Keep it crafty: weekend stays for makers

The signs were there. One childhood Mother’s Day, short of a gift, I seized newspaper, a balloon and a paper plate and, after furtively crouching by the freezer, proudly presented my mother with a papier-mâché Head of John the Baptist. She was speechless. And I’d been taught a powerful lesson. Making things is a joy – at least, for the maker.

Even better, you might get mucky.

Whether it’s mud, sand, clay dust, soil, paint or flour, the grubbier my paws, the more I relax. I’m powerfully drawn to potters’ and artists’ materials, to peculiar tools of any trade. Show me a retired handsaw, particularly if saved from certain scrapping, and I’m starry eyed.

But I’m a novelist. Tragically, fiction requires only a laptop and a brain. Beyond fountain pens, there’s little hope of mess; no essential equipment, other than 17,000 notebooks. Then, at St Ives, I casually glanced into Barbara Hepworth’s studio window and boom! The protagonist in my novel, Lucia, became a sculptor, just so I could write about maquettes and wire, all those covetable chisels. I even visited the brilliant potter Pip Hartle but wasn’t allowed, for some reason, to assist her.

Yet the desire to get my hands dirty remained. Briefly I joined a sculpture class at the Mary Ward Centre in London. The fruits were abysmal, but two pleasures stayed with me: using a fallow part of my brain and heading home afterwards, terracotta-red to the elbows, grubby, exhausted and strangely at peace.

Then I heard about West Dean, an idyllic residential arts centre where one can learn letterpress printing, weaving and even how to construct – gulp – a guitar. For some, eating crumble with fellow tassel enthusiasts is the thrill; for me, it was workshop access. I’ve carved a limewood ammonite, made a genuinely beautiful oak stool and, flushed with success, bought my father an unforgettable present: learning to sculpt limestone with his favourite daughter.

But stone is… hard. Afterwards, he said: “I don’t want to do that again.” Obviously that was happiness speaking. Dad, let’s try blacksmithery next? Or chairs, like in Little House on the Prairie! Though let’s sleep in the lino-cutting studio, for that raisiny smell (and the little gougers).

The C-word is everywhere. From Gen-Zers knitting scarf-hoods in cool yarn, The Great Pottery Throwdown and The Great British Sewing Bee, to dads in chore jackets carving spoons, we’re addicted to craft. Cafes for painting premade cereal bowls have been overtaken by serious(ish) courses. Look at Nigella’s impressive ceramics on Instagram; would she make me a kimchi crock? Fermenting and crocheting have taken off since Covid; wild yeast is practically extinct. Come fascist Armageddon, the demand for gilding may be minimal, but wouldn’t it be nice to know how to make a plate?

As more of us fancy becoming weekend artisans, our options multiply. Want to learn basketry? Nowadays you don’t have to find a self-appointed expert, then slog back to the nearest B&B to sleep under Febrezed faux-fur throws and seaside-themed wall art. There’s a new alternative – beautiful, stylish places to stay that offer classes with serious artists, designers and, I’m sorry, “makers”.

Frankly, I’d have stayed at Tŷ Clai for a car-maintenance course. Its award-winning architect owners, Emma Flynn and Luke Royffe, have renovated a derelict building in Fishguard, Pembrokeshire, to a dazzling standard. It’s like swanning around a midcentury Toast catalogue: all Welsh vernacular furniture, wild landscapes, hi-spec appliances, deep windowseats and, best of all, the ceramics they make downstairs. Some guests, family groups or old friends, come for a week in summer, playing with clay every morning in the comfortable yet professional studio. The inspiring workshops in the afternoons are also unmissable: a perfect combination of freedom, expertise and creativity.

I tried both: an architecture-informed afternoon, for building a surprisingly pleasing slab model of a house, and a morning in which to create anything, from coils, moulds, pinching or throwing. According to Emma, amateurs like, well, me, often make lovelier, freer work than professional artists and ceramicsplainers (not her word). She’s extremely knowledgeable but encourages play; and, oh, I did.

Thanks to wet slip, cheesewires and vintage icing nozzles, my sessions evoked the joy of an infant art class, with none of the urine. Like all good teachers, Emma guided me to do everything myself. The result (a large mug with, ahem, removable herb tea strainer, patent applied for) is far less hideous than if I’d been entirely unrestrained, yet still, unmistakably, mine own.

Best of all, it fed my brain. I’ve always loved experts’ language almost as much as their tools, and now I can mention leather-hardness and rubber kidneys like a pro. And childhood memories were sparked: not only of Play-Doh and pastry but of hours inexplicably spent in a potters’ studio in Ireland modelling hedgehogs from bits of terracotta. Maybe I’m not an amateur after all.

Yet one aspect of my early craft apprenticeship worried me. My John the Baptist sculpture disappeared. So this time the lucky recipient of my artistry will be my mother-in-law, who doesn’t yet know she’s getting a beautiful model of her childhood home in extruded slab. I can’t wait to see her face.

More workshop weekenders…

By Tabitha Joyce

Crafted at Powder Mills – East Sussex
After he moved out of London, Chris King wanted to create a club with a community and social scene that competed with the city’s. Now this vine-covered Georgian mansion-turned-members’ club and hotel has artists and writers who live in nearby Hastings and St Leonards mooching about in it. There are urbane flourishes, in the sense that the gym offers barre classes, paddle boarding and face yoga, but there’s also stuff that’s more rooted as well as more whimsical: botanical imprint pottery clubs, essential-oil labs and birdhouse-building. Best of all: a woollen sauna hat embroidery class. Stitch away before hitting the lakeside huts. This is the start of King’s much bigger plan to roll out clubs across the UK – his sights are set on Scotland next. staycrafted.com

Modja Modja House – Margate
This seaside sweetshop turned B&B is also artist Amy Croft’s studio. It specialises in making traditional Japanese noren (spy one of Amy’s bright fabric dividers half-screening the kitchen while tucking into handmade onigiri at breakfast). Here in this pocket-sized spot she runs get-messy natural dye workshops using dried plants that create the most brilliant vivid shades. Croft’s partner, Yuri Suzuki, is obsessed with sound, and in each of the bedrooms there is one of his wacky orange sound machines, created with the  Japanese furniture label E&Y. Toggling the various switches to create your own bespoke, nutty bedroom soundscapes is addictive. There are only three bedrooms here, but a stay might be shared with a travelling percussionist or DJ from Japan on a creative residency. This is a micro-immersion into Croft and Suzuki’s Japanese-inspired design world, where everything is influenced by their extraordinary and meticulous attention to detail. 
modjamodja.com

Cottage Orné – Cornwall 
A 17th-century farm recently transformed into one of the smartest places to stay in Cornwall. Of the 14 cottages to sink into, Ploughman’s is probably the most charming, with its ceiling hooks in the former cheese room, previously used for hanging curds. All of the cottages have access to the pool, which is surrounded by wild flowers – buttercups, poppies, daisies – and nearby is the on-site studio, where all the candle-making and lino-cutting classes take place. This is what makes Cottage Orné special, in a part of the country full of special places to stay. There is a wonderful cyanotype UV light printing workshop, and after foraging for leaves and grasses these can be incorporated into one of the distinctive blue silhouette prints. In the summer months, local food trucks spill on to the village green, and there’s no need to go anywhere else. The best bit is the ability to take over the whole hamlet – this is the place to level up a big group into a full-scale creative retreat. cottageorne.com

The Craftsman’s Cottage, Wiltshire
This arty corner of the West Country, where south Wiltshire slides up against Dorset, is home to a cool cluster of creatives hard at work. And owner Amanda Bannister knows them all. Inside this three-bedroom cottage, everything – from the wooden nook by furniture designer Dominic Parish to the Joanna Sims oil painting in the kitchen – has been carefully chosen to show off its craft credentials. Bannister’s connections extend to the lineup of courses on offer, such as mesmerising hands-on marbling sessions with the heritage Compton Marbling company, and lampshade-making with Return to Cloth, in Tisbury. Need a lamp for your new shade? Pick one from the cottage interiors; they are available to buy. Ahead of the curve when she opened in 2017, Bannister still leads the charge with this considered stay spotlighting British design. thecraftsmanscottage.com.

Glen Dye – Scotland
When Charlie and Caroline Gladstone moved to the Highlands to revive Charlie’s family home, there was no heating or electricity. These days, things may have been spruced up, but its outside rough-and-tumble spirit remains. Pull into the farmstead to be greeted by a sunny sign reading "Keep Glen Dye a Secret", and the sight of muddled family clans running about in the woods and learning how to light fires without matches. New for 2026 is a natural-ink workshop that kicks off with a guided forage. The couple’s sibling property, Hawarden Estate in Wales, runs a similarly eclectic schedule covering everything from brushmaking to fermentation. Another early pioneer in the new generation of craft stays, Glen Dye is a brilliantly British version of summer camp.
glendyecabinsandcottages.com

Photographs by Rebecca Hope and Nick Clarke