MazAmar Art Pottery

Across Mane Street from Pioneer Bowl, a large tan stucco building where visitors are told to park, a weathered wooden front carries the word “Pottery” in block letters across the top. The studio’s own Instagram calls it “the POTTERY in the old movie set on Mane st.” of Pioneertown. In 2017 Ashley Breeding, writing for Desert magazine, found it between land offices and some woolly pygora goats, on a dusty street where “only hoof and foot traffic” is free to wander. Its two front windows held earthenware in cactus green, desert rose and sky blue.

MazAmar Art Pottery is an open production studio, and the pots on the shelves are made in the rooms behind them. Joshua Tree mugs, heart bowls, labyrinth plates, wine cups, tiles and the faux bois Wood Pots are made here, along with desert critter mugs. In July 2026 a run of new Joshua tree tumblers was in production. The studio also prints its own nature-themed art tees. Thomas Alban has been proprietor since 2000. In 2017 Desert magazine reported that his wife, Amara Alban, owned and operated the shop with him.

The shop, the courtyard and the apothecary

The front room sells more than pottery. A July 2026 post lists “pottery, paintings, sculptures, photography, jewelry, shirts, art prints and cards,” with “a little something for everyone in our shop for that perfect souvenir.” Regional potters show alongside the house line. The studio’s friends page names Bailey Jones of Sage Ceramics, Elizabeth Eisenstein of ZZIEE Ceramics, Tayler Straziuso of Stray Ceramics and Chloe Folger of No Ware Ceramics. Beyond the shop is an art gallery in the courtyard, and through that a boutique and apothecary. In August 2026 the shop had copies of the 25th anniversary Hwy 62 Art Tour catalog for visitors to pick up.

The studio teaches group pottery and wheel-throwing classes open to the public, aimed at aspiring potters, kids and tourists. Neither of its websites posts a class schedule.

How a Joshua tree mug is made

Amara Alban walked Desert magazine through the process in 2017. “We use the wheels for all of the round pieces, but hand-build everything else,” she said. For the Joshua tree mug, the clay is first mixed and pugged, then cut, measured, wedged by hand and thrown. Handles come from an extruder and are fitted with an indent for the drinker’s thumb. “The fit and feel of the handle is something that we pay extra attention to,” she said.

The tree is transferred onto the mug from a sheet of paper. In May 2026 the studio posted a clip of “transfer flow printing on leather hard clay.” The mug then dries on a shelf for a week. A bisque firing of about six hours drives off the water, and the mug cools for as long as it was heated. It is sanded, cleaned and dipped in glaze, then finished in an eight-hour firing. Out back that year, raw-clay mugs, vases and “drunken” shot glasses waited on tables to be fired at around 1,800 degrees in massive gas kilns.

The hands at the wheels have changed over the years. In 2017 the Albans gave their emerging throwers free use of the studio to build their own lines and let them sell in the showroom. “The business side of being a potter is often neglected in art schools, so that ends up being a large part of what we teach,” Amara said. Folger, a studio art graduate of Cal State San Bernardino, worked production there for about two years. She told VoyageLA in 2020 that the job “was almost like boot camp for throwing,” and that the owners “really knew how to bring out the best work in people.” Jake Reiland came on as a production potter not long after finishing high school.

The studio’s about page lists two others. Geoffrey Fennel grew up on a cattle and hunting ranch in northern Wyoming and left the film industry in 1999. Nikki Ilkanich, an Ohio University ceramics graduate, moved to the Southern California desert in the summer of 2020.

Shows in the art garden

An outdoor art garden sits between the pottery showroom and the boutique, and its shows change through the year. In late May 2026, “Clay Stories” by Cher Townsend was in its last weekend. The Mandala Show ran next, from June 20 to September 6, 2026. It paired Thomas Alban’s carved clay wall pieces with work by Julia Briest, an eco artist from Desert Hot Springs who builds mandalas from natural, ethically sourced plant materials. New pieces went up as others sold.

The reception fell on the Third Saturday Art Walk, over the summer solstice weekend. The apothecary poured chakra tea. At 7 p.m., Compassion Sound Healers, Matt and Julia Briest, gave a donation sound bath, and visitors were asked to bring their own mats, blankets or cushions. A new show opened on September 11, 2026, and a mid-September post pointed to raku work by Lewis Burris.

A dent in the hood

The Albans came from Georgia. Desert magazine put their arrival in the Mojave “around the turn of the century” and said they traded cast-cement sculpture for a potter’s wheel, a kiln “and a few instructional books.” Amara remembered landing in Rimrock, just north of Pioneertown: “We also got the impression that if you weren’t weird, you were weird – we fit right in!” Thomas gives the move different seasons. His studio pages say he came from Savannah to Pioneertown in the fall of 2000, and in a 2024 VoyageLA interview he said the spring of 2000.

He told VoyageLA he was then making cement sculptures and fountains and could not find platters to fit the fountains and pumps, so he thought of throwing his own. While he was visiting friends, their water truck backed into his car and dented the hood, and their insurance sent a check. “I was fine driving around in an old car with an extra dent,” he said. “It sort of helped me fit into this place a little better; I spent that money on a potter’s wheel and kiln.” The MazAmar Sculptural site tells the same fender-bender story, saying the settlement let “then partners, Thomas and Amara” buy a kiln, wheel, tools, clay and glaze.

He studied library books “page after page,” he said, “before YouTube.” After a few months of practice he entered a local Christmas craft show, nervous about “these funky little naïve pieces.” In two days he made more than he usually earned in two weeks of construction work.

Faux bois and carved bricks

According to the MazAmar Sculptural site, the pottery team took over the functional work over time so Thomas could turn to clay sculpture. In 2024 he told VoyageLA that he worked at the pottery by day and in his home studio in the evenings, and that he had kept a studio and showroom in Pioneertown for the last 14 years. The larger work had begun by 2017, when Desert magazine reported 3-foot planters and abstract sculpture headed for an April exhibition at the 29 Palms Art Gallery.

His faux bois bowls and vases are clay shaped after wood worn by sun and wind, and people often ask him how he fires glaze on wood. Since the Covid lockdown he has carved wall pieces from clay tiles he calls bricks. He draws each one out, rolls the clay, lays out the bricks, carves them and dries them slowly so they will not warp. The Refractory Series joins pattern-scored bricks glazed together into a story.

Some of the work began as accidents. He once contaminated his kiln, and later firings peeled the glaze off pieces and ruined a number of shelves at real expense. What the bare clay looked like under the lost glaze inspired much of his later work. Cracks led to a line of pieces that are, in his words, “really brutalist in the sense of just allowing Clay to be Clay.”