We’ve just released a new mug hand-building workshop for those of you looking to try pottery out for the first time or just to enjoy a morning or afternoon creative class with a friend. In the class you’ll learn to hand-build your own pottery mug and then finish it off painting it with coloured slips (a liquid clay). Think patterns from the tessellating pop illustrations of Keith Haring to the psychedelic optical dots of Yayoi Kusama, create your own unique design.
Forget pottery painting Manchester, you’ll create your brew vessel from scratch, from messy mud to neatly constructed mug. Manipulate the clay into a slab, create and attach a handle, then finish it off by painting it. You’ll be welcomed into our friendly class and shown the processes of making pottery by one of our expert tutors. We’ve been running classes for over 25 years, so you know you’re in good hands, with our skills having passed down generations from the top potters in the country.
Your mugs will be fired twice, clear glazed and after 3-6 weeks they’ll be ready to pick up. So if you’re looking for an activity to do with a date, or wanting to get into pottery after seeing it on the Great Pottery Throw down, this hand-build a mug workshop is a really good way to start.
Paint-a-pot or pottery painting is a business that operates as a café where you can paint ready made pots. What you say? You don’t make your own pots and then paint them? That’s right, you paint ready made manufactured pots.
We’re not a pottery painting studio, but we do get a lot of calls about pottery painting. We’re a pottery making studio, where you’ll make the entirety of your pot from a lump of clay, manipulating it by hand and tool to create your own masterpieces. You may at this point paint them with slips, a liquid clay, and/or you’ll then glaze (or paint) your pots when they’re fired too. You can try our hand-build a mug pottery class where you’ll paint them too.
Technically potter’s don’t put paint on their pots? Paint is made from plastics, which are far less durable than ceramics, and what pottery makers actually use to colour and finish their pots is glaze, slip, underglaze and oxides. These are made from natural materials, usually different types of rocks and metals. Sometimes potter’s will use a brush to apply these glazes, slips and oxides, and this may be where the term pottery painting comes from, but brushing is just one method of application. You can pour, dip, and spatter your way along with many other techniques.
The ready made pots in a paint-your-own-pot café have already been biscuit fired, so you can apply your glaze to them with a brush. Nothing to do with biscuits, but pottery goes through the process of 2 firings. The first firing is at a low temperature and is called the biscuit firing. It’s called this because the pottery is weak at this temperature and can break like a biscuit. Once a glaze is applied it goes through a second firing to melt the glaze and make the pottery harder.
Pottery painting is a good way to drop in and keep the kids occupied for a bit. However, it hardly compares to the satisfaction and enjoyment of making pottery from mud, with your bare hands. It’s fun manipulating clay into objects you can use and you can also ‘paint’ the pots that you make too. But what is the ‘paint’ that we use?
Pottery Paint
There isn’t such a think as pottery paint, what potteries use is glaze and slip. So what is glaze and slip?
What is Glaze?
In simple terms glaze is a glassy coating made to fit onto the outer layer of a ceramic pot. It makes it impervious to water, food safe and easy to clean. It is just as durable as ceramic and can enhance the strength of a pot helping them to last thousands of years. It can be applied with a brush, perhaps where the term pottery painting comes from, but it can also be poured, dipped or sprayed on.
What is Slip?
Slip is a liquid clay that can be applied to clay pots before they have been fired. It’s used in a decorative fashion to add colour and patterns. It can also be applied with a brush, but sponging, dipping, pouring and slip ‘trailing’ are also common methods. England has a tradition of slipware pottery, and you can see such beautiful examples made by modern potters such as Fitch & McAndrew.
What is Underglaze?
Underglazes are manufactured and pigmented colours within an independent medium that’s not quite slip nor glaze. Underglazes can come in vivid colours, but can also be quite expensive.
What are Oxides?
Metallic oxides are metals in their raw forms, such as iron oxide, copper carbonate, cobalt carbonate, chrome oxide, and manganese dioxide among others. These are the materials (or chemicals) that colour the world.
Pottery painting or Paint Your Own Pot (PYOP) studios usually use a combination of commercially manufactured glaze or underglazes applied to bisqueware (low fired pottery) to paint pottery.
Can you paint pots with paints?
Paints are various concoctions of plastics and chemicals, whereas pottery and ceramics are long-lasting and durable materials that can last thousands and thousands of years. The oldest things we have in the world are pots made by the hands of our ancestors. These can be carbon dated back 24,000-30,000 years old. You can indeed paint pots with paints, there’s nothing stopping you, but you’re devaluing the material, so make sure not to tell me or any other potters that’s what you’re doing, and be careful not to put them in the dishwasher as it’ll melt the paint.
Pottery Painting vs Pottery Making
Pottery painting is like to pottery making what a colouring-in book is to illustration, a trailer is to a movie, or what a ready meal is to a chef. IT’s a way in and a good start to creativity. If you’ve had a go at pottery painting in Manchester, then try a pottery course, to get your hands stuck into clay and create your own masterpieces from scratch. The classes are popular and as such you won’t be able to drop in, you’ll need to book a pottery class in advance. Try our make and paint your own pottery mug workshop or one of our other taster pottery classes in Manchester where you can also learn to throw on the wheel, all of which are perfect for someone looking to have a go for the first time.
There are numerous benefits of trying a pottery workshop in Manchester from meeting people, to learning a relaxing activity that helps relieve daily stress. There’s a good reason why celebrities, from Seth Rogan to Brad Pitt, are turning towards the craft and giving it a go. Here’s why we’d encourage everyone to try pottery out:
Making Pottery is Good for your Brain
As someone who has trained in Neuropsychology, and changed career to be a potter, I conducted research on how to train your brain. There were a number of things important in the research literature for longevity of healthy brain function in old age. These things can help build up your cognitive reserve, a kind of brain function strength that staves off the effects of dementias. What are they?: Exercise, socialising and novel activities.
These are the most stimulating things we can do for our brain. Well guess what? You’re engaging in all those things when taking a pottery workshop. It requires the development of fine motor skills and takes physical effort to roll, knead and centre clay, it’s very social when learning in a class, and it engages your brain heavily when you learn a new skill. It also helps to relax you and relieve stress which is great for your brain, and promoting good immune system function too. So taking a pottery course in Manchester is a great way to bolster your brain.
Taking a Pottery Workshop in Manchester can help you Relax
It’s well known that learning pottery requires a lot of concentration. It’s that concentration that takes your mind away from your thoughts, ruminations, and daily stresses to focus on a fun and creative activity, that soothes and calms the mind. This meditative like activity can help bring you into the moment and quieten negative thought and anxieties. It’s no wonder then that the NHS has pottery studios used for therapy in their mental health services.
Meet New People in Manchester in a Friendly Workshop
A pottery workshop is a great way to meet new people in Manchester. As activities go, it really is easy to join one by yourself and make buddies with the other people there. People attending workshops also come from all walks of life, with a really diverse range of people helping to expand your access to different networks and ways of thinking. As there’s pottery making to be done there’s also no obligation to socialise, which is what makes it so great. You can sit down and focus on your pots if that’s what you want to do. However it is really common for classes to become socially supportive groups, that promote a sense of belonging and camaraderie. Lastly you’ll have a hobby to talk about to your current friends and family, gifts to give them, and ceramic art around your home giving you even more social capital. So if you wouldn’t mind making new friends in Manchester, then a pottery workshop would be a great activity to try.
Learning Pottery Enhances your Creativity
Through slabbing your clay into a ceramic art sculpture or trying a new mug handle shape, making pottery really enhances your creativity, even for people who don’t feel ‘arty’. There are so many aspects to pottery making that can be creative: You can make utilitarian pieces, varying their style, shape and design, and learning along the way what works, what doesn’t and what sort of aesthetic you want to create. You can focus on form, but you can also focus more artistically developing patterns or painting styles you apply to your pots to make them your own. You can also learn by accident, with the unpredictable nature of firings sometimes you can discover happy accidents, that teach you a new technique or effect. In making pottery you’re spending time practicing and developing your creative thinking and skills.
Pottery is FUN
Yep, well it isn’t surprising that doing things that are good for your brain health, relieve stress, and providing a community for you to make new friends, would be fun. It’s like when children make a mud pie, but for adults. So whether you’re looing for a long pottery course, or just for a pottery date night in Manchester to impress someone special, this is a place you can play, no judgement. You’re likely to have a good time, all while making food vessels for your home to hold everything from tea to noodles.
Sam Andrew
Sam Andrew is a ceramicist creating Nerikomi tableware and ceramic art pieces focusing on material reuse, pattern and perception. With a background in Clinical Neuropsychology Sam learned ceramics since a young age and changed career a decade ago to design and make ceramics.
