For the past few years now, I have been wanting to learn a specific skill: how to make pottery. I kept delaying it to focus on other things and then eventually, I decided to add it to my goals list. Putting it down on paper made it more concrete to me.
The only thing about learning new skills such as pottery, which requires someone teaching and the appropriate equipment, I really was not sure where to start or where to go that would suit me. Then I heard about Arran Street East and their beautifully designed homewares. While admiring the various products on the website, I noticed there are workshops you can attend at the studio. I dutifully added it to my list as a place that would be perfect to learn pottery and started saving up for it.
And then, I just let a lot of time go by until a few months ago, a friend mentioned she was going to attend a three-day workshop at the Arran Street East studio. It was most certainly the motivation I needed so I went online and signed up too.
The only thing about learning new skills such as pottery, which requires someone teaching and the appropriate equipment, I really was not sure where to start or where to go that would suit me. Then I heard about Arran Street East and their beautifully designed homewares. While admiring the various products on the website, I noticed there are workshops you can attend at the studio. I dutifully added it to my list as a place that would be perfect to learn pottery and started saving up for it.
And then, I just let a lot of time go by until a few months ago, a friend mentioned she was going to attend a three-day workshop at the Arran Street East studio. It was most certainly the motivation I needed so I went online and signed up too.
Over the first two days of the workshop last October, Gayle taught us the fundamentals of throwing on a potter’s wheel. She told us about the clay and various tools we were going to use. Then she demonstrated how to shape the clay into a mug. After this lesson, it was our turn to sit at individual potter’s wheels and make something. Yes, I say 'something' because there is no way anything we made as a first try looked even remotely like a mug.
There was a lot of concentration, mistakes that meant restarting from scratch, giggles here and there when creations looked rather strange and lopsided, and finally, after many trials and errors, the satisfaction of throwing clay and shaping it into something decent (see the photos above and below).
On the last day, Andrew and Marta taught us how to turn pottery and helped us with the finishes on our variety of objects (for example, we learned how to add a handle to a mug - yes, I made a mug!). We picked the pigments that would colour our creations and left them behind to be glazed and fired.
I picked up what I had made when it was ready not long before Christmas and even managed to gift a few of the things to family members (my mother got the mug, which had reduced into a double espresso cup because I had not accounted for it to reduce when fired, oops!).
I am quite happy with the things I made and I love their little imperfections. Every time I look at them or hold them in my hands, I am reminded that it was worth going ahead with wanting to learn a new skill and finally making it happen.
There was a lot of concentration, mistakes that meant restarting from scratch, giggles here and there when creations looked rather strange and lopsided, and finally, after many trials and errors, the satisfaction of throwing clay and shaping it into something decent (see the photos above and below).
On the last day, Andrew and Marta taught us how to turn pottery and helped us with the finishes on our variety of objects (for example, we learned how to add a handle to a mug - yes, I made a mug!). We picked the pigments that would colour our creations and left them behind to be glazed and fired.
I picked up what I had made when it was ready not long before Christmas and even managed to gift a few of the things to family members (my mother got the mug, which had reduced into a double espresso cup because I had not accounted for it to reduce when fired, oops!).
I am quite happy with the things I made and I love their little imperfections. Every time I look at them or hold them in my hands, I am reminded that it was worth going ahead with wanting to learn a new skill and finally making it happen.
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What is the skill you wish to learn?
Is it on your goals list or do you leave it in a corner of your mind until it is down on paper?
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What is the skill you wish to learn?
Is it on your goals list or do you leave it in a corner of your mind until it is down on paper?
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