Likir Pottery — Ajang Tsepel and the Next Generation
Ajang Tsepel helped preserve traditional pottery in Likir. The family studio now describes his son Rigzen Namgail as a practising potter and teacher, continuing the craft through workshops and training.
By Akshay Singh
Outside the ancient monastery, timeless silence weaves through this living land — cloaking mountains, gliding across deserts, descending upon deserted villages. Everything everywhere, mystically wrapped in absolute quiet.after Prabir C. Purkayastha
It is hard, anywhere in the modern world, to live without borrowed aspirations. In a place still being told it is 'developing', it is almost impossible. Around fifty years ago, Ladakh was pulled into that same conversation — one that asked the valley to measure itself against an outside ideal. Academic success became the norm. Everything else slipped quietly into 'secondary'. Craft, in particular, stopped being a calling and became a fallback. You took it up only when the system had already decided you weren't useful to it.
How Ajang Tsepel became a potter
Ajang Lamchung Tsepel was orphaned young and raised by his aunt. By the time he reached eighth grade, the family had little money and he had shown little academic promise. So his aunt suggested pottery — a craft that the family studio links, as an origin tradition, to King Lhachen Gyalpo, and even then practised by only a handful of families in a village of around a thousand people.
He started by copying the potters around him. From the very first batch, it was obvious he was a natural. He picked up the basic skills almost instantly. But when he asked for honest criticism, the few potters in the village told him he was already good enough and didn't need their help. He knew that wasn't true. He could feel the gap between what he was making and what he wanted to make. The craft, he realised early, was not being passed on — partly out of arrogance, partly because the passion to teach had already begun to fade.
- Home of the family studio
- Likir
- Father–son craft tradition
- Family
- Workshops documented by the studio
- Training
Pots that wouldn't stand up
He took his first batch to sell in the city. The pots had round bottoms — they wobbled on flat ground and never made it into anyone's home. He came back that night upset, but for the first time also clear about something: in pottery he had found a kind of expression and release he had not known existed in his life. Whatever else this craft was going to be, he was not going to do it badly.
On the pretext of borrowing a cigarette
He decided to learn from a master in the village. The master had no interest in teaching him. He was politely sent away, more than once. So Ajang Tsepel, a smoker at fifteen, started turning up at the master's house on the pretext of borrowing cigarettes — and quietly stayed to watch him work. That is, in the most literal sense, how he became a potter: by observation, by stolen glances, by hours of practice on his own. Later, briefly, he was taken on as an apprentice by an older potter, and there he went deeper — finding his own line, his own aesthetic, his own way of putting a mind into a piece of clay.
He learned the craft the way the craft was leaving the valley — quietly, sideways, almost in secret.Akshay Singh
Recognition arrived as the others disappeared
As the older generation of potters passed away one by one, Ajang Tsepel began to be recognised in the city. With almost no competition left, he started doing better than he had ever expected to do as a potter. Older accounts described him as a last remaining potter. That description needs historical context: the family studio now documents his son Rigzen Namgail practising and teaching the craft.
A craft being passed on
Likir Pottery describes Rigzen learning from his father in 2006 and later teaching villagers and students. The tradition remains vulnerable, but it is inaccurate to say that nobody has inherited it. Workshops and commissions offer practical ways to support its continuation.
What is in his hands
Forms, firing skills and knowledge of local clay passed through the family studio.
Knowledge
What helps the craft continue
Training, sustained practice and paid work for practising potters. The family studio documents teaching as well as production.
Inheritance
What we can do
Commission real work. Pay what it is worth. Tell the story. Make space, financial and cultural, for the next person who might choose clay over a safer life.
Action
He is a man with a singular skill, largely unnoticed by the time and the people he belongs to. The least we can do is notice.Himalayan Locals