Pottery

Just for fun, Anna and I decided to start pottery lessons, so with money towards them for Christmas we were soon booked onto a course at the Arts Centre and went to our first lesson yesterday.

We’ve never done anything like this before and wouldn’t really expect to be any good at it so it was always going to be a fun activity that would probably lead to amusing results rather than anything impressive. We didn’t really know what to expect.

Pottery – Lesson One

The group was relatively small, I think there were 7 of us and a couple of other people in the room that weren’t necessarily part of the group. We were a little relieved when everyone there said they had no experience either. The instructor soon introduced us to a big block of clay each and it wasn’t long before we were getting our hands dirty. The main idea of lesson one was just to get a feel for the clay and see what could be done with it. There was no real plan or aim, we were just given a lump of clay and told to start playing with it.

After shaping it with our hands we cut bits out of it and re-shaped it, added coils to it, squished it, joined it and basically saw where it took us. We set to it with bits of wood, bits of wire and paddles that looked like mini cricket bats. Anna’s didn’t look great to start with then all of a sudden she squashed it up completely and it actually looked pretty good. Pleased with that she moved onto having a second go. This time it looked really good for a while then suddenly it went downhill a little bit.

I struggled with not having a plan and had no idea where mine was going. After a while I decided to stick a little lump on one end of it and turned it into a spout and then added a handle so that it looked like a jug – well, a very lop-sided, asymmetric jug anyway!

Everyone else got on OK as well. Typically there was one person whose item looked really good and all of the girls on the other side of the table seemed to be getting on pretty well. Anna’s looked good too. I think the three male participants lagged behind a little with the creativity!

I’m likely to be missing a week soon so will probably lag behind either further – that’ll be my excuse anyway. I also imagine there will be all sorts of carnage once they let us loose with a potters wheel!! We’ll keep you updated with progress.

Tags: Pottery