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Bunty O’Connor | Episode 483
Bunty O’Connor learned pottery at evening classes in 1970. Interested in using local clay, Bunty collected and tested different clays of Trinidad. In 1987, Bunty and husband Rory, started Ajoupa Pottery making terra-cotta figurines and exporting in the Caribbean. Globalization eventually caused the closure of the business. Bunty now teaches mosaic and Raku workshops and works on making whatever she wants!
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What kind of courage does it take to venture out in an area that there was no model for you to look at next door or down the road?
Well, there is a very famous saying that goes : Necessity is the mother of invention. Which you might have heard of. And when you have three little children and you have no money, you are going to do something, right? And then there was my mother who said: Hard work never killed anybody, you know all these encouraging remarks that were made. So I think it was just a matter of the old factory coming up for sale when it did and then my dad was able to help us put the money down to get a mortgage on it. I didn’t want to do it, Rory was the one who wanted to do it. It was a case where he was determined to drag us all to live in the country and do this thing and I really didn’t have a choice, but it was wonderful to be able to be part of a team that we had to train all these people to do the painting of the pottery with the Duncan glazes and all the other work that had to be done. So it was very, very rewarding and yes, it was pioneering and nobody has taken it up, which I find very curious.
How did you make sales?
We went round to the local shops. At that time malls were coming into fashion and after the recession people seemed to have a little bit more money. The price of oil was going up again. I remember we took our first pots to people and they would say, Oooh, they are very nice but why don’t you make them in white clay? I would say, No, because we like terracotta clay. And then one person decided to go with them at Christmas and she had sold everything we had given her, and so that was good. And the other thing we did was to go to all the islands in the Caribbean with samples, and this was the hard work part, there are lots of little islands and they all have a tourist trade and they all bought pottery from us. So for the first few years of our business we were almost totally doing export and mostly very touristy kind of things. But they were very unusual, they weren’t the usual touristy kind of things. And all hand made, we never used molds.
What made your business successful?
Hard work. And dedication on the part of our employees. We had fantastic employees. They loved what they did.
How did you develop a culture of happiness among your employees?
I really don’t know. A lot of people have asked us this question. We used to have weekly meetings that were very informal. We always told them what was going on, so they knew in advance. We were always easy-going with women who had little children. We never did this thing where you go around with a stop watch and time people for how long it taking them to do something. If they had a problem with a kid and they were late for work, it was never a problem and we had a very open relationship with them. So I think that made a big difference.
Now that you shut down the factory what has kept you loving clay?
Raku! Well not only raku because I discovered sculpting clay which in England they call it cranks and in America I think they call it T material. It is a very groggy clay and you can build huge things with it and it takes the fire and doesn’t break. And I started working with that when I started making some bigger pieces. Being liberated to no longer have to run a business and design pots and make pots I started making glazes. and that is what I have found a great deal of interest in the last 8 years.
How do you manage your time now as a maker?
When I am working I work all the time. I just fired my last kiln tonight and I have to do a raku firing tomorrow and then I am done until the new year. And then I will be teaching classes and probably not doing a lot of work. I don’t really produce as much as I used to and I don’t have as much of a forum as I used to.
What does your clay work mean to you?
It is one of my reasons for being. Clay is not like people. People are tricky to deal with, you never know whether you are hurting them or whether you are doing the right thing by them, but clay is always amenable. The thing with clay is you might not even have an idea what you are going to do with it but it will show you something and you can then develop that in it, which is a very subconscious way of working. It is a very enjoyable way of working. Clay for me is comfort and a great sense of peacefulness. It is kind of like a security blanket, I guess.
Book
Picasso: Painter and Sculptor in Clay
Contact:
Instagram: @ajoupapottery