Ben Holgate speaks to the woman who quit her part-time job to try her hand at pottery

Despite studying art throughout school, it took an impromptu family outing to a pottery painting cafe for Hannah Marshall to undergo an epiphany of sorts and discover her professional calling in life.

The 24-year-old single mother from Cholsey recalled: “I really, really enjoyed it and thought, that’s what I want to do.”

What’s remarkable is that within 16 months Miss Marshall, who has a three-year-old daughter, Millie, had quit her job to focus on pottery full time.

“I was worried about it,” she admitted. “When I first handed my notice in, I got very nervous.”

That fateful visit in May 2014 to the aptly named Kiln Ceramic Cafe, in Henley-on-Thames, was organised by her mother, Christine Blackburn, 50, who simply arranged for an outing to fill in idle hours for Hannah’s holidaying aunt and young nephew after visiting Legoland.

But it proved to be the first building block for Miss Marshall’s metamorphosis from administrative assistant into novice commercial potter.

She went on to do two, one-day courses – one on business, the other on pottery painting – at Country Love Crafts at Milton Park, Abingdon.

Then in September 2014 she sold her own pottery for the first time at a craft show, in East Hendred.

Barely three months later, in December, she began selling items on her Facebook page and the website Etsy, which she described as an eBay for crafts. She said she had made more than 430 global sales on Etsy since then, including to buyers in Europe, North America and Australia.

Miss Marshall’s first big decision was to buy equipment to set herself up. The kiln cost £1,300, which she paid for with a business credit card, and the materials (clay, underglaze and glaze) initially cost an additional £1,500, which she funded out of savings.

The electric kiln, which she runs at 1,050 degrees Celsius (about 10 times the temperature you would boil the kettle for a cup of tea), now sits in her mother’s garage. Fortunately, her mother moved to Miss Marshall’s home village of Cholsey in July after selling the family home in nearby Wallingford.

“It looks quite industrial,” she said of the kiln. “It’s completely safe. You can keep them in your home, if you want.”

Her second big decision was to pursue her dream. For the past two-and-a-half years, she had been working as an administrative assistant for Capita, which provides business process outsourcing. Her work specifically related to the benefits department of South Oxfordshire District Council.

Most importantly, her 24-hour-a-week part-time job was bringing in an annual income of about £10,000. And it was a job she could perform at home.

She finished up with Capita in early September. “As Christmas is coming up and I’ve got all these ideas, I thought, I might as well go for it,” she said.

The brave leap, she said, was welcomed by her bosses, who were aware of her ceramic hobby that was quickly becoming all-consuming.

“They could see this was my passion and that my heart wasn’t really in benefit work.”

Another positive was that she could spend more time with her daughter, whose name she used in her trading name, Love Millie Crafts. Millie spends three days a week at nursery, and the rest of the week with her mother.

“My daughter comes in and paints, and I get to see more of her.”

Miss Marshall paints all the pottery that she sells, and makes the smaller ceramics. For the moment, the larger items – such as teapots, cups and plates – she purchases before applying her own idiosyncratic design touches through glazing.

However, she recently acquired a potter’s wheel to upgrade what she does make herself. “But I’ve got to sign up for a course on how to use it,” she added.

For the most part of the year, she sells exclusively through the Internet. In the lead-up to Christmas, she also sells through market stalls, which during that time accounts for about a quarter of total sales.

Ironically, the Wallingford-raised Miss Marshall said that, although she studied art at Wallingford School, pottery was never offered.

After school she went on to study fashion design at the Winchester School of Art at the University of Southampton before realising that was not for her.

“I’m still doing art, which I love,” she said of her pottery. “But I’m putting it into practical things that people can use or put as a decoration into their home.”

Miss Marshall’s pottery can be found at etsy.com/uk/shop/lovemilliecrafts or on Facebook.

Her next market stall is on Sunday at Market in the Barn, Ipsden.