Moving to a larger room – my new pottery studio.

I’ve been on the move again this week! Over Easter I have sorted out our house and got rid of the kids unused toy room, moved all the things around and…I now have a POTTERY STUDIO! Not a real one by any stretch of the imagination, but with a few more shelves it won’t be far off!

What do you need in a pottery studio?

Well, I’m still learning this myself, but what I have found is that I needed a bit more space for clay, tools and so on- so I have added my kids old ikea Mammut table to the back of the Shimpo wheel…it fits pretty much perfectly! This now means I can keep all the clay I need, all my tools and my water bowl there much more easily.

I’ve adopted all the old toy room shelving – so I now have tons of room for drying out pots I’ve made and keeping myself organised. I do want to add more shelves, but for the volumes I’m (not) making at the moment what I have works perfectly.

One of the most important things I have in the studio is my mop and bucket. No clay dust for these lungs thanks! I make sure I do a thorough clean up every time I do pottery. It can be a bit of a pain, but I clean every surface and wipe the floor over too, I like to have it clean when I leave.

Pottery table

You know you’re officially old when you get excited over a table! I have been keeping my eye out for ages for a very cheap or FOC wooden table – and one came up locally on Facebook Marketplace! Managed to just about fit this into the boot of my car and have sanded and stripped this down so I can use it to wedge clay. It’s much sturdier than the previous table I was using (a trestle table!) – so it’s been great. Very happy to finally have a table.

Is your kiln in your studio?

No. I don’t have the kiln in the house currently. We have a lean-to, so I have put the kiln under there and bought a cover for it. That way I’m not constantly worrying about it and it can’t melt the flooring I have down (vinyl flooring!). It’s not ideal – it should really be completely covered and kept at a certain temperature – but it’s the best I can do for now. I have an older version of the Hobby 40L by Cromartie. The dream is to one day have a Skutt KM818 kiln, but I think that may be a little way off yet.

What’s next

I am fast realising that the real key to improvement is practise, practise, practise! I have watched countless hours of YouTube now, knowing the technique is one thing, actually doing it is another! So…whats next is probably lots more wonky pots – then hopefully some less wonky ones!