Pottery: the prologue

I’ve started doing beginner wheel throwing classes.

My previous experience with pottery includes:

• Bingewatching The Great Pottery Throw Down

• Making two greenware bowls at a free trial class at Ceramiques Elsternwick.

The teacher at Ceramiques did a decent job of teaching us all how to throw a bowl in a one hour time frame. I came up with something that looked remarkably like a bowl, and somewhat elegant too.

Here is the very first bowl I ever made:

The bowl is nestled in the plastic box I used to take it home.

It is squat, extremely uncentred, but it does bear some resemblance to a bowl.

Here is bowl number two, made in the last couple of minutes of the free class.

This photo was taken on a bench at Elsternwick Station.

I am rather proud of this bowl, and the way the lip of the bowl sweeps out smoothly like a trumpet bell. After a week’s worth of drying, I flipped the bowl over and used a paring knife to trim the base and carve my initials into it.

I looked up prices for finishing the bowl at a pottery store, and the total price for two firings, studio time and glazes was more than AUD$100. A tad exorbitant for a single bowl, I thought.

Since the bowl has not had its first bisque firing, it’s very delicate. I had to leave it behind, but I’ll always have pictures.