Since 1966
About
Canada's largest maker of pottery clay. Dug on the prairies, blended and tested in Medicine Hat, shipped to studios, schools and potters across North America.
Same corner of town since 1966
In 1966 Luke Lindoe, an artist, potter and geologist, decided the clay around Medicine Hat was worth digging up. He set up with John Porter, a British trained technician with a head for business, on the site of the old Alberta Clay Products plant. The company has been digging, blending and shipping clay from that same corner of town ever since.
It started as a few stoneware bodies for prairie potters. Today it is more than forty clay bodies, four stores and customers across North America, and the mixing has never left Medicine Hat.
What actually happens here
Short version: raw prairie earth goes in one end, and the material potters across Canada work with comes out the other.
ONE
We mine it
Our clay comes out of deposits we own on the prairies – most of it across the border in Saskatchewan. We don’t buy our raw material from anyone. Very few clay companies can say that.
TWO
We make it here
It arrives in Medicine Hat as rock and earth. We blend, test every batch and mix it into dozens of different clay bodies – each one built for a particular job, colour and firing temperature.
THREE
We send it everywhere
Out the door to studios, schools, universities and potters in every province, plus our own stores in Medicine Hat, Edmonton, Surrey and Parksville.
Who we are today
Sixty years, one address. We still dig our own clay out of the prairie, haul it home to Medicine Hat, and blend it into more than forty bodies on the same corner of town Luke Lindoe picked in 1966. Somewhere along the way we became the largest maker of pottery clay in Canada – which sounds a lot grander than it looks from the parking lot.
We want to be the clay you never have to think about. The body that behaves the way it did last time. The box that’s in stock and on your dock when you’re counting on it. The person who picks up the phone when something isn’t right. That’s been the whole idea since 1966, and it hasn’t changed.
Bet you didn’t know
01 – We're the biggest in the country
No company in Canada makes more pottery clay than we do. All of it from a building most people in town have driven past a thousand times.
02 – There's a lab involved
Clay is chemistry. Every body we make gets tested – for shrinkage, strength, absorption, colour and how it behaves in a kiln. Get it wrong and someone’s work cracks on the shelf.
03 – We sell more than clay
Kilns, wheels, glazes, tools and everything else a studio needs. If somebody you know makes pottery, there’s a good chance some of their gear came from us.
04 – Somebody you know owns a piece of it
The handmade mug in your cupboard had to start somewhere. Many of them start here, and most of the people who own one have never heard of Medicine Hat.
1966
Making clay in
Medicine Hat ever since
#1
Largest pottery clay
maker in Canada
40+
Clay bodies, every one
tested in our own lab
15
4 Stores & 11 dealers
across North America
Thanks for checking in
That’s us. If you’re curious about what we make, or you know someone who works with clay, the door’s open. Four of them, in fact.
