When Arran Street East invited me along to try out their pottery throwing workshop, I was an immediate yes. I consider myself quite hands on and crafty, and it's rare you get the opportunity to try out an actual pottery wheel. In fact, Arran Street East is one of the few places you can do a pottery workshop where every participant gets their own wheel.
I didn't imagine I would have any talent for it - if primary school art classes taught me anything, it's that I am doomed to only be able to fashion misshapen objects from clay while my classmates made relatively normal looking bowls and pots. But it seemed like a relaxing, potentially meditative way to spend a Saturday.
The workshops take place in the beautiful Arran Street East studio in the Dublin markets, where the team behind the ceramics brand throw, fire and glaze all their pottery. As you walk through the studio, up to the workshop space on the third floor, you get glimpses into the full process. Pots, cups, vases, bowls and everything in between are kept on shelves in various stages of production - whether drying after being thrown, waiting to be glazed after being fired, or waiting for their finishing touches after glazing. The kilns were on, and you could feel the heat coming off them as you walked by. Later, I saw someone loading up the kiln with pieces for their first firing.
The workshop room has about ten wheels and its own mini-kiln, and the results of previous classes' work on shelves all around. It's heartening to see both almost professional-looking pots on shelves, mixed in with more misshapen pieces that say there's no judgement on your skill level here, but there's hope you may be one of the ones who come out with near perfect pots.
We meet Gayle, a resident potter at Arran Street East who once upon a time made pieces for retail, but has since fully taken over the workshops. She says she enjoys that every class is different, and every pot made in it is different, which is a positive for our group of seven who have never tried throwing before. It's an all-ages group, and everyone is trying the workshop for largely the same reasons as me - it seemed like an interesting, and relaxing way to spend a Saturday, and something a bit different from the norm.
The first clue that the day won't be relaxing at all comes when Gayle sits down at her wheel to demonstrate the first steps for us. She makes a uniform, perfect-looking pot on the first go, and she makes it look very easy, but goes on to explain we'll be starting by learning to centre our clay. It's an important step to put you in charge of the clay and stop it wobbling away from you, but something professional potters spend a long time mastering. We're only in Arran Street East from 10am-5pm, so she admits we may need to settle for 'as centred as possible'. And it's a lot of work.
Don't get me wrong, it's super fun. We get going on the wheels within a few minutes of entering the workshop, and physically holding and molding the clay is a very different experience to watching someone do it. Nothing you think you understand about the instructions makes sense until you've got the wheel going and are feeling the wobble you couldn't see in the clay. But it's definitely not relaxing - you have to put your whole bodyweight into it, and I'm pretty sure I'm using arm muscles I have never found a use for before in my life. Still, it's very satisfying when you see the clay come up into the conical shape Gayle effortlessly made, before bringing it back down to flat to help with the centring. We work on this until the first tea break, with some venturing onwards towards creating an actual shape with their clay once they felt it was centred. Gayle comes around to each of us individually to help us with our technique, and our own specific problems and encourages experimentation with shape to get a feel for the wheel and the clay.
Arran Street East have recently opened a cafe in the ground floor of their studio, and there's a buzz in it every time we go down to it. Una, who runs the cafe and plenty of other parts of Arran Street East, prepares tea and coffee for us, as we traipse in in our already clay-covered aprons. We've two coffee breaks within the shop as part of the day, and it's a lovely space to hang out in, with plenty of good people watching out the windows. But we take it as a good sign when we're only delighted to be told it's time to go back up and move onto making a pot.
Gayle has brought in examples of what the clay should look like at every stage of the throwing, and then gets back on her wheel to show up the techniques to achieve each step. She does this a couple of times and then it's our turns. I'm very grateful that the clay is recyclable as several times in a row, the entire top comes away and spins off the wheel into its surrounding basin, and I scrape it down to start again with new clay. The old clay all goes into a bucket, and later will be left to dry out so it can be used again. Gayle comes over to help me and I explain my issue with the runaway clay, and she gets to work moving my hands and arms into the correct positions, and making sure I'm applying the correct pressure. I finally make something that vaguely resembles a cylinder, though every attempt I make alone after turns into a bowl shape. I may not have intended to make a bowl, but I'll take it!
By the end of the day, I feel much more confident in what I'm doing. I'm still having runaway disasters, but I can understand why it's happening - usually to do with not applying the necessary pressure or an unanchored arm. And when my clay stays on the wheel, I can definitely see the resulting pieces looking better each time. There's no limit to the amount of pieces you can start - Gayle kept bringing in extra clay when necessary and there's no shame in throwing away a disaster piece because it'll be recycled. When it's time to go home, we clean up our stations and choose two of our masterpieces to keep. Arran Street East will fire and glaze them, and we can collect them once they're ready.
In no particular order, most of my 'successful' attempts at creating a pot!My pieces are far from professional-looking or perfect, but they're a definite improvement on the misshapen clay pieces I made in school. In fact, with a bit more practice, I feel like I could at least crack consistently making the same shape - whether it be a bowl, or a cylinder - which is a big jump from where I started that morning. While some took to the wheel more quickly than others, everyone finished the day with at least two decent looking pieces (of varying shapes and sizes!) to pick up later, and the day flew by.
Arran Street East glazed two of my pieces, which I collected later. Not perfect, but not bad!Most of us expected it to be a meditative, relaxed day and what we got was much more of a workout, without much time for mindful thoughts as throwing takes a whole heap of concentration, but it was chilled in a different way - something about developing the muscle memory necessary to take control of the clay and learning the rhythm of the whole thing, and focussing on only that keeps you enthralled. It's a nice break away from the real world, and from phones and screens and all the rest, and a rare opportunity to get super hands on with something.
I did the full day Saturday throwing workshop for beginners, which costs €120, but there are shorter refresher courses for people who've worked with clay before (€50), all the way up to a week-long workshop to get you throwing (more) like a pro (€275). Our creations were fired and glazed after the workshop, but they also offer a glazing workshop (€60) if you want to learn the complete process from start to finish. You can find out more information about their pottery workshops here.
