Within two months of arriving at Moly-Sabata in 1930, Anne Dangar wrote to Albert Gleizes about obtaining a simple wheel and constructing a furnace to commence her pottery, and of her wish to establish a workshop encompassing other crafts.
All … night I planned and built air castles—our little pottery grew and grew … we started other industries, basket-making, rush-mats and chairs and stools—we even knocked down a wall between two small rooms because our big loom for carpet and rug weaving needed space and light.
These dreams were short-lived. The following day, Robert Pouyaud announced he and his wife were leaving the community, putting an end to her immediate plans. With his departure, it was not yet feasible for Dangar to build a pottery—she had neither money nor resources. But knowing her interest and experience in pottery, Pouyaud sought to connect her with potteries in the region.
By June 1930, Pouyaud had introduced Dangar to Clovis Nicolas, from a pottery at Saint-Désirat, nine kilometres south of Moly-Sabata, across the river in the Ardèche, and Dangar began working there regularly alongside senior potter Jules Pignault. Entering the masculine space of the Saint-Désirat pottery as a woman was difficult and, having come to the medium later in life, Dangar had not completed the full seven-year potter’s apprenticeship.
Her relations with Pignault were initially tense; she found him ‘coarse and disgusting’ and called him the ‘old drunken potter’. Certainly, as a woman in her late forties with limited French and vastly different world experience and social background to the peasant potters she encountered, Dangar was a curious anomaly in this context and likely an easy target. In time, however, Pignault and the other potters became impressed by her resolve. Dangar later credited him with being: ‘the best potter [she had] ever known’ and that she owed him ‘all [she knew] regarding real pottery’.
