Hand-building Pottery Class: Slab Pot

During the first part of the workshop, we’ll demonstrate how to wedge and roll clay before learning how to make your pot from slabs.

During the slab-making process, it’s your chance to get creative and personalise your pot! We have a range of stamps (lots of botanicals, flowers, bees, and cacti to name a few. We have letters, words and sayings too). Additionally, there's items to create texture and patterns into the clay and our cutters can either create indents or cut-outs in the design – great if you want to transform your pot into a tea light lantern, or you may want to attach cut-outs onto the pot.

Once you’re happy with your design you can choose if you want to infill the indents created by the stamps with colour or you can choose for us to clear glaze it or you have the option to come back to paint it at a later date when the piece has dried. The last option will incur an additional fee of £4.50.

Next, you’ll learn the score and slip technique to join the walls of the pot to the base and to finish off your pot you can make a label if you wish to fit over the joining line which you can further customise with Handmade by or other wording or decoration of your choice.

Once finished you will leave your pot with us to dry out naturally before we can either glaze and fire it before it is ready pick up. Please allow 2-3 weeks.

Or if you've chosen to come back and paint it, book a pottery painting session at a time to suit you - you need to allow at least a week for it to dry enough. Once painted we need to glaze and fire it and it will be ready around 10 days later.

Advisory:

Due to the nature of clay and because this is a hand-building class there are problems that can arise during the making, drying and firing process of pottery that affect your piece and depending on what it is, they can't always be rectified. However, the pitfalls will be explained to you during the workshop and you will be taught how to prevent them from happening so if you follow the instruction the risk is low. If booking others onto the workshop please make them aware of this before you book.