Celebrating 18 years as the finest ceramics studio North of Boston!

The Clay School is located in the unique and historic Lydia Pinkham Building in Lynn, Massachusetts, just over the Salem border and convenient to residents of Lynn, Marblehead, Swampscott, Salem, Saugus, Lynnfield, Reading, Melrose, Peabody, and towns close to I-95/rt 128.

The former factory building was home to one of the first successful female entrepreneurs, Lydia E. Pinkham, making it a fitting home for two enterprising women, Doreen Mastandrea and Kirsten Bassion, to realize their vision for a top notch ceramics school. Founded as the North Shore Clay Studio in 2005, the studio’s name was changed in 2010 to The Clay School and continues to be owned and operated by Kirsten, a lifelong Marblehead resident and professional artist.

While The Clay School’s size has more than doubled in the last 18 years, what’s remained the same is the supportive, welcoming environment that Kirsten and her outstanding teaching staff have created. Classes often grow to feel like family, and countless lifelong friendships have been formed. It’s our returning community, year over year, that makes us so special.

We pride ourselves on being the only studio in the region that offers a 24/7 open door policy, so in addition to over a dozen class offerings for every experience level, students and artists who create work for galleries and shows also have unlimited access to our space. Night or day, you can almost always find someone there working right alongside you!

Our studio also plans and hosts an annual public art event, Lydia Pinkham Open Studios, featuring artists from our community as well as dozens of others throughout the building. Open Studios takes place every year the weekend before Thanksgiving and gives all of our building artists and the public the chance to connect with one another to share (and sell!) their art.

Want to learn more about The Clay School? Check out news articles, exciting milestones, and more in the Our Community section.