Progress on the skills you’ve learnt in wheel skills 1, and advance towards feeling confident to throw on your own at an open wheels session.
In this session we’ll learn how to centre a medium ball of clay and practice throwing cylinders. Centring is a key skill if you’d like to continue to progress your ceramic journey, as without a centred piece of clay it’s almost impossible to throw a pot on the wheel!
We’ll also advance into learning to pull handles, which is not only a key ceramic skill but also quite an amusing thing to do!
This skills session is priced at £20pp which covers 2hrs of tuition. As this session is focussing on technique rather than a finished piece any pots you make will be recycled at the end of the session. If you wish to have any pieces fired, this will be charged at £5 per piece which covers the cost of returning to paint them a few weeks later.
Limited spaces available - booking + advanced payment essential.
How it works:
We’ll begin the session with a group demonstration, during which our potter will talk you through all the tips and tricks you’ll need to start mastering basics of centring a ball of clay.
During the session we’ll make sure you get at least two goes on the potters wheel. There are 8 spaces available for this class and 4 potters wheels, so expect to spend some time off the wheel, observing others and talking techniques. You’ll be glad of this on the day we promise as centring is quite a physical task!
When you’re off the wheel we’ll show you how to pull handles. This new skill combined with the cylinder throwing practice will set on on the right path for being able to make cups, jugs and other medium vessels.
At the end of the session you can decide if you’d like to practice the zen art of squishing your pots, or choose keep any of the pieces you’ve made. Any pots you choose to keep will priced at £5 per piece which includes all firings and returning to paint them.
Any pots you decide to keep need to be slowly dried and then fired up to 1000+°c which will take about 3 weeks, after this you’ll then have 1 month to return to paint your pieces. When you return to paint our studio assistants will talk you through all the pottery painting possibilities and set you away painting. It will probably take 1-2 hours to paint your plant pots, depending on how much detail you decide to add.
Once your pots have been painted you’ll leave them with us for another firing this time to a glaze firing up to 998°c, which will make them super shiny and waterproof ready for using! Your finished pots will be ready to collect 7 days after you paint them.