I found Radostin Ganev in his workshop in the village of Voysil in the fall of 2017. I reached him after a very brief research in the villages of the Maritsa municipality for master potters, they told me “only Rado, there are no others”. From that meeting to this day, we have built a very warm cooperation. I can say with complete responsibility that Rado is our “luck”, his help has proven invaluable and irreplaceable in all phases of the implementation of the Maltepe Center program. Three years later, thousands of children who have passed through the workshop of the Maltepe Information Center have taken home their own handmade clay object, along with knowledge of the material and the history of this disappearing craft.
After completing 8th grade, Radostin Ganev applied to the Art School in the city of Smolyan, the “wrought iron” class – he was not accepted. He began studying to be a locksmith at the Anton Ivanov MUTSTPO in the city of Plovdiv, where he did not stay long. From his classmate, he learned that there was a class in artistic ceramics in the village of Cherna Gora – Chirpansko. He moved there, traveling 80 km from Plovdiv every day, but was disappointed, because in three years he learned almost nothing. He was then assigned to the “Ceramic Factory Trakia”, where he made bricks in fours, along with people serving corrective labor for minor hooliganism. After leaving the barracks, he began to learn the craft with Vesselin Kingarov – a master from Plovdiv. Veso and the brilliant ceramicist Lili Tankova were the first teachers of the future master. After nearly two years of apprenticeship, Veso Kingarov and Lili Tankova decided to send him to their colleagues in Troyan because they saw the potential in him..
His training was taken over by the Troyan master – potter Bai Minko Beliya (Beliya – from the village of Beli Osam, Troyan region). He learned the craft from the last old masters from the village of Beli Osam. With Bai Minko he learned topping – the process of pouring a clay vessel on a potter’s wheel. From Petar Shopa he learned to paint with a brush…. and that’s how he prepared for the master’s exam. Rado shares “the craft is learned by doing, it’s not done by watching, telling, reading” and so after a lot of work he is ready to take the exam to become a master potter.
The exam is held shortly before the Christmas holidays of 1989 at the art school in Troyan. Before the exam, the future master passes an “admission”, which is a presentation of several vessels before the “Cooperative of Masters” in the city of Sofia. The decision whether the candidate is suitable for a master is made by six master potters. The most difficult exam task is to make a pitcher, in addition, a pot and a casserole are made.
Rado admits to us that while he was an apprentice he dreamed of “one day becoming a master and…”, but that didn’t happen at all. He set up his own workshop, started working and realized that he “knew nothing”. At that time he used Trojan clay. He started making chicken drinkers, as there was a great demand on the market. His first drinkers cracked and were so ugly that if you ask him now if he made them, he would deny it. But the product was in demand. The market for drinkers was so hungry that the merchants didn’t wait for the goods to cool down, they grabbed them from the kiln hot, pre-paid for the next order and left. The master potter tells with a laugh how one of his clients once almost set his car on fire because the boxes in which he placed the ceramics caught fire.
A few years later, he discovered Bratsigov clay, which turned out to be much better for this type of ceramic products. That is exactly why the old masters moved to live where there were clay deposits. Thus arose the various schools of “Businska”, “Trojanska”, “Samokovska”, “Preslavska”, “Tarnovoska”. Where the land was fertile, the masters worked ceramics only in the winter, and immediately after Easter they started to cultivate their land.
With the advent of industrial production, clay vessels were replaced by plastic, glass and other modern materials. Even the processing of clay was modernized. Today, craftsmen buy technologically processed clay, use presses, filter presses, rollers, electric kilns and wheels. Machines for making pots are also entering the market on a massive scale.
Now Rado makes ceramics that cannot be manufactured in a factory, each of his works has a soul and shines with uncompromising perfection. Perfection that is the result of more than 30 years of experience and two talented hands..