6-week Adult Beginner Throwing Course – Monday evenings from 7 to 9pm

Description

This is an introductory course to deliver the basics of wheel work and to get you started on your throwing career! Throughout the six weeks you will be working towards being able to center clay on the wheel, then learning to throw bowls (fit to use afterwards!) while also ‘turning’ pots on the wheel (carving and shaping the bases when they are semi-dry). Later on, you will be throwing mugs and attaching handles. We’ll also cover techniques in slip application to decorate your work. The finished, turned and decorated pots will be bisque-fired, coated in transparent glaze and then glaze-fired before being ready for collection.

Throughout the course you will get an understanding of how to center clay as well as the basics of throwing pots on the wheel.
In the first session you will get a feel for how the wheel works and how the clay responds to your hands. You will start to center clay on the wheel and make a basic pot shape, whatever that might be! In the subsequent throwing classes you will be guided through the process of making bowls before finally making mugs.

You’ll get started with the skill of ‘turning’ (or ‘trimming’: carving and shaping the bases of pots when they are ‘leather-hard’), an equally important skill and aspect of wheel-work. The decoration process in our studio is carried out using slips (liquid, coloured clay) and this is also applied at the leather-hard stage on the second day. You will chose your favorite pots to work on for this class.

The pots that are finished during the course will be dried, bisque-fired and then glazed by us in a clear glaze before they are glaze-fired, all of which is included in the price of the course. This process can take up to six weeks to complete after the course finishes. The pots are then ready to collect and to use!

This course is fully focused on techniques of the potter’s wheel, no hand-work.

There are a maximum of 7 students per class ensuring that everyone gets a nice bit of attention while learning how to throw pots!

There is quite a bit of hand-eye coordination and concentration required to learn to throw pots on the wheel. For this reason, these are for people aged 16 and over.

Monday evenings from 7 to 9pm.

Lessons run for 2 hours per week for 6 weeks. Doors will be opened 5 minutes before the class starts in order to allow for class preparation.

The cost includes all materials, firings, etc. for work made during the class times. Please note that not everything that you make will get finished; the focus is on learning the skills of wheelwork. You will get pots finished, but on the turning/decorating week you will choose your favorite pots to work on. These are the pots that will be fired and glazed and returned to you.

Make sure that you can attend the course dates before booking. These classes are unlike other types of courses where people can swap and change between times; everyone needs their own wheels to work on and 7 is the maximum number per class to ensure that everyone gets adequate attention. Due to this limited number of 7 students per course, we are unable to change, swap or reschedule courses after you have booked. There is no refund for students who are unable to attend a course for any reason. If you have booked on to the course but are no longer able to attend, you can nominate someone else to attend in your place. We can work around it if you need to miss a class while the course is running: if you miss a week of throwing pots, then the following week you can work on, and keep, pots that we will have ready for you for this process. If you miss a turning/decorating week, then the following week you will be back to throwing pots again along with everyone else.

If you have not received a confirmation email after booking a space on a course, please check your spam mail. We have gone to the upmost effort to ensure that confirmation emails go directly to your email inbox but some are still ending up in spam folders.

Due to the costs involved with putting on this course, if less than three people book on it may need to be postponed. In the unlikely event of this happening you will be offered another place on another course. If this does not suit you, you will be offered a full refund.

More information can be found on the FAQ’s page.