The old cracked clay oven, fired by slabs of burn­ing wood, crack­led on Fri­day as the last batch of 10,000 deyas were put to bake at the back of Radi­ka’s Pot­tery Shop at Ed­in­burgh, Ch­agua­nas.

With over 200,000 deyas al­ready made in the lead­up to Di­vali, which will be cel­e­brat­ed na­tion­wide on Tues­day, fourth gen­er­a­tion pot­ter Andy Ben­ny said he was hop­ing that com­mu­ni­ties in Cen­tral Trinidad would cel­e­brate Di­vali with the usu­al grandeur de­spite the re­cent flood dev­as­ta­tion.

Ben­ny said his fac­to­ry start­ed mak­ing deyas six months ago and the last batch was due to come out of the oven yes­ter­day af­ter 20 hours of fir­ing. Be­cause of the weath­er, Ben­ny said it was not fea­si­ble to make any more deyas be­cause they would not dry in time for Di­vali.

In an in­ter­view with the Sun­day Guardian, Ben­ny said the art of tra­di­tion­al pot­tery mak­ing is dy­ing. He said labour short­age is a ma­jor prob­lem. Skilled pot­ters are no longer pass­ing down their skills to the young gen­er­a­tion be­cause pot­tery is not seen as a prof­itable, fea­si­ble work of art, he not­ed.

“This year we lost one of our skilled mas­ters, De­onar­ine Ram­cha­ran, who got knocked down by the traf­fic light and died,” Ben­ny said.

He ex­plained that al­co­hol ad­dic­tion was al­so killing skilled pot­ters.

“Pun­cheon is a prob­lem. We can on­ly get them to work in the first half of the day. The sec­ond half they go miss­ing,” Ben­ny said.

He added that his great ma­ter­nal grand­fa­ther, Seecha­ran, was one of two broth­ers who came from In­dia with the pot­tery skills. Seecha­ran stayed in Ch­agua­nas, while his broth­er Goolcha­ran set up shop in Rio Claro. Their pot­tery skills were passed down and his moth­er, Radi­ka Ben­ny, lat­er es­tab­lished a pot­tery shop which be­came a hall­mark in Chase Vil­lage.

Ben­ny said he was will­ing to teach pot­tery to the youths. He ad­mit­ted that many of his rel­a­tives now had au­to­mat­ed pot­tery shops, but said noth­ing was as re­ward­ing and valu­able as see­ing pot­tery done the tra­di­tion­al way.

“There are purists who want the pots cre­at­ed by hand. All of our pots sell but we have no space to ex­pand,” he said.

He added that sev­er­al years ago their MP, Dr Bhoen­dra­datt Tewarie, made rep­re­sen­ta­tion for them to get a piece of land to ex­pand. How­ev­er, that fell through.

Ben­ny said they now had a ma­jor prob­lem be­cause there was lit­tle de­mand for the al­ready over 150,000 deyas they had pro­duced be­fore the floods hit. He said many peo­ple who were hit by the flood­ing had been scal­ing down their Di­vali cel­e­bra­tions and the deyas and oth­er pot­tery used at this time were not in high de­mand. A wood­en house filled to the brim with deyas stood near to the pot­ter’s wheel while an­oth­er lot was filled with truck­loads of yel­low sap­atay clay dur­ing the Sun­day Guardian’s vis­it.

A tour of the fac­to­ry was like a step back in time with mounds of pots and vas­es at var­i­ous stages of com­ple­tion.

Giv­ing an overview of the pot­tery mak­ing process, Ben­ny said they were now able to make pot­tery much quick­er be­cause of the pug­mill which kneads the clay.

“I hate when they call it mud. It is not mud. It is a spe­cial clay which we get three or four feet un­der­ground where there are no im­pu­ri­ties like nail, bot­tle, grass or roots. I bring in six truck­loads every six months be­cause we do pot­tery right through the year,” Ben­ny said.

He added that long ago, pot­ters had to dance in the mud to take out the im­pu­ri­ties.

“That was not fun. It was hard work. When we take the clay out of the pug­mill we put it on a rolling board where we man­u­al­ly roll it in­to a block,” Ben­ny said.

This block of mud is then put on a pot­ter’s wheel made with old car parts, dri­ve belts, pul­leys and mo­tors. There are three pot­ter’s wheels in Radi­ka’s fac­to­ry and Ben­ny said they cre­ate urns, vas­es, kalsas, deyas and gob­lets.

His sis­ter Mona Ma­hamoody and cousin An­nette Ben­ny fash­ion in­tri­cate de­signs on the cre­ations which are then sold out­side in a tent.

The last mas­ter pot­ter, Bas­sant Char­ran, said he was proud of his craft.

“This is what I love. It’s what I’ve been do­ing since I was small. I don’t know any oth­er work,” Char­ran said.

He al­so called on the Gov­ern­ment to pro­vide a par­cel of land so that they can ex­pand their op­er­a­tions and teach the young gen­er­a­tion the skills of pot­tery.

“We should not wait to let this process die. It is some­thing that we have to trea­sure. We are prob­a­bly the last set of pot­ters who do pots and deyas the tra­di­tion­al way and it is some­thing that must be pre­served,” Char­ran said.

Some pots are sold for $3 while in­tri­cate dec­o­ra­tive ones are sold for $175. Gob­lets are sold for $30 while gob­lets with han­dles are sold at $50.

Any­one want­i­ng pots can con­tact Ben­ny at 665-4267 or 789-4089.