Next Step Wheel: The Pottery Throwdown

If you’ve ever watched The Great Pottery Throw Down and thought I could do that — here’s your chance. Eight weeks, seven challenges, and ongoing discussions and critiques. Each week Keisha reveals a new brief and demonstrates the technique and piece. Then you’ll have ninety minutes on the wheel for your version, and at the end we’ll discuss our process, goals, and how to continue improving.

The format is the fun part. Thirty minutes of demonstration and discussion where the challenge gets revealed and the techniques are explained, an hour and a half of throwing while Keisha moves through the room offering help and encouragement, then a final thirty minutes gathered around the table talking through what everyone made. Seeing eleven different solutions to the same brief is the best design education there is, and it’s genuinely delightful watching someone take a prompt somewhere you never would have.

We’ll push you with new forms, unfamiliar constraints, and techniques you’ve been avoiding. Briefs could be forms like butterballs or moon jars, the widest bowl that isn’t a plate, stretching vases with sodium silicate, and more. The prompts will be curated towards the level of the students who sign up. Week 8 is glazing, where everything you’ve made comes together and we’ll celebrate.

Students ready to move past their beginner phase will be pushed by forms they haven’t tried. Experienced potters in a creative rut will be pushed by prompts they didn’t choose. Either way you’ll leave with a shelf of things you didn’t plan on making.

Taught by Keisha, who is known for her attention to detail, thoughtful design, and caring manner with students. Students must be comfortable centering and throwing a basic cylinder.