I for one salute our new pottery overlords.

It’s back, so pour yourself a nice ceramic bottle of milk, sit back and let’s pretend like I know what I’m talking about!

First of all, Full Frontal Disclosure: I am not a potter, my entire knowledge of pottery is from this show and a tour of the Wedgewood factory I went on when I was 15 – wait, maybe I *am* a potter? I do do my best to research things I am unsure about but will inevitably probably say something factually incorrect about clay, I just hope and pray that we can handle it better than the time I didn’t know Kirsch was a key component of a fondue and got thoroughly roasted in the comments by the fondue stans of the world of which there are apparently numerous and they are very angry people.

So it’s back to kick off the year with a wonderful wholesome few weeks and then vanish again leaving us to disintegrate into despair… And all your favs are back! Or at least mostly, Siobhan has apparently broken her leg and will only Facetime in for comedy VT purposes while potentially dressed as a tiger?

no explanation is given as to how she broke her leg but if I may don my sensible tweed and play Miss Marple, I would like to politely accuse THIS MENACE of grievous bodily harm

I’ve watched every documentary going about the Peterson Staircase murders and STILL, this Gladstone flight of stairs is the most sinister – Why so steep? Why so little bannistery? How many people conked their heads *BEFORE* they padded the beam? Why specifically set up a camera in this position? That’s just baiting tragedy!

And because Siobhan is out of action, they have replaced her with Ellie Taylor

I really enjoyed Ellie as host, I did of course miss Siobhan, but you know… maybe we just pivot Ellie over to Bake Off duty? She’d be very useful over there with her pockets full of eggs.

The judging panel is the same, except for the addition of Special Guest Judge: Universally Medium-sized Egg

apparently Rose decided to wait another series before launching the pincer attack and ousting one of them to and taking her position on the judging panel as is customary in Pottery Throwdown culture, so for now she plots in the drying room

soon…. Special Guest Judge, Universally Medium-sized Egg, soon you’ll be an omelette AND THEN WHO’LL BE RIDING THE SKATEBOARDING TORTOISE TO GLORY?

And of course we are joined by a whole new batch of lovely people…

AJ – AJCeramic

I am mostly eagerly looking forward to AJ trying to involve their love of all things geeky into their creations and very much trying to also avoid any Copyright issues for Love Productions. You can wear Link’s Korok Leaf mask, but don’t you dare say the words “Zelda” or “Nintendo”.

Anna – MuddyFingersMcGurn

Ah yes, the beating heart of the competition: The Emotional Support Potter – with her constantly cheerful demeanour, an ability to get clay on her face before she’s even started and a willingness to provide a look to camera at any moment she is by all means a golden retriever made human.

Bill – Bill.Thomas.Pottery

God bless him, a man so destined to be the first boot of the competition that I’m almost convinced he might have written it on his application form as a special talent. Could he have survived a couple more weeks if he’d made more of his novelty hat? I mean, Rowan got through 2 weeks of Bake Off on the threat he might wear an 18th century waistcoat that a French aristocrat got executed in alone…

Cellan – _Cellan_

And so we have our first Pottery Throwdown birthed potter with Cellan apparently taking up pottery because of the show. Thus proving that some people watch the show and are inspired to craft and others watch and are compelled to write obscenely long recaps that you’re not sure are too mean or not. Truly, we are the two wolves inside you, whomst shall you feed?

Christine – ChristineCherry_

She’s a strong contender for the final because she seems to merely touch clay and Keith sobs, we call it The Josie Effect. No signs of any potential assassin related tendencies. All in good time though…

Jenny – JenniferCobbCeramics

My favourite thing about Jenny is that she came in with the wholesome demeanour of the nicest of your mother’s friends and immediately the show nominated her as Chief Innuendo Merchant. How long before she collapses onto the floor sobbing that she CAN’T DO IT ELLIE, SHE CAN’T SAY CLEAN BOTTOM ONE MORE TIME, SHE JUST CAN’T TAKE IT.

Josh

My guess that Josh will make the final is based entirely on the fact he looks like every MasterChef finalist has been merged into one person, so if this whole pottery thing goes awry, maybe try your steak cooking skills over on BBC1?
I also can’t find Josh on Instagram, so if anyone does have a link, send it my way and I’ll make sure to add it.

Lucinda – LucindaLovesey

Certainly not one to be underestimated, both in terms of her pottery talent and her ability to stare down even Keith Brymer-Jones when he dares doubt said pottery talent.

Miles – MilesPottery

Miles is off to a strong start what with being a dog owner and generally seeming like he might be on the verge of a scream at all times. I will be needing him to immortalise his dog on a piece of earthenware sooner rather than later though, last year Sally wasted no time and we already had a hound on a cheese dish.

Nick – NickRobattoCeramics

Has anyone had a swifter character arc than Nick? Turning up looking like he might be the lead singer in a Nickelback tribute band called PennyBlack only to become the coolest person in the room (sorry AJ) with but a two second flash of a homemade Sonic Screwdriver and a casual dropping that he’s a prop maker for Doctor Who.

Tom – Tom_Demeranville

Who amongst us hasn’t considered running away to live in a vintage caravan at some point during the last year?

Zahra – ZahraJabirCeramics

An honest to God icon purely for her dead-pan comic timing, which is certainly better than her time management was in this first episode.

And with that, all that’s left to do is don their aprons and limber up with a jaunty jig

TO CLAY TOWN, BABY!

Child’s Play

For the first challenge of the series, the potters were tasked with making a child’s crockery set made up of a 2 handled beaker, a character egg cup, a bowl, a plate and a side plate because every child that can’t hold a mug without two handles uses a side plate. The designs of their crockery sets had to also be inspired by their own childhood memories so on the menu today were of course the circus, a weird fishing trip with an overly friendly fisherman, the vast unknowing dread of space, Alice in Wonderland and the time your dad killed a duck that your mother secretly fed to you…

This was of course Anna’s design inspired by the time her dad led her and her siblings to believe a fox had killed their ducks so they were going to go and smash in the brains of the falsely accused vulpine criminal.

I see, it’s an eye-for-eye mafia situation in the Anna McPottery-Throwdown household. I’m also not sure the lie in this situation is much less traumatic than the barefaced truth?

Lucinda was also inspired by animals, this time thankfully involving a lot less threats of violence, mostly

putting a lot of faith in your grandmother there by instantly jumping to the assumption that she will kill the turtle.

With a childhood love of animals that wear people clothes, she is truly a woman that speaks to my soul, she was going ham on the decoration of her clay menagerie

the Skateboarding Tortoise being inspired by her own pet tortoise called Hannibal, who is very much serving us Long Lost Ninja Turtle Brother who joined the circus, or as we call him, Henry

sadly none of this year’s potters have owned up to possessing the skills of a circus clown but Cellan does have a certain I-know-how-to-juggle energy about him, but that might also be because he looks legally and contractually obligated to be within 30 feet of a hacky sack at all times.

Bill was going for a more explicitly circus-themed routine, Lucinda having the better sense to not directly invoke the name of the circus in the age of PETA being insane on Twitter – they will be relentlessly questioning you on the wellbeing of your clay animals though. Bill’s set being entirely made up of elephants inspired by the memory of seeing the circus elephants parading through his hometown

My favourite part of this sketch is just how accurately they capture the rather terrifying beaker elephant that looks like a caricature of a GB News presenter. It’s not entirely clear if creating Andrew Neil in elephant form was entirely his plan from the outset or if it was more the result of him accidentally guillotining his plate which must have eaten into his time somewhat

However, despite the parade of elephants on show, in a true TV miracle, not a single person mentions The Greatest Showman, and we do know that Love Productions has the budget. Ironically, this might have been the one time I would have allowed it without comment because I do not feel like we talk enough about Hugh Jackman just casually riding a gummy looking CGI elephant to his child’s school, parking it *SOMEWHERE* in the middle of a New York winter and just going to watch an entire dance recital – I think about that scene far too much, as you can probably tell. WHERE WAS THE ELEPHANT HUGH? WHERE WAS IT?

The last of the explicitly animal themed sets was from AJ who was going with dinosaurs given that they were, entirely unsurprisingly, a Dinosaur Kid™ when they were little –

and now I’m just mostly invested in what their favourite dinosaur was – personally I favour the Dilophosaurus and do not appreciate the smear campaign that Jurassic Park started against my frilled fav. I’m gonna guess that AJ was either the Stegosaurus kid, who of course had or desperately wanted a fauxhawk or they favoured the Ankylosaurus – either way, we’re in fauxhawk territory.

Do I kind of wish that AJ, being a cosplayer, might have dressed up to fit the theme? Yes, who doesn’t want to see Reptar sculpting the perfect medium sized egg cup? But I do also respect that it might have been hard to do anything while wearing one of these

and so, I will settle for a costume that is merely German Tourist Walking Around The Natural History Museum Who Has Grown Bored Of The Guided Tour’s Audio Track

I will be stealing that for this year’s low effort Halloween costume.

I was surprised that we didn’t have more dinosaurs on display, I just feel like a love of dinosaurs, fossils and archeology might often serve as the gateway drug to a life dedicated to clay. Nick’s wasn’t too far removed in that he was theming his around monsters (sorry for villainsing dinosaurs), which he did choose to introduce thusly

and for a brief spell, I did think he was going to be making a Satanic Child’s crockery set because after all Damien “The Antichrist” Thorn had to eat his devilled eggs off something. “Would thou like to live deliciously?” he asks as he cracks his perfectly medium sized egg.
His monsters came with quite a lot of fiddly work given that he was having to attach various fangs, hands and tentacles to them. And one of my favourite parts of the show was the moment he said “tentacles” and just so that everyone knew he said “tentacles” AND DEFINITELY NOT TESTICALS, he started pretending to be an octopus

*aggressive tentacling*

I will very much need to know how AJ reacted when they realised they were in the same room as a prop maker for Doctor Who though. Where is that wholesome scene? RELEASE THE FOOTAGE.

Rather excitingly we did end up with our very own much more relatable Space Race between Tom and Jenny. The latter of which was also the victim of the obligatory handle pulling innuendo corner

a truly valiant effort to push through the slowly creeping mortification, I for one salute you Jenny, meanwhile Cellan stood there rubbing, pulling and steadfastly refusing to make eye contact with a single soul

Having to describe cup making like she was audio describing Rebecca Loos collecting pig semen wasn’t the only extra work Jenny was having to do this episode as she had decided to go the extra mile and create a cap for her egg cup which would make it look like a proper rocket

Jenny did not come to mess around, she will be raking up the brownie points this series like a woman who baked her own biscuits for the post-church luncheon. You don’t get to sit at the right hand of God by buying an M&S selection box, Meredith.

Tom’s space theme was much more extra terrestrial, which does make sense because you cannot convince me that there isn’t a telescope, an extremely complicated wall chart and a VHS tape recording of Channel 5’s what-we-shall-generously-call-a-documentary “UFOs: The Proof is Out There” in this caravan

they never showed us the interior of the caravan is all I’m going to say…

Completely accidentally, while making his alien egg cup (that’s an egg cup that’s an alien and not an egg cup for a standard supermarket medium-sized Ovomorph) he had given it little shoes

and Anna was of course on hand to be utterly thrilled by it and gas him up

she is settling well into her role as Emotional Support Potter and if she ever gets eliminated, the tone of the show will take a turn. Keith tears will dry up, pot plants will wither, raku vases shall smash.

Space wasn’t the only battle as Cellan and Miles found themselves in a beachfront feud. Miles drawing his inspiration from a fishing trip he did on a family holiday and has a Peak British Family Holiday Photo as proof

I’m sorry, but if you don’t have a photo of you as a child holding a bunch of fish and looking very confused and/or grumpy, you never went on holiday and your entire childhood is a lie.

For his Character Egg Cup, he was making a “jolly lighthouse keeper”

No, he said “jolly” and not “distressingly horny for the Eldritch”, a missed opportunity, kids love Robert Pattinson, Willem Dafoe and isolation madness.

As for Cellan’s, he had settled on the beach because of his lung capacity and I’m glad the illustrator was as confused by his egg cup as I ended up being – apparently it’s a fish mouth?

he was also very much overselling his crab plate… “it’s a beach towel” he said while looking distinctly like the shifty-eyed dog gif

to be fair, everyone seemed to put their plates on a bit of a back burner and concentrate more on theming their more interesting beakers and egg cups. The only potter to really try to do ~something~ with their plates was Josh who was drawing inspiration from his childhood love of motorcycles and holidays in Portugal and was making the most frustratingly unstorable crockery sets I have ever seen

I do love that as Ellie’s voiceover said “adrenaline filled summers”, they showed this picture of young Josh sitting in a concrete basin, holding a hosepipe and looking very confused

My favourite thing in the world is childhood photos with zero context, as you can imagine, this episode was a treat for me.

Of course because this was a child themed challenge, someone was obligated to invoke what we shall hereby dub Carroll’s Law and produce an Alice in Wonderland themed piece. The potter performing the duty this time was Zahra who was read the book as a child and was attempting to theme each piece around a different character. Sadly excluding the Cheshire Cat because I imagine she thought a lot of people might do childhood pets and she didn’t want to be entering a Feline Fight To the Death. She was however going to have to sculpt and paint A LOT of faces

she was the only one to do a hidden sculpture in her bowl which was a really fun idea but did come with a concern for the general hygiene of the piece. Personally, I was a little more concerned about the fact the chosen pose for the caterpillar does make it look a bit like its a person wearing a straightjacket in a padded cell – I can sense the anxious rocking back and forth as he’s slowly flooded by porridge.

Lastly we have Christine was was inspired by her mother’s love of fairies and the walks she used to take her and her siblings on

Sidenote: “Ladybird Sprigs” is my new drag name.

I was slightly concerned at first that she was maybe going too elegant and sophisticated with the white narcissus flower theme, but this was a crockery set for a child that uses a side plate and you have to be one hell of a cultured 5 year old for that.

And that’s it for the first section, I feel like I didn’t really talk much about the making of anything but with 12 potters and only 15 minutes to get through them and do introductory VTs, there wasn’t actually much footage of anyone making anything and nothing went disastrously wrong – so well-played you lot!

Crying Over Spilled Milk

We start strong with the Throwing Challenges as from the back of the pottery emerges the glorious sight that is Keith Brymer-Jones in his dungarees

to say Anna was having the time of her life would be an understatement

but quickly her awe turned to utter horror as it was revealed that they would have to make that classic and very much not made up thing: a ceramic milk bottle

and they weren’t just having to make 1, someone maybe should’ve made sure that Bill knew that this wasn’t the case, they had 15 minutes to make as many uniform milk bottles as they possibly could – and if they forgot what the key features were, Rich had a handy little song

if Casette Boy weren’t so busy fighting with LadBaby, this would have been remixed and viral by now, truly nobody won the Christmas Number 1 Feud, least of all us.

So with the potters lined up in their pottery conga lines, it was all systems GO!

and while everyone started with a flurry of activity, nobody was powering through faster than Tom who was seemingly possessed by the furious spirit of George Henry Lester and churned (heh) out 6 milk bottles

and even had time to make an extra 7th to serve as sacrifice to The Pottery Gods so that his extra-terrestrial crockery might survive their kilning

and with every George Henry Lester, there must be an Alex Campbell (I fell down a rabbit hole of milk bottle history, bear with me) and, try as he might, Josh couldn’t quite compete with Tom suddenly deciding to become a 1 man milk bottle factory and ended up with 4 sturdy looking bottles

that’s a set of Agatha Christie murder weapons if I ever saw some.

Neither of them were quite on the level of Christine or Jenny though who both promptly brought Keith to tears over how good their milk bottles were

and yes, this is the same man that walked away from Zahra’s only to be compelled to come back and claim the life of a second milk bottle like Godzilla taking a second swipe at a small village he’d just trodden through

there is not a single better illustration of the duality of man than when Keith wields that Bucket of Doom and becomes arbiter of pottery worth. To be fair she was lucky to initially only get away with her one rectally combusted milk bottle being binned

Zahra is lowkey iconic, her delivery of everything she says is *chef’s kiss* – truly the soundbite queen of the series.

Miles had a similar output to Tom, however none of his looked very similar

it’s more of a milk bottle found family – the L in LGBT stands for Lactose after all.

And then trailing behind everyone else was Bill who spent a significant amount of time seemingly trying to convince himself that this was a milk bottle

that is bordering on being a bowl.

And in the end, wound up making a lovely trio of milk bottles of which Keith mercifully only binned one

it probably would have been cruel to wipe out an entire milk bottle family in one fell swoop like this was a Gjakmarrja.

An Official Milk Bottle Power Ranking

1. Tom, The One man Milk Bottle Factory
2. The Emotional Thrill of Jenny’s Milk Bottles
3. The Slightly Lesser Emotional Thrill of Christine’s Milk Bottles
4. Josh Is The Milkmaid, Never The Milk-Bride
   • AJ’s Set of Four
   • Cellan’s Set of Four
   • Anna’s Set of Four
5. Miles’s Milk Bottle Pride Parade
   • Zahra’s Pottery Kaiju Attack
   • Nick’s Set of Three
   • Lucinda’s Set of Three
6. Bill Did Not Know This Was A Race

Child’s Play 2: Egg Cup Boogaloo

Given that this was the first episode The Kiln Gods were a mostly merciful pantheon, seemingly only punishing Miles by splitting his fish in twain

or you know, perhaps they were trying their very own Feeding the Multitude miracle and couldn’t quite work out the schematics. And it’s a real shame because he painted the fish absolutely beautifully

does it look a bit like something that’s hanging on the wall of every Cornish holiday home? Yeah, sure, a little bit but given he was going for a Cornish themed set, it’s at least on brand. The stand out of the set though was of course the self-portrait that was his Jolly Lighthouse Keeper Egg Cup

something about Keith brandishing that egg cup at a seemingly very stressed and slightly confused Miles does play out like a scene from Long Lost Family in which Davina McCall has just surprised someone with the twin that they didn’t know they had.

Miles’s rival in seaside crockery, Cellan, got a bit of a mixed critique but I think over all had a slightly more interesting set, granted the egg cup is slightly indiscernible as a fish’s mouth and his beaker has the wingspan of a particularly aggressive seagull but my God did he paint the hell out of that crab

Keith and Rich spend a lot of time mostly praising how well thrown the bowl is, and it does have a wonderful ergonomic look to it – as well as the all important cereal capacity. Where was that test? Screw the medium-sized egg, all a child wants to know is if they can fit a quarter of a bag of Frosties in their bowl.

Where his set does come slightly undone is with the plate that Keith does, in the style of Michelle Visage telling Derrick Barry that her outfit was a piece of fabric, point out is kind of just a flat slab of clay with a crab painted on it in

The way I GASPED.

Jenny had a few cracks around the joins of her cloud-lined bowl but given that she was painting the cracked areas in rainbow colours was seemingly able to hide them a little better than the stark white belly of Miles’s mackerel

it’s a really lovely little set and even though she was using a lot of black in the paint scheme, it really let the colours that she did use stand out. I’m sure if she’d had enough time she might have decorated them to look a little more galaxy-esque but as they are, she still managed to reduce Keith to a second round of tears, and I’m not sure there’s ever been anything on this show as funny as Keith crying while holding a beaker with a tiny little sign on it that said “Little Star”

this man is single-handedly shattering Harry Judd’s reign of toxic masculinity, Cynthia Erivo must be proud.

While Jenny got away with block painting most of her surfaces black, her revival in the only space race I care about, Tom, was seemingly painting not a single thing the same colour and with each piece needing about 3 coats of glaze to make it a child-friendly shade of garish, that’s A LOT of work to get through! But it really, really paid off

the only thing I do not appreciate about it is the fact that the beaker reminds me far too much of the malevolent moon oven from Wallace and Gromit: A Grand Day Out which to me as a child was the scariest thing I had ever seen and I still don’t trust vintage ovens as far as I can throw them with my arms that are about as well toned as the han dles of said potentially evil beaker.

What I do want to know about Tom’s piece is if we’re counting the little stand that his alien egg cup is standing on as a side plate? And speaking of the egg cup, it perfectly housed the officially authenticated medium-sized egg but my favourite part was when they did so and Tom just blurted out “ALIEN BRAINS!” to a very confused judging panel and then had to explain why he had just shouted “ALIEN BRAINS!” at them

I love him, absolute chaos at every turn.

While Tom managed to accomplish a great deal in the time, Bill was on a bit of a backfoot considering he was having to spend the first 30 minutes buffering the rough surfaces of his pieces down to a smooth finish. And then to slow him down further he fell into the death trap that is a facemask and glasses combination

he was clearly pushed for time and when it came time for the reveal was clearly a little disappointed with the fact his colours weren’t quite as bright as he’d hoped for. But speaking of the reveal, shout out to whoever made the decision to position the GB News elephant so that it was facing the camera when they took the hessian cloth off to reveal it in the fashion of a James Wan jump scare

I am fully obsessed with this terrifying elephant that looks like every man that enters your mentions on Twitter to explain something to you in great detail that you very much already know yourself

ok, now that I’m done cyberbullying a child’s sippy cup, we can talk about the rest of the set

I think the plate and bowl are rather grand and were worth clearly prioritising, the elephants fit the shape really well and the painting of them is incredibly neat – it’s a pity that they’re quite such a totalitarian shade of grey but that is kind of just an elephant for you.

On the other side of the elephant divine was Lucinda’s beaker

it’s just sublime, maybe a touch unwieldy looking and I wouldn’t trust a child to go within 6 foot of it, but it’s beautiful. The star of the show though was Hannibal the Skateboarding Tortoise

can someone tell me why I’m jealous of a ceramic tortoise’s eyeliner? Honey came to serve looks

But me becoming a Skateboard Tortoise stan account is not to dismiss the quality of the rest of her pieces which had the look of both Richard Scarry’s illustrations and Jean de Brunhoff’s illustrations for Babar

it’s all just painted so beautifully and it was delightfully relaxing watching her sweep on the whiskers so confidently and delicately

finalist material for sure.

Anna also managed to capture a very child-friendly animated style to her wild goose chase of a fox hunt, which at least somewhat lessened the general Yikes of the story

that very Axel Scheffler style of cartoon animal is always going to be a crowd pleaser and she did it wonderfully – it definitely worked better on the goose and the fox than it did the little girl – there were a few eyes that looked a touch too dilated, but apparently we’re only measuring egg cups tonight…

maybe we just feed children larger eggs? You know, as a treat.

AJ also very much excelled in bringing their cartoon-y dinosaurs to life

it’s absolutely perfect, almost *too* perfect, had we not seen them sculpting this, I would have assumed they’d nipped over to the nearest John Lewis and paid through the nose for a novelty crockery set – I don’t care how much you love your child, £62 for a 3 piece Alessi dinner set for a toddler is robbing you in broad daylight.

It was certainly the most “characterful” design of the lot, someone please commission the animated series about the adventures of AJ’s dinosaurs, we’re still in the realms of that 30 year nostalgia cycle to capitalise off The Land Before Time – Littlefoot wont know what hit him. Probably shouldn’t make jokes about things hitting dinosaurs with the whole meteor thing… I can’t quite decide which is my favourite of AJ’s dinosaurs because as much as I do enjoy the little dinosaur egg cup, nothing has ever awoken my maternal instinct as much as this little guy did

I will protect it with my life.

While AJ played mad scientist and brought dinosaurs back for their Jurassic Park: Dino Tots debut, Zahra didn’t quite get to the same level with her Alice in Wonderland set, getting a little waylaid with the amount of glaze she would have to do and didn’t quite get around to finishing everything

A lot of the sculpting is very good though, and her Mad Hatter Egg Cup was well on its way to looking very much like a collectable Toby Jug, unfortunately she never got around to painting his face and now the fact he looks like faceless Rose Tyler from The Idiot’s Lantern episode of Doctor Who will haunt me forever

Zahra, why must you do this to me?

Although, it might have been for the best that she didn’t give him a face because the face she gave her Playing Card Plate made it looks like he was going through an existential crisis

which given the fact he had the proportions of a piece of Sonic The Hedgehog inflation fan art is understandable. Also, nobody Google that and if you do, I am not responsible for the psychological damage that DeviantArt will do to you.

As for the caterpillar in the bottom of the the bowl, the idea was a very charming one however she hadn’t quite managed to completely glaze it, meaning there were hygiene issues with the little guy, who did also look a little bit like The Great Gazoo from The Flintstones

thank you to Zahra for providing me with ample opportunities to talk about irrelevant media.

Nick had a few painting issues of his own, mostly in that he didn’t spell the word “mayhem” correctly, which is in itself… mayhem

honestly though, the English language has far too many Es, let’s Marie Kondo this linguistic clutter – CULL THE Es.

At least the spelling error was on the bottom of the plate though and there’s still time for him to decide his pottery brand is simply called Mayhm and he can sign all of his pieces that way. Everything else about the set was pretty damn stellar though

it is very The Trap Door looking and there’s a lot of really good detail work going on in the monsters’ skin and the bowl’s mouth

almost too much detail at times, something about the teeth gripping the egg is deeply disconcerting to me

it reminds me far too much of that horrible fish with the human looking teeth to allow me to enjoy my breakfast. Cereal milk on a uvula? Fine, love it. Teeth gripping an egg? A step too far. Apparently.

departing from the bright and the garish was Christine who very much stuck to her guns about painting her flowers white, which certainly did give them the effect of looking slightly diaphanous and allowed all the intricate little details to really stand out

That fade from green to while on the petals of her beaker is utterly sublime.

I love that Christine and Rich had the conversation about giving the fairy brown skin and what that means on both a personal level to them as individuals but also speaks to the broader issue of racial and cultural exclusion, especially in children’s media and products

so yeah, reclaim the Flower Fairies.

Lastly we have Josh and his MotoGP crockery set

I can’t say that it’s a set that particularly excites me but given that I am an almost 30 year old woman that’s probably a sign it’s pretty successful though. I think he got a little bogged down in wanting it to be the colours of the Portuguese flag and that came at the detriment of some of the fun of the pieces. There was also a slight issue with the lopsided size of the handlebars on the beaker, which did seem to make Keith angrier than Cellan’s Slab of Clay With a Crab On It™

given that my childhood bike had handlebars that routinely came off, I really can’t complain about them, they seem functional enough.

An Unofficial Child’s Crockery Set Ranking

1. Jurassic Park: Dino Tots
2. Skateboard Tortoise and Gang
3. The Flower Fairy Reclamation Effort
4. Brakfast Tim Mayhm
5. ALIEN BRAINS
6. One Small Step for Jenny, One Giant Leap For Eggkind
7. What The Fox, Anna?
8. Miles’s Cornish Breakfast Selfie
9. Cellan’s Eggs on The Beach
10. My Personal Disinterest in Motorbikes
11. Carroll’s Law: A Work In Progress
12. The Elephantine Horror

And so we come to the first result of the series – it was very clearly a race between Lucinda and Christine in the eyes of the judges, I still think I preferred AJ’s and think they should have won but you know, if Rose’s Museum of Pottery Wonders isn’t going to take them, I’ll just have to write to The Natural History Museum. But given the amount of work that went into both her sculpting and glazing, it was still a very deserved win for Lucinda

and now on to the first elimination, it almost seems mean to eliminate someone in the first episode – can we do Strictly rules and give everyone a pass to Week 2? You know, give Bill a chance to fully realise that this is in fact a competition… I thought they might come down hard on Zahra for not finishing her pieces, and I think she expected the same however it’s Bill who gets the first chop of the series

He came, he pottered about a bit, he maybe tried to make being The Hat Guy his gimmick a little too late, he went home and remained a thoroughly charming man throughout.

And so, 11 potters remain…

And if you’ve enjoyed this recap of the Great Pottery Throwdown’s triumphant return and would like to support the blog, you can leave a small donation via my Ko-fi HERE.