sessions. That is a genuinely hard sell at this distance, so we would rather say it before you drive rather than after.
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 at the studio, which matters when the nearest pottery supply is nowhere near your side of the lake.
Do you take beginners?
Most people who join have never touched a wheel. In a city that has gone from a thousand people to over sixty one thousand inside twenty five years, almost nobody in the room has been doing anything here for very long.
Is there parking?
Yes, and free. Shared lot on Pony Express Road, and after a summer of the lakefront park lots it will feel like an embarrassment of space.
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 Saratoga Springs and join here have never touched a wheel.
- Nothing to bring. What to wear is covered on the what to wear page.
- The first day page walks through the whole first visit, in order.
- Free lessons for everything else live in Clay Hole University, whether or not you ever join.
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.