It was one of those “tick off the bucket list” moments.
My husband, my mother in law and I enjoy watching the UK reality TV programme “ The Great Pottery Throwdown”. This show features a group of around 10 potters who battle it out each week, producing various clay products, one potter is dismissed at the end of each week, and eventually the grand winner is proclaimed. Each week so many beautiful pieces are lovingly crafted, each week the head judge has tears in his eyes as he exclaims how exquisite and beautiful the items are and occasionally there’s an odd dud and mishap too. Each week, my husband and mother in law and I exclaim how wonderful to be able to craft such beautiful pottery.
So, on the first day of May this year….which happened to be a very warm 25°C … my husband, my mother in law and I turned up at The Essex Pottery Studio, near Halstead in Essex. Being complete clay novices, we booked a 2 hour lesson on the potters wheel. The Essex Pottery Studio offers lessons to complete novices, and the price includes materials and the firing of the finished products.
Facing the wall in the studios were three potters wheels, ready and waiting. Our lovely teacher showed us first what to do with a demonstration on how to operate the pedal, how to wet the wheel base, how to throw a lump of clay onto the wheel, how to stick the clay onto the base by lovingly caressing it, how to put our fingers into the clay to make an opening whilst spinning the wheel, how to then pinch the edges to gently grow the pot, how to smooth the sides with a sponge not dissimilar to a make up sponge, how to gradually stop the wheel, and finally how to use wire to scrap the finished pot off the wheel and onto the board ready for firing. Easy peasy. She made it look easy.
We were ready to attempt two bowls ourselves. We had to take off our watches and rings, put on aprons and settle ourselves down onto the little stools perched next to the wheels. We were ready to make our masterpieces.
And that’s when the fun and games began. In order to get the clay to stick and to mould the wheel and the clay need to be constantly wet and the wheel needs to be spinning fast. Also you need to squat quite low on your stool with your elbows on your knees. It was extremely difficult to (a) remember not to have your elbows in the air – the pot flops (b) and to keep the speed up as the wet clay tended to fly off the wheel. Unfortunately to slow down the wheel you needed to press the pedal with your heel; pressing with your toes sped the wheel up…and taking your foot off the pedal did nothing at all. After rescuing the clay after sliding off the wheel a couple of times, we soon managed to start making pots.
We were ready to make our pot openings. Putting our middle finger and index finger together we pushed through the top of our little clay moulds and then very slowly we pinched the sides so they grew upwards. And voilà, our bowls were born. Unfortunately, my mother in law has arthritic fingers, so her pot opening wasn’t round as she had hoped and ended up making a plate instead!
Time for round 2. This time I made a flower pot 😊 No, it wasn’t my intention – my fingers just happened to protrude too far into my clay that I made a hole. Nevertheless I carried on. I must say that our second attempts were a lot better than our first. My husband created the best pots out of the three of us and seemed to have less mishaps than us girls!
I was so glad we wore aprons as by the end of the session we were covered in clay! We picked all the pots for firing…. and we haven’t yet picked them up for painting 😳 It was such a wonderful, fun afternoon and a great experience too. It was much harder than it looks to do so we have even more respect for those TV potters whose pots unfortunately turn wonky or don’t actually look like they were supposed to look, because we now know it is difficult to keep control of the wheel.
If you are looking for a fun activity to do then I would definitely recommend having lessons on a potters wheel!
Apart from the pottery lessons, The Essex Pottery Studio is a great place to pop in to visit – it is a ceramics & art studio so there are plenty of exquisite pottery and artwork for sale. There is a small tea room but unfortunately it wasn’t open when we visited. The studios have other activities such as PaintYour Own Pottery, Clay Hand Building and Glass Fusing workshops. They also host private parties, both adults and children, for birthdays, hen parties, business bonding etc. The Pottery Wheel lessons are for available for absolute beginners – 1 or 2 hours and price includes clay and firing. The potters wheel is also available to be used outside of lessons but the only stipulation is that the clay used is purchased from them. The Essex Pottery Studio is open 7 days a week, 10.00 – 16.00. For more details : https://essexpotterystudio.co.uk
This isn’t a sponsored post. We bought the lessons actually as a birthday gift for my mother in law and husband and I decided to tag along! We enjoyed ourselves so much, I thought it was worth giving The Essex Pottery Studio a shout out on the blog.
Why don’t you give it a go?
Linda x
Photos: Linda Hobden
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