Trying my hand at ceramics with Hands On Pottery

~ shirleyrainbow

I’m really pleased to share a project with you today that has been rather a long time in the making! Last year a friend and I signed up to do a hand throwing pottery course at a local ceramics studio, Hands On Pottery. Having avidly watched the Great British Pottery Throwdown for the last few years I was really intrigued as to whether my A’level Ceramics skills would re-emerge on entering a ceramics class!

A pottery studio with wheels ready to use, and shelves of pots made by more experienced potters!
The pottery studio awaits!
(Hands On Pottery have now moved to a different studio, this is the old room)

Well, hand throwing is quite a lot harder than I remembered it being! My ambitions of making a large fruit bowl were quickly dismissed, as I discovered my wonky fingers were not helping me make a straight pot, or in fact anything at all. Our teacher Elaine was fantastic and managed to get me to make three small wonky pots, of which I’m very proud.

Two hand thrown pots just made, wet and resting on a plank over the pottery wheel. The rest of the room shows more pottery wheels.
Fresh off the wheel before tidying them up
6 ‘leather hard’ pots ready to be finished and fired
Leather hard pots, mine are the wider ones, my friend Clare made the taller slimmer pots.

Then the November lockdown started, followed by a very busy December for me, and then the January lockdown, so it meant that it was only in April of this year we managed to get back into the studio to add glazes to our fired pots. I had spent quite a bit of time looking at ideas on Pinterest of how I might be able to glaze them…and finally this week I went to collect our pots… and here are mine, in all their wonky glory. I’m so pleased!

White pot with glazed yellow, orange and green shapes, with a spiky green plant inside
Possibly my favourite…
Three pots decorated with orange, yellow and green stacked together with similar coloured embroidery in the background
Hand holding a pot decorated inside with orange and green glaze
Also possible my favourite

I have taken a ridiculous amount of photos of them already, and you can probably expect them to pop up in my product photos quite often now!

Three ceramic pots in shades of white yellow and green, against a yellow green wall with plants in two pots.
Matching with my embroidery work!
Birds eye view showing the inside of the pots on a white background
View from above: I continued some of the decoration inside the pots.

Making the pots wasn’t quite as relaxing as I thought it would be, although by the final class I felt much more confident, and my hands were starting to remember what to do. I thoroughly enjoyed it all though, and there is a great sense of achievement in holding a pot you have made from a lump of clay!

Three pots with plants in on a black mantelpiece against a yellow green wall
I think they will be happy living in my living room.

Teresa x

4 thoughts on “Trying my hand at ceramics with Hands On Pottery”

    1. Thank you! I don’t think I’m a natural hand thrower, I preferred hand building with clay I think. I’m sorry to hear you had a bad experience there, what a shame! 😕 Teresa

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