"People here have been making things from Elkhart River clay for nearly 200 years, and this region keeps producing serious potters," Trevor Daugherty, executive director of the Northern Indiana Clay Alliance, told The Goshen News before the Clay Center opened. "What we haven't had is a place where anyone can walk in off Main Street, take a class, buy clay, and see that tradition up close. Now we do."
That door at 118 S. Main St. opened on Oct. 2 during the Harvest Festival First Fridays. Getting through it for real instruction is already harder than the open house made it look. The center's first beginner wheel class was listed as sold out before the six-week session even started. Goshen spent decades building a pottery community without a public front door, and the new one is small. Each class takes eight people, so if you live here and want your hands in clay before the holidays, you need to know which of the other doors are still open.
Eight seats a class sets the pace
Every class at the center caps at eight students. NICA pitches the cap as real time with an instructor, not a seat in the back of a crowded room. The same cap means a single Wednesday night section can fill quickly, and that happened with the wheel. Here is what the fall calendar showed when we checked.
| Option | When | Cost | Status at last check |
|---|---|---|---|
| Introduction to Wheel Throwing with Eric Kaufmann | Six Wednesdays, Nov. 4 to Dec. 16, 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. | $250, or $225 for members | Listed as sold out |
| Surface Decoration and Handbuilding with Justin Rothshank | Same six Wednesdays, same hours | $250, or $225 for members | Six places left |
| Fall Break Kids Camp, ages 8 and up | Oct. 21 to 23, 10 a.m. to noon | $75 for all three mornings | Open for registration |
| Walk-in visit and supply counter | Tuesday to Friday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Saturday 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. | Varies by purchase | Closed Sunday and Monday |
Both Wednesday sections meet Nov. 4, 11 and 18, then Dec. 2, 9 and 16. No session is listed for Nov. 25, the night before Thanksgiving. Class listings change in real time, so the counts above may have moved since we looked.
The open seat is at the handbuilding table
People who wanted the wheel and missed it should look at the other Wednesday section first. Justin Rothshank's Surface Decoration and Handbuilding class covers building small and medium forms by hand. It then spends real time on what goes on the surface: slips, underglazes, decals, "and the decisions that make a pot yours," as the class description puts it. The listing welcomes both beginners and experienced potters.
The instructor matters here. Rothshank co-founded the Michiana Pottery Tour in 2011 with Dick Lehman and Mark Goertzen. He also worked with Daugherty on the conversations that led to NICA becoming a nonprofit in fall 2022. The handbuilding class puts a first-timer in front of one of the people who helped build the regional network the center now houses. The wheel class lists Eric Kaufmann as its instructor and covers centering, pulling walls, trimming and glazing. NICA says more workshops are coming in January 2027.
Three mornings over fall break
The earliest way into the building as a student is through a child. Fall Break Kids Camp meets Oct. 21, 22 and 23 from 10 a.m. to noon, for ages 8 and up, at $75 for the three mornings with snacks and materials included. The event listing gives more detail:
- The camp starts with handbuilding, then moves to wheel throwing and decorating.
- Groups cap at eight, the same as the adult classes.
- Parents may stay.
- Finished pieces are ready for pickup starting Oct. 29, during open hours.
The pickup date is the detail to plan around. Pots need time to dry and fire, so the camp ends on a Friday and the work comes home the following Thursday or later.
A building that sold tools for sixty years
The center fills 8,000 square feet of a building that went up in 1898. According to NICA, it was a hardware store for its first sixty years. It then became a Sears catalog store, where shoppers ordered from the big book and picked up their deliveries, and after that Goshen Camera. The brick walls, pressed tin ceilings and hardwood floors are still in place throughout. The entrance faces Art Alley.
The renovation was a $1.5 million project. In July, NICA received a $300,000 READI 2.0 Arts & Culture Grant from the Indiana Economic Development Corporation and the Indiana Arts Commission, which went toward the building work and equipment. That kind of money is going into a membership organization that, as of July 2026, represented more than 150 artists from 17 states and said it had returned more than $500,000 in program income to member artists.
Half a century of potters with no storefront
The reason a pottery center fits Goshen goes back to Goshen College. NICA's About page dates Marvin Bartel's arrival there to the late 1960s and credits him with planting a "family tree" of potters across the region, a network that grew through Dick Lehman's work at Goshen's Old Bag Factory. Its programs page gives the year as 1970 and places Rothshank in that lineage too. The Michiana Pottery Tour began in 2011 and grew into an annual event with nearly 50 participants across 10 studios. Before NICA, the Goshen Clay Artists' Guild offered residents a class schedule that rotated through the year. NICA's history traces clay use in the area to Indigenous makers, records Goshen-area pottery by the 1840s, and says an Elkhart County plant was digging clay from a nearby river system by about 1900.
That whole tradition lived in private studios, college classrooms, a guild's rotating class schedule, and a tour held once a year. The Clay Center gives it a fixed public address for the first time, and NICA calls the center "the first home NICA can truly call its own." Bartel's name continues through a planned artist-in-residence program meant to bring ceramic artists from around the country to the building for extended stays. No application dates or program length had been published when we checked.
Between sessions, the supply counter and the alley
Not every visit needs a class seat. The center runs what NICA calls a full-service clay supply operation, the only one of its kind within a two-hour drive. That gives potters already working at home, and art teachers across the region, a local source for clay, tools and glazes, with no long drive or shipping bill. Posted hours are Tuesday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., with longer hours on class nights. The center is closed Sunday and Monday. NICA lists open studio hours and private studios for working artists, but it has not posted rates or eligibility rules for either.
Membership is the main way to lower costs. The annual tiers are Artist at $250, Friend of NICA at $100 and Student/Teacher at $50. Each includes a directory listing and at least 10% off supplies, classes and workshops. At the member price, the $25 saved on one six-week class equals a quarter of the Friend tier. The membership page does not say whether any tier includes open studio access.
Art Alley is the free option. NICA opens the alley on First Fridays with free activities for kids, and regional artists' work hangs on the walls inside. The next downtown evening is the Light Parade along Main Street on Friday, Nov. 6, from 5 to 9 p.m., which falls in the first week of the Wednesday classes.
If you're pricing a custom build and want a studio space with the right ventilation, a utility sink and a 240-volt outlet for a future kiln, that's the kind of detail we plan into every new-home project. Let's Connect with Michael Lee to talk through a home with room to work in clay.
