Traditional vs. studio potters

I've been in India the last few weeks. Generally when I travel, I like to visit potters. Couldn't figure out how to do that there. There are still traditional potters, making standardized ware for practical use. I say a few vendors by the roadside, mostly selling large round unglazed pots, maybe water containers. And I've heard of pottery neighborhoods in city slums, where people  have moved together from pottery-making villages and resumed their pottery businesses.

I thought there were few studio potters, art potters. I'm not sure. I did not find any. On the other hand, several years ago in San Diego, I heard a studio potter from India talk about her work, and her uneasy relationship with the traditional potters. She wanted to encourage them to keep the work and tradition going, as a national treasure. At the same time, she knew it was a low-valued  village craft, and low paid. How could she succeed as an artist and encourage people not to switch to some better paid work to support their families and be respected?

And in a Mumbai newspaper, I saw an article about an award winning studio potter.

There is both, evidently. In many other countries with continuing pottery traditions, the potters expand their markets to hotels and restaurants and tourists, and some traditional makers are appreciated as artists. Perhaps that is beginning in India. I get the impression though that the poor are very poor and cut off from opportunity, and that village knowledge is not much respected in cities. Not modern, not sophisticated, low tech. What baggage we carry!