Shape Your Shabbat: Ceramic Ritual Set Workshop

Get your hands in the clay and your spirit in the flow in the JCCSF Ceramics Studio! In this joyful workshop led by ceramicist Amber Allen we’ll dive into simple, accessible hand-building techniques to craft your very own Shabbat ritual set: a pair of candlesticks, a kiddush cup and a challah plate.

Play with clay as you learn best-practice tips, then dream up a design that bridges this ancient tradition to your modern life. Work at your own pace with plenty of support along the way. When your forms are complete, you’ll select glazes to bring your creations to life with color, depth, and shine. Shape pieces that feel truly yours through playful experimentation in a tactile, community centered ceramics workshop connecting craft, ritual, and joy for beginners and the curious alike.

Over the course of the week, your pieces will be glazed and fired in the studio and ready for pickup on Friday, just in time to light up your table and welcome Shabbat with beautiful objects you made by hand.

This workshop includes instruction and materials for one Shabbat ritual set. Sign up solo or design your set with a loved one. Up to 2 people per registration.

For ages 14+. No prior experience needed. All ceramics levels welcome.

Amber Allen is a multidisciplinary artist whose work explores the dualities of destruction & repair, concealment vs. exploration, and nostalgia for the past combined with her complex hopes for the future. Always on the lookout for fun yet meaningful subjects, she creates art about a large variety of topics with a throughline of space-age themes as a metaphor for the human condition.

Born in Indiana in 1992, Allen knew from the moment she completed her first still life painting at age fifteen that she would become an artist. Often moving from place to place growing up, she settled in the Bay Area for college and began to explore her disparate interests. A graduate of the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, Allen has exhibited her work in solo shows in California, and group shows across the US.

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Host or Publisher Jewish Community Center of San Francisco