Great Pottery Throwdown
Series 7, 2024
So the 2024 Great Pottery Throwdown is done and dusted. The 2025 applicants are already being zoomed, sifted and sorted to come up with a shortlist. This was me last year. It all started with being curious as to what questions the application form asked. But in order to read it you had to fill it in. By the end, the process of thinking through my answers made me realise I wanted to apply and test myself further.
I only started pottery a few years ago and mainly once a week at a class at The Kiln Rooms. Interrupted by Covid, I bought a wheel and slowly the obsession grew. I saw Throwdown as an opportunity to be jolted out of my comfort zone and pushed to learn new things. It achieved that for me, massively.
What it also did was teach me to think about how my daily life could inspire my pots. It could be the simple detail of the different colour mosses growing on my garden wall. It could be a reminder of the raucous games that have rounded off so many Sunday lunches with friends. Or it could be the retelling of the Moby Dick epic tale in the canals of Leeds. It is so easy to go through life, maybe recording it on your phone, but essentially letting it pass as we move swiftly on. Throwdown has helped me hang on to life experiences, re use them and inspire new pots.
If you'd like to keep up to date with the work of my fellow contestants, please check out their instagrams: