Khmer pottery: the clay of Andong Russey in the hands of Veranda Pottery
They build a jar without a wheel, striking the wall with a wooden paddle. In Andong Russey, in Kampong Chhnang province, the gesture has passed from mother to daughter for more than a thousand years. On Saturday, in Phnom Penh, the Veranda Pottery workshop demonstrated it to an audience of children.
A lump of grey clay, a low stool, two hands. The potter hollows the ball with her thumbs, widens it, turns it on her knees. Three or four minutes later, a bowl. It is thick, uneven, marked by her fingertips. It looks like nothing you would find in a shop.
That was precisely what the children had come to see. They stopped, crouched down, waited their turn without anyone having to ask them to be patient. The demonstration took place on Saturday 12 September in the gardens of the Institut français du Cambodge, during a morning open to families.
A village living off clay since the 6th century
The clay comes from Andong Russey, a village in Kampong Chhnang, roughly 7 km west of the provincial capital. The name of the province translates as « port of the cooking pots ». That is not a figure of speech: this is where the jars and clay stoves you see on the national roads set off from, loaded onto straw-lined carts.
The village sits at the foot of Phnom Krang Dey Meas, the « golden mountain », which supplies a fine, dense clay. Almost every household lives off ceramics. Archaeologists have dated the kilns and the paddles found on site to the 6th century: the same toolkit is still in use today.
The craft declined after the fall of Angkor, then came close to disappearing under Democratic Kampuchea. Some of the village potters were already working before 1975 and took it up again afterwards. The trade was revived in the early 2000s with support from German development programmes.
Paddle and anvil, not the wheel
The technique is not that of the potter's wheel. Archaeologists call it paddle and anvil. The piece stays still; it is the potter who moves around it, walking concentric circles, striking the wall with a wooden paddle while a stone or a fist held inside provides the counter-pressure. The blow stretches the clay, thins it and compacts it at the same time.
For larger pieces the potter sits down and rests the form on her knees, turning it as she strikes. The wheel only reached the village recently, with the daughters' generation, and it has not replaced the paddle: it sits alongside it, for small runs.
Firing is done with wood. It leaves grey haloes on the sides, black patches, sometimes a whole smoked zone. On an industrial line that would be a reject. Here it is the kiln's signature: no two pieces from the same firing look quite alike.
Veranda Pottery, from the countryside to Bassac Lane
Veranda Pottery sits on Street 312, in the Tonle Bassac district, a short walk from Bassac Lane. The place is part workshop, part shop, part café: the cup your coffee arrives in came out of the house kiln. The intent is written on the poster at the stand: to make pieces that carry the long history and the nature of the village, together with the young women who inherited the family workshop from their mothers.
Every piece carries the « veranda pottery » stamp pressed into the raw clay. Two registers sit side by side on the shelves. On one hand, the bare terracotta of the village: miniature jars, gourd-shaped vases, lotus cups, decorative tiles, all in ochre and sand tones. On the other, glazed stoneware — teapots, pitchers, cups — in green and brown glazes, which belong to a workshop skillset rather than to the village tradition. Smaller pieces were priced at around nine dollars.
The workshop also takes groups. In February, a kindergarten class from New Gateway International School spent a morning there: beating the clay, pulling it up between their fingers, scoring patterns into it. The same sequence, in short form, as the one offered on Saturday.
Some children left with a still-damp bowl that will dry on a shelf and probably never hold water. Others with the idea that a Khmer cooking pot does not come out of a factory.
Practical information
Veranda Pottery & Café
#13A, Street 312, Tonle Bassac, Phnom Penh (near Bassac Lane). Open daily, 8am to 7pm. Tel: +855 16 783 083. The workshop has no website: new pieces, firings and workshop dates are announced on its social accounts. Instagram: instagram.com/veranda_pottery — Facebook: facebook.com/p/veranda-pottery-61567102842587. Groups and school classes book directly by phone or message.
Andong Russey
The village is open to visitors, about 7 km west of Kampong Chhnang town. Homestays and pottery courses are offered by local operators, including Khmer Village Pottery Tours (khmervillagepotterytours.com).
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