This is my favourite Renaissance painting.

Nothing but respect for MY Lord of the Rings.

Hello? Testing, testing. Is this thing on? Are you receiving? Over.

So… been awhile, huh? If you follow me over on Bluesky (It’s like Twitter but without… being Twitter!) I’ve talked about it already but a combination of creative burnout (existentialism really sets in when you realise there’s only so many ways to describe chefs failing to fillet a fish) and a complication in the ol’ personal life derailed me at the end of last year but what’s a New Year other than an opportunity to have the cat drag me back in? TO THE THROWDOWN, MY FELINE STEED!

There has been a little change-up at the pottery with previous contestant Princess taking over from Rose as kiln technician

extremely happy for Princess, but of course there was immediate speculation as to quite why Rose left. She very quickly clarified that she chose to leave and she and her new crab son, Socrates, are both thriving

In Crab We Trust.

But of course, most importantly we have 12 new potters. 1000s of people applied

and the casting directors at Love Productions tore up those applications and appears to have just hoovered up whoever was passed out in Glastonbury’s Circus Field venues – we’ve got Stephen, Lord of the Rings

A Green Party canvasser

Lesbian Aquacise

and Hayley who’s been on a contact high since the 80s

more like a stoned chat, amiright?

And then everyone else is putting on a facade of relative normality but I think it’s only a matter of time before Victor tells us he breeds endangered chameleons in his free time and Jonathan owns up to being The Farmer from Shaun the Sheep

I’M ON TO YOU.
But for now, here’s the line-up of everyone’s new favourite weirdos and Perfectly Normal Chris

they’re all my favourites but I will do awful things if anything bad befalls my sweet baby angels Imy and Victor. YOU’VE BEEN WARNED, KEITHCHARD.

You Don’t Win Friends With Salad Sets

In true Pottery Throwdown absurdity we start with a challenge that often feels like the hardest challenge in the first half of the show with the potters having to make a salad set made up of a Salad Bowl, a Side Plate, an Oil Dispenser (with stopper), an Olive Bowl and a pair of Salad Servers. On Bake off they at least just get to make a cake before they’re thrown to the wolves of Biscuit Week in which they have to make a tableau honouring their favourite historic war out of gingerbread. This week’s call for engagement is for you to tell me your favourite war and what you would have flavoured the gingerbread with.

The theme of their six (6) piece set had to be their favourite holiday. I had a really lovely holiday to Amsterdam last year which is where my mind immediately went so I was happy to see Olivia going for her own Amsterdam inspired set

personally I would have done anything to avoid having to draw a bicycle and probably leaned more into the itty bitty breakdown I had at the Van Gogh Museum in the Matthew Wong exhibition – truly one of the best art installations I’ve ever seen. It was devastating but somehow less traumatising than how absolutely TERRIFYING the bicycles are in Amsterdam – between the locals travelling at 50mph without a care in the world and seemingly determined to take out at least 3 tourists before midday and said tourists being a liability at all times, the entire place is like you’ve been selected for The Running Man. 10/10, would recommend, I’ve never felt so alive.

I was surprised there was only 1 set inspired by Greece but if there had to be only one I’m glad it was being made by favourite goose stepping aquarobics instructing lesbian

this is my Triumph of the Will, I’m all in on the Natalie hypetrain

I am sad the salad bowl wasn’t inspired by that time America’s Next Top Model made its All Stars contestants pose as sexy Greek salads in what has to be the most stomach churning attempt at sexiness you’ve ever seen

who was this for other than the Stir-fried Women portion of DeviantArt cretins?

Also going for a very seaside holiday theme, but very much on the opposite end of the Cocktail Hour to Experiencing The Culture Spectrum to Natalie’s barely sober 40th celebration with the girls was Imy with her exploration of Australia’s Reefs

although, Imy’s isn’t a salad set, it’s a bespoke ceramic popcorn bucket

which is somehow still be more practical and easier to use than the Dune 2 demonic fleshlight monstrocity

but I appreciate Imy giving them ideas for the future as we speedrun through every available crockery set they can think of. So brace for next year’s challenge of creating a Popcorn Bucket, large soda cup (with lid), nacho tray and crinkle-free sweet container all inspired by your favourite cinematic experience. (mine is still the 6th time I saw CATS (2019) on its last showing in a theatre with just 5 other people. We laughed. We cried. We… were all a little bit too horny for Skimbleshanks.)

Victor was also going for a cognitively dissonant salad set, decorating his as inspired by a Hong Kong breakfast

something about pouring olive oil out of a container that says “MILK TEA” on it just feels like it should be illegal. But he’s Victor, so no jury could possibly convict him for making you think what milk tea drenched lettuce and tomatoes would taste like. Which would only be the second worst thing to happen to a salad

I’M SORRY, I JUST NEED YOU ALL TO KNOW THIS HAPPENED AND WAS TREATED AS VERY SERIOUS ART. TYRA BANKS MADE THEM SIT IN AMBIENT TEMPERATURE FETA CHEESE, OLIVE OIL AND MUSHY BREAD.

Victor used to live in Canada and in an interesting coincidence, Stephen was making a Canadian inspired set, which was sadly not just a leg on the Hula Hooping World Tour I’m choosing to believe he went on in 1987

there was a moment before they colourised the sketch of his planned set where I did fully believe that the stopper of his oil dispenser was Baby Yoda

I pulled a muscle during the three seconds of mental gymnastics I did in order to somehow connect Grogu to Canada. But despite his stopper having the wingspan of a bald eagle, he was in Beefy Stopper Showdown with Diana’s Alhambra inspired set

I… I wanna pop it. And I’m not sure the video of a cebaceous zit being lanced that you accidentally watched out of morbid curiosity when your YouTube algorithm went weird as your mindlessly scrolled in ebd is really what you want to be thinking about as you drizzle out your salad dressing. Sorry, here’s something to cleanse your mind

LOOK INTO THE RINGS.

There were a couple of more local holiday inspirations amongst the exotic climes of Australia’s seas, Greece’s beaches and Amsterdam’s greenery. James’s set was based around a trip to The Mournes

the sheep hoof salad servers are such a cute idea and in a series with Former Mr. Hula Hoop, The Aquacising Roman Empire and Steve’s Illicit Moonshine Side Hustle

I wouldn’t have been surprised if James had just whipped out a real sheep’s leg to do a live study of. However, no sheep were knowingly harmed in the creation of James’s salad forks

ALLEGEDLY. We didn’t see the trial runs.

Also keeping it British was Chris who, and I am sorry to this man, was making a set that had something to do with the birth of his son

my toxic trait is that as soon as someone starts talking about their children I glaze over and now I know how people feel when I start telling them about how my D&D character laid a curse upon a lake and committed a merfolk genocide. Chris seems lovely but… it’s just not the most memorable holiday anecdote or set when you’re next to Jonathan who might be making a ceramic molotov cocktail?

and oh, how proud of his ungainly spout he was

but as they say, pride comes before erectile dysfunction

but don’t worry, he salvaged the situation through brute strength and stressing the fact “it’s meant to be a battered old oil can, it’s fine if it looks beaten up and curves slightly to the left!”

God bless you Jonathan and the fact you look slightly like Gandalf when he’s in Frodo’s house

he’s either very tall or Gladstone shrank in the wash.

Hayley had heard the brief to create a set inspired by your favourite trip and instantly began painting with every colour of the psychedelic wind based on that time she did mushrooms in 1989 and thought she could talk to frogs before she realised it was a holiday so she course corrected to Sri Lanka because… it has colourful wildlife

ALLEGEDLY, don’t sue me Hayley. You’re secretly the coolest person in the pottery this year but don’t tell Natalie I said that because I fully believe she could curb stomp me within seconds.

Francesca was also going for a wildlife heavy set inspired by a trip through Rajasthan

Francesca was more of a background player in this premier but I was very excited about her little frog

spoiler alert, but it’s a highlight once it’s fired and decorated. I will go to war for him. And that war shall be memorialised in cardamom flavoured gingerbread.

Lastly we have illicit moonshine pedler Steve with his illustrative, Vietnamese inspired set

this set is made to appeal to me – throw a koi fish on anything and I will love it unconditionally. The same goes for sticking a Death’s-Head Hawkmoth on your poorly written crime novel. I’ll read it. I might not like it, but I’ll definitely read it.

SangriAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

For their first Throwdown Challenge of the series, the potters were having to make as many sangria jugs as they possibly could in only 20 minutes

and I don’t think anything sums up quite how well this went for most of the potters than Chris’s own journey into Hubris

honestly, a kinder fate to befall his jug than having Keith smash it into the bottom of a bucket like the God of the pottery underworld harvesting souls of the damned

but Chris still managed a very respectable middle of the board placement – he’s never going to escape the Default Setting Man allegations, he is the Bald Head, Goatee, Green Shirt of the pottery

he’s like the one human in a Muppets movie – you need the normie for everyone else to shine. He’s essential to the eco-system of absurdity.

Given that Steve’s shed serves as an illegal brewery (ALLEGEDLY) I wasn’t overly surprised that Steve was able to pump out Sangria jugs like a machine

even after killing a couple of them, Steve still had more jugs left standing than 90% of the potters had BEFORE Keith had bucket’d their rejects.

Nobody faired worse in The Bucketing than Imy who made the mistake of getting emotionally attached to her critically endangered population of Wobbly Sangria Jugs

before Keith swept through their population like an expedition of colonizers in 1500 eating half the flightless rail species in the Southwest Pacific

I’ve been watching A LOT of YouTube videos about how different species went extinct and the amount of time it’s just “these guys got really hungry and would eat anything that moved.” is ABSURD – entire populations of parrots that allegedly tasted like you were eating your own boots just eaten into oblivion because a group of men got the rumblies that only a Glaucous Macaw could satisfy.

At some point this was a recap about pottery.

An Official Sangria Throwdown Ranking:
1. Steve’s Illicit Sangria Shed
2. James Came Second And He Took That Personally
3. Diana III
4. Francesca’s Well Preserved Sangria Population
5. Stephen’s Sangria Jug Juggling
6. Perfectly Middling Chris <3
7. Jonathan Coming 7th Is An Indictment on the Rest
8. Hayley’s Teeny Tiny Sangria Committee
9. Victor / Not Victorious
10. Natalie’s Sangria Gravy, anyone?
11. Olivia’s Gonna Need More Sangria
12. Imy’s Sangriapocalypse

Are You Serious? Right In Front of My Salad Set?

The Kiln Gods granted a mercy and thankfully the good vibes kept rolling with everyone’s creations thankfully surviving the firing process leaving them with a deceptively generous amount of time to get their glazing done

oops.

The only potter that really had to cut some corners was Olivia who had given herself the herculean task of drawing far too many bicycles

as an art teacher I would have expected her to know the Four Horsemen of the Artistic Apocalypse that you should never try to draw:
1. A horse
2. A bicycle
3. A cowboy hat
4. A gun

As a result while everyone had tearful, joyous reactions to their first makes, Olivia reacted to hers like a polar bear that’s just realised it has to eat one of its babies to survive

a situation that truly does call for a Double Kleenexing

Keith and Rich however really liked her set despite its slightly rushed elements – although, I do agree with them that the subtler colours do probably work better for the set than the more vivid ones she’d intended

Steve had also drawn his designs on with a pencil, although while Olivia’s gave hers the charm of a doodle you do while you’re on the phone to the bank, Steve’s really helped capture the ink wash style of East Asian art

I ADORE this set, I think it’s some of my favourite pottery that anyone has ever made on the show, it’s got such life and character in it

I think it’s absolute perfection, but it was a pity about the crack

James also knocked this challenge out of the park with a set that’s so perfectly made and glazed that it’s hard to believe it wasn’t machine-made and I half expect him to reveal he’s actually a robot in a scene similar to Preston in Wallace and Gromit’s A Close Shave

this is… bonkers? I don’t think we’ve ever seen something so clean and pristinely made in the history of the show. It’s almost too good? I think personally, I just prefer a little more mess and human error in pottery but I absolutely cannot fault James for that, because the salad servers alone are just so charming I’d put them in Princess’s Pottery Vault

while James went for mutton haunch sized salad spoons, Chris has apparently never seen a salad spoon in his life and turned up with what looked like teaspoons in Keith’s hand

but (most of) his glazing work was very pleasing if perhaps a little bit too expected and like something you’d find in a lake district village gift shop next to an inexplicable fridge magnet with a picture of Big Ben on it

I DO LOVE YOU CHRIS, I PROMISE!

Natalie’s Greek inspiration meant she was also leaning into a mostly blue and white aesthetic but there were a few pops of sunset colours to make it a little more fun and interesting

she had a bit of a wobbly stopper on the oil decanter but her salad spoons were a triumph of camp kitchiness

I almost wish the rest of the set leaned that hard into being a bit silly – the cocktail umbrella olive bowl is nearly there but everything else feels a bit too ordinary amongst the Ester Williams salad spoons. But it was Stephen who had the set with the oddest collective aesthetic as his several different styles didn’t quite come together as a whole

HOWEVER, I do think his stopper is adorable and looks a bit like a grumpy rookidee

and speaking of adorable tiny animals, Francesca’s frog is a real winner in my eyes

it’s so cute and her set as a whole came out absolutely superbly which was no mean feat given how much very precise and symmetrical work she had to do with her glazing

I think I would personally have easily put Francesca in contention for Potter of the Week over Diana who was Keith and Richard’s third choice alongside Steve and James

I like Diana’s, there’s a very Clarice Cliff style to just how uniform and vibrant it all is. However, I wish there was just a little more to the overall design – it’s cohesive but it doesn’t feel particularly inspired. And I just cannot get over how much that stopper top looks like the gnarly zit from Ed, Edd & Eddy

DIANA, I AM SO SORRY.

Anyway, here’s breakfast

I really love the subtlety of Victor’s gentle colour scheme and the tiny details like the scattering of chopped spring onion over the egg in the salad bowl really sell the whole thing

and on completely the other end of the spectrum of subtlety, IT’S HAYLEY WITH A PSYCHEDELIC STEEL CHAIR!

it’s another set that’s very much a matter of personal taste – something about these particular shades of yellow, green and red together remind me of the sort of mural you’d see on the wall of a Pizza Hut in 2005, however I did ADORE how she’d done the peacock feathers on the inside of the salad bowl

there’s such a wonderful artisticness to them that I wish she’d echoed more throughout her pieces.

The real anxiety of the episode was as to whether Imy’s octopus embellishment would survive the firing process. Or if you’re me, you had a flop sweat and an eye twitch going because you’re convinced what she’d actually made was a giant squid

but either way, while I wrestle with its binomial nomenclature like the Carl Linnaeus of Gladstone, Imy’s Cephalopod of Some Description™ did indeed survive! The only real issue with Imy’s set was the fact her salad bowl was a touch too small

but if you put it next to Chris’s Teeny Tiny Salad Cutlery, it’s a perfectly normal size.

Lastly we have Jonathan who is really not beating the Molotov Cocktail allegations

I just need to know if ANYONE pointed it out to him, it’s not even a bad thing! I’m sure anarchist protestors eat salad too. There was a lot to like about Jonathan’s set – the texture of that oily rag stopper (my new favourite insult) is really well done! But I do think the glazing of the salad bowl gets a little messy

I’m not entirely convinced you want the inside of your salad bowl to look a bit like the slowly rotting salad you kept promising yourself you’d put in the fridge and eat for lunch tomorrow. YOU’RE NEVER GOING TO EAT IT! JUST LET THE LETTUCE GO, BABE!

An Unofficial Salad Set Ranking:
1. James’s Suspiciously Good Sheep
2. Steve’s Inky Koi Fish
3. Justice For Francesca’s Peacock
4. Victor’s Cognitively Dissonant Milk Tea
5. Slightly Above Average Chris
6. Diana’s Pomegranate Pustule
7. Natalie’s Barely Sober Salad
8. Thoreau had to eat salad out of something
9. Imy’s Debatable Cephalopod
10. Hayley’s Good Trip
11. Stephen’s Canadian Mixed Bag
12. AmsterDAMMIT!

Overall it was a very strong start to the series with nobody’s set being an absolute dud which made coming to a consensus about an elimination a little tricky. However, picking a Potter of the Week was a little more straightforward with it coming down to a race between Steve and James. The latter did end up getting the honour, very deservedly

and then because the lower end of the spectrum, Imy, Hayley and Stephen, were so inseparable in their quality and the show still refuses to take on my suggestion of a Lipsync for Your Life to decide – nobody went home!

every single stage of grief is present in this picture.

And so, we still have a full house!