After completing the Ceramics Certificate course at Brookvale Technical College, Jan Buttenshaw joined five other graduates to set up the Clay Things Potters Gallery in Dee Why in 1983. The other members of the cooperative were Jan Green, Robyn Nolan, Robyn Stayte, Barbara Webster, and Gloria Wildash. In the same year, with Nolan, she established the 'South Creek Pottery', in a factory in a small industrial complex. They worked together there for ten years, exhibiting through the cooperative, which had moved its retail outlet to larger premises in Balgowlah in 1987. In 1994, she moved her practice to the country. In 2003, with Jan Green, Robyn Nolan and Barbara Webster, she celebrated their 20th anniversary as potters with an exhibition at Mura clay Gallery, Newtown called 'Four Friends Twenty Years'. Buttenshaw's work is marked with an impressed 'JB'.