Saskia was born in Amsterdam, Holland, where her mother was a professional potter who employed helpers to produce the line of dishes she designed. After high school Saskia studied pottery at the Rietveld Akademie. She remembers traveling to Antibes on the Côte d’Azur and being strongly influenced by Picasso’s highly decorated ceramics at the Château Grimaldi (now the Picasso Museum), where he worked for six months in 1946. Working as an au pair in Paris strengthened her fluency in French and exposed her to many artistic influences.

In 1967 Saskia arrived in Madison, Wisconsin, where her husband, Sietze, attended the University of Wisconsin. Saskia registered as a special student in ceramics, studying with Don Reitz. Although she had studied German, French, English, Latin and Greek in Amsterdam, the Dutch-speaking young woman found that her “more goal-oriented” American friends would frequently finish her sentences for her. The couple had a wonderful and exhilarating time as part of the burgeoning arts scene at the university.
Eventually Sietze took a job as a technician in the ceramics department of the Sheridan School of Design in Port Credit. Saskia followed her own muse, creating raku pieces. The couple became part of the founding team of the Harbourfront Craft Studios in Toronto and worked there for three years. With Sietze as director they developed courses, held exhibitions, and launched programs in pottery, glass, weaving and sculpture.

Following Her Other Muse

Through artist acquaintances they learned that the Ontario Arts Council was looking for potters to go to Botswana where an Irish priest was working to create employment for women whose husbands were working in mines far from home. Sietze convinced Saskia to join him and they built, taught and worked at the Thamaga Pottery of Botswelelo Centre in Botswana for three years. “It was fascinating and scary. Everything is so different - snakes, beliefs, our cinderblock house with a thatched roof…” With two small children, the couple decided to return to Canada and look for a pottery they could buy. Good friends from the Sheridan School of Design had settled near White Lake, and in 1980 the Praamsmas purchased their home in Clayton.

After their third child was born, Sietze decided to return to school. He studied robotics and then technical writing at Algonquin College. Saskia was a homemaker, a potter and a Red Cross homemaker assisting the elderly in their homes. She worked one year at the Perth Museum, and then found a job at the Dovercourt Recreation Center in Ottawa where she worked for twelve years as a pottery instructor and as a technician making glazes and firing the kilns.

Getting Fired Up

In September of 1999 a group of students of former Almonte potter Darlene Keffer started meeting to discuss their mutual desire for a place to continue pursuing their new love. Saskia became one of the founders of the Almonte Potters’ Guild, and in August of 2000 the group moved into their current location at 95 Bridge St. in Almonte. Now Saskia and Susan Roston share responsibility for the technical and administrative aspects entailed in operating the shared facility. Saskia teaches an “Introduction to Pottery” course, and “a little bit of everything else. I love to get people fired up about pottery,” she quips. “Especially children.”

aMused Again

About a year ago Sietze saw a television program that mentioned the creation of a new school for the arts in Afghanistan. They needed a ceramics adviser. A month after he left, Saskia joined him in Kabul where they spent five more months at the Turquoise Mountain School of Ceramics setting up the pottery, getting the kilns going, working on the curricula, and teaching. This time it was their knowledge of German that facilitated their interactions with a German-speaking potter from Kabul. Saskia was intrigued by the anomaly of the ubiquitous use of cell phones in a landscape that almost made her feel like she was living in Biblical times.

Making Tracks to Saskia’s Feats of Clay

This Thanksgiving weekend (October 11-13 from 10am to 5pm) the Praamsma’s home and pottery at 1258 Bellamy Mills Road in Clayton will be Stop 4 of the annual Crown and Pumpkin Studio Tour. Check the website at www.crownandpumpkin.com to learn about the 26 local and guest artists offering a wide array of fabulous creations at twelve participating studios in Clayton, Almonte and Pakenham.

Saskia will be participating in the 260 Fingers invitational exhibition of the top potters in Eastern Ontario and West Quebec, Nov 8-10, from 10-5 at the Glebe Community Centre, 690 Lyon St. in Ottawa. From November 13-16 she will be exhibiting her work at The Ottawa Guild of Potters Fall Sale at the Hellenic Community Centre at 1315 Prince of Wales Dr., Ottawa www.ottawaguildofpotters.ca. She also is represented at the Cornerstone Gallery in Kingston. You can reach her by phone at the Almonte Potters’ Guild at 256-5556, or at her home at 256-3472 or by email.