Why Pottery Classes Are More Than Just a Hobby

I’ll be honest—I didn’t expect to enjoy it. A mate roped me into one of those pottery wheel classes, and I thought it’d be a laugh at best, a waste of a Saturday at worst. Walked into this studio on a drizzly morning, the windows fogged up from the kilns in the back, the smell of clay mixing with coffee. The instructor had clay under her fingernails that looked permanent, like it had been there for years. Everyone else seemed to have a clue. I sat down at the wheel, dropped a heavy lump of clay on the centre, and watched it spin completely off balance. Within minutes, it flopped into something that looked more like a cow pat than a bowl.