Wheel throwing
Centre it. Open it. Pull it up.
Your teacher takes four students at a wheel bank, and the clay fights you for the first hour. By week three you pull a cylinder. By week six, a bowl you would put soup in.
Pottery studio and school / Leith, Edinburgh
Make something
that holds.
Eight wheels, one big kiln and a north-light studio by the Water of Leith. Come to a taster night, take a six-week course, or rent a shelf and get properly good.
Scroll and the clay moves
01 / Choose your class
Choose your class
Hand building
Coils, slabs and thumbs.
No wheel needed. Roll coils into a jar, cut slabs into a box with square corners, and learn why clay remembers every finger. Slower, quieter and oddly calming.
Glazing
Dip, pour, brush.
Raw glaze is chalky and dull, so you will not know what you made until the kiln opens. We mix ours in the studio: celadon, cobalt, honey and a rust that goes liquid at 1240.
On the wheel a lump of clay
01 / 03
02 / Fire it
Fire it
Step one
Into the kiln.
Pots dry for a week, then go in for a bisque firing: ten slow hours up to 960 degrees. Out they come pale, hard and ringing like a cup when you tap them. Then we dip them.
Step two
Up to 1240.
The glaze firing runs eleven hours. Powder turns to glass, cobalt blooms, and your pot shrinks by about a tenth. We watch the peephole so you do not have to.
Step three
Two days later, it is yours.
We let the kiln cool for a full day, open it like a very slow oven, wipe the feet and set each piece on the pickup shelf. Collect any evening, or leave it on the studio shelf a while.
20°C, kiln cold
01 / 03
03 / Throw one yourself
Your turn. Wet hands.
Drag on the clay. Pull up to raise the wall, push sideways to belly it out, drag inward to pinch a waist. Then choose a glaze.
Height 9 cmWidest 11 cm
Drag the clay
Bare clay
04 / The studio in numbers
Small studio.
Big kiln.
- Classes a week
- 0
- mornings, evenings and weekends
- Glaze firing
- 0°C
- eleven hours, up and down
- Students per class
- 0max
- two teachers once we pass six
- Taster night from
- 0
- one pot, glazed and fired
05 / Four ways in
Start small, or start properly.
- from £35
Taster wheel night
Two hours, a bowl of wet clay and a very patient teacher. Wine in the courtyard after.
- from £210
Six-week course
Wheel or hand building, glazing and firing all included. Eight places, always full by the second week.
- from £85 a month
Open studio membership
Your own shelf, wheel time any day of the week and your glazes at cost. Induction in your first month.
- from £4 a piece
Kiln firing service
Made it at home or in a school? Bring it dry and we fire it. Bisque or glaze, back in a week.
06 / Come and get messy
Book a taster night.
Thank you. We will hold you a wheel and write back within a day. Wear clothes you do not mind losing.