Mad Hatter’s Pottery, Reading

I’ve never considered myself to be particularly creative when it comes to the field of arts and crafts. You may well agree with me after reading this post and browsing through the pictures. Anyway, when Helen was given a voucher for her birthday and chose a morning pottery painting to which I was invited I was apprehensive, to say the least. What would I paint and just how rubbish would it be?

Mad as a Hatter

On the allotted day we headed off to Mad Hatters Pottery Painting which is housed inside the local garden centre. It’s a brightly lit space with a dozen or so tables set out and along one side lots of blank pottery pieces to choose from. The voucher allowed us to choose a piece each up to a certain value although we could pay more for a higher value piece. In my mind I had thought I would choose a coaster, paint the Williams logo on it and then be out of there. I really couldn’t see how we would be spending any significant time in there.

We both perused the blank pieces and finally, both settled on bowls which could be used as planters rather than eating our cereal out of. These cost slightly less than the voucher value but not significantly so. Mine had a pattern of different sized indents which looked as if a small child had carefully and uniformly pushed their finger into the clay before it had dried. Helen’s three concentric rings around the centre.

We were shown to our table and told what to do – basically select a colour from the guide on a tile on the table, squeeze some of the said colour onto a blank tile and paint. I’d decided to do each of the indents in bright shades of yellow and orange and the rest of the bowl in shades of blue. Thinking about it now after the event I admire my ambition given that I’d gone in there to basically paint a W on a tile!

And Relax

Each area you painted needed two or three coats and by the time I’d painted the bottom and inside of the pot I realised that I’d vastly underestimated the amount of time we’d need to complete it. I realised something else too – there was something wonderfully freeing about concentrating on putting paint on a pot. I wasn’t really one of those people who got into those mindfulness colouring books for adults a few years ago but now, in retrospect, I can see that they would have had a similar effect.

In the end, we spent a good two hours finishing our masterpieces and I probably could have taken longer over mine but lunch was calling. I also came to realise that the end result really wasn’t important but it was the journey itself. Oh! How philosophical!

The Big Reveal…

We were told that after the pot had been fired it would look different to the painted version we left behind. This was clear from the paint samples that were on each table which were more vibrant than what was painted. And, as you can see from the image below, this was very much the case. The blue in particular was much stronger and darker than the light blue version I’d left behind. I’m very pleased with the outcome and I can imagine us going again – I just can’t think where I might put such a gaudy bowl 🤣.

Here’s a selection of pictures of the pot in various different stages of its gestation.