Crafting has become something of a theme for our last few weekends. When we haven’t been continuing our own projects at home – me with my embroidery, Elle with her dressmaking – we have been out learning new skills.
A few weekends ago, as a (very belated) Birthday present for Elle, we had a morning of pottery painting at the Hatter Street Studio here in Bury St Edmunds. We had often walked past the windows, admiring the unbelievable variety of pottery on display, from subtly designed bowls to bright, colourful figures. It was a daunting prospect: while seeing all those creative projects may have inspired us to create some of our own, it was also a somewhat intimidating welcome.
In many ways, however, it proved to be a fantastic introduction to ceramics, at least for me. Elle had previously taken part in a pottery workshop as a team-building activity with her colleagues, which had included throwing the initial shapes, and an expert had undertaken the all-important glazing and firing.
Our session at the Hatter Street Studio was a much more relaxed experience: the pottery objects themselves had already been prepared, so all that was needed was our decoration and the final glazing and firing, and Nat at the Studio gave us a thorough introduction to the paints, tools and materials.
Even so, for us, the actual painting proved to be terrifying. Like writing the first letter into a beautiful, handmade notebook, we both found putting the initial paint layers on quite scary. The other people in the Studio at the same time as us seemed to be taking the challenge in their stride, cheerfully painting while chatting with their friends and drinking coffees. By contrast, we were silent with concentration.
We both decided to choose the same small vase as our starting-point, but we had very different approaches to our designs, with Elle going very geometric with vertical lines and dots in muted tones, while I opted for a botanical motif on an ombré background.
After about an hour, we had finished, and we left feeling rather pleased with our efforts, but nervous about how the final vases would look once they had been glazed and fired. We shouldn’t have worried: the glazing process really brought the colours to life.
We thoroughly enjoyed our visit to the Hatter Street Studio, and highly recommend it to anyone else looking for an interesting way to meet-up with friends and family (or as incredibly belated Birthday present!) We will certainly be back again: next time, we might pluck-up the courage to attempt one of their larger pieces!
You can find out more about the Hatter Street Studio on their website.
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