Suddenly everyone from film stars to ladies who lunch are enjoying a revival in pottery. Is it a reaction to the digital age, asks Anna Moore
Tonight, The Great Pottery Throw
Down, the show in which home potters compete, as home bakers do in
Bake Off, launches on Channel 4. Contestants include a bodybuilder, a carer and a gymnast, and you can guarantee moments of muck, magic, jeopardy, genius and a few explosions. You can also guarantee that, by the end, thousands of viewers will be searching for local studios to sign up for classes. (After the first series, one of the show’s judges, ceramics designer Keith Brymer Jones, needed new equipment and found for the first time in his career that the price of kilns had skyrocketed and there was a six-month waiting list for a wheel.)
American Vogue has dubbed pottery “the new yoga”, it’s the latest mindfulness trend to seduce Silicon Valley, and even Brad Pitt has his own “sculpture studio”.
In the UK too, we’re falling in love with clay. Studios are springing up – Studio Pottery in Belgravia charges an eye-watering £2,900 per year for membership – classes are full and ceramics fairs report bumper attendances. “Potters tell me people used to come into their studios and say, ‘I’m not paying £20 for a mug!’,” says Brymer. “Now they will buy two – because they realise there’s a skill and a process involved.”
Ceramics suppliers are feeling the boom. Keith Shelton, from Stokebased suppliers Pottery Craft, says the surge started about five years ago. “I joined in 1980 when every school had kilns,” he says, “but then funding was redirected to computers, schools stopped offering pottery, university courses closed down, business fell and its been static ever since. Now we’re busy again. I don’t know if it’s the Throw
Down effect or a reaction against technology and an interest in sustainable living – but everyone is noticing the revival.”Tallie Maughan, founder of Turning Earth, has been at the very forefront. She opened her first open-access ceramics studio in Hoxton, east London in 2013, followed quickly by another in Leyton and is about to open two more. They run on a gym-style membership – you pay monthly to use the facilities and support on offer – and there’s currently a nine-month waiting list (the clamour for Turning Earth places has been likened to the rush for Glastonbury tickets).
For Maughan, the inspiration came when she was living in the US and her partner at the time was studying at Stanford University. “Stanford had an open-access studio, not for arts students or people who wanted to become potters, but just a place where anyone could practise for the sake of it,” she says, “to learn a skill, to use your hands as a part of being human. The standard of work was amazing and to cut a long story short, I thought it was the best thing in the world and everyone should have the opportunity.”
Before Maughan had even returned to the UK, she tested the idea of an open-access studio in London on her Facebook page and quickly found 70 people keen to join. The thriving Turning Earth community has since produced many professional potters, as well as hundreds of amateurs with thriving side hustles. Other alumni have left to open similar studios as far as Amsterdam and Hong Kong. Maughan believes the pull of clay is in our DNA. “Human beings have worked with the earth to make something we can use for their entire evolutionary history,” she says. “It’s only recently that we’ve stopped doing that but it’s programmed into our bodies. “The first time I tried pottery as an adult, it felt like a mystical experience. Trusting your body, listening to your hands, being receptive to the clay and learning what it’s capable of – it takes you to a mindful place.”
Sue Pryke, the ceramic designer who has joined this series of Throw Down as a judge, agrees pottery is a refuge from our insanely busy, hugely distracted, hyper-connected existence. “You can’t do it half-heartedly, you can’t scroll on your phone – clay and computers don’t mix, and anyway, if you lose concentration, it’s finished, you have to start again,” she says.
“If I’m not touching clay for two or three days, I feel a bit funny,” adds Brymer. “I have to get on the wheel as that’s when I calm down and my mind really does its thinking. For so many people, it installs confidence, passion, focus and discipline.”
This is the third series of Throw
Down – and it has moved to Channel 4 after it was axed by the BBC to “make room for new shows”. (A petition signed by more than 30,000 fans helped revive it.) Contestants make – among other things – Greek statues, chess sets and lavatories. “Some of them only took up pottery after watching the last series and their level of skill is already amazing,” says Pryke. Her hope is that this is just the beginning of pottery’s rebirth. “Schools don’t teach it and there are very few ceramics courses left in universities but perhaps that will change,” she says. “There’s a growing realisation that the basic skill of making something with your bare hands is essential. It’s empowering, it’s joyous – and it’s what humanity is based on.”
‘You can’t do it halfheartedly, you can’t use your phone – clay and computers don’t mix’