The Workshop

The story of this workshop did not start with me

The story of this workshop did not start with me. It started with my parents.

My mum (Judit Major) and my dad (Csaba Keszthelyi) bought the house at 77 Fő utca in Palkonya. My sister and I moved here from Budapest when I was two years old. My grandmother also bought a house in the same village, at number 2. We moved in there first, while my dad started to renovate the other house with his own hands. A year later my grandmother died, and then it was decided that we would stay. Number 2 became our family home, and the other house became the workshop. It was a bit of a rocky start, but that is how the house where I work today became a ceramics workshop, while my dad was still alive.

I grew up in Palkonya, and in this workshop I also learned to throw on the wheel.

We went to school in Villány by bus, and on the way home I always stopped at the workshop, because it was on my way. Of course, I could have skipped it, but I preferred to go in and see my dad.

While he was working, I sat down on a small chair that was always ready for me, and we talked. I told him what had happened to me that day, and what had happened at school.

Sometimes he gave me small jobs. There were many pressing moulds in the workshop, and he decorated the round tile stoves he built with pressed ornaments. When I felt like it, I helped. When I got a bit older, he even opened a page for me in his notebook and paid me pocket money for my work.

People sometimes ask me when I learned to throw, and I always feel a little awkward. On the one hand, I often feel that I still can’t do it. On the other hand, I really don’t remember the first time I sat at a wheel. That is not surprising. My daughter, Csenge, is two and a half now, and this summer she threw on the wheel for the first time. But I had already put clay in her hands many times while I was working. I kept her first piece, but she probably won’t remember it either.

My dad often travelled to Austria to teach pottery. While we were in kindergarten, he took my sister or me with him in turns, because at that age we were still allowed to miss school. While he taught the adults, I often worked on the wheel on my own in a separate little room. He taught me too, but I also learned a lot just by watching him teach other people.

For me, the workshop was never just my dad’s workplace. I always felt completely at home there. I had my own things and my own creations there, and when I had an idea, my dad helped me make it. I still have a small box that we made together. I also made a sofa for my dollhouse, so my Barbie dolls had somewhere to sit, and other things you would expect from a little girl.

Maybe that is why it feels so strange that, twenty years later, the same place became my workshop. But for that to happen, I first had to deal with everything that had stayed almost the same for twenty years.

In the next part, I will write about what happened to the workshop after my dad died, and how a creative space first became almost a storage room full of old things, and then slowly became a workshop again.

The pieces I am making now come from this new chapter. It is the same house, but now it is shaped by my hands.

Tags: Family Palkonya Childhood Workshop

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