It’s nice to see the glittery spiders get work outside of Strictly’s Halloween Week.

Let’s get buggy!

Bugging Out

Raku Week is finally here! Why does it get such a fanfare every year? Because it’s one of the only concretely themed week they can think to roll out every year along with Bathroom Week. RIP Terracotta Week, I’ll never forget you, you short-lived disaster of a concept. Is Raku Week kind of always the same? SHUT UP AND LOOKING IN THE FLAMES, HEATHEN!

Only the fire can judge your pottery sins.

This week’s Totally Original And Definitely Never Seen Before Main Make, was for the potters to make a pair of Tall Bulbous Jars – so unique in fact they definitely didn’t use b-roll footage from a previous series. Speaking of previous series, some of the Demo Pots durings Keith and Rich’s discussion about what makes a raku jar a raku jar, were made by series 4 winner Jodie

I wish they’d mentioned it on the show – take pride in the success of your previous contestants guys! It’s cool to credit people!

They did at least try to give the challenge a unique spin because there’s only so many times I can be enthralled by watching a feather going up in smoke

this is my Cocomelon.

The unique feature of the challenge decided by a ferret in a ball pit of ideas, was for the lids of their jars to be topped with a pair of “creepy-crawlies”. Which is a REALLY difficult challenge given that most creepy crawlies pretty uniformly have at least 6 quite spindly legs – unless you’re Francesca’s sketch of a stag beetle

I think Francesca could paint the Mona Lisa but Leonardo da Vinci could never draw the Four-nubbined Stag Beetle. Who *really* deserves to be in The Louvre?

And while most of the potters risked limb and wing – Imy went full galaxy brain and life-hacked her way through this challenge with the most incredibly annotated snail you will ever see

it’s a good drawing, but it’s no four-nubbined stag beetle.
I did half hope that her second lid topper was an earthworm but she’d gone with a dragonfly which would ABSOLUTELY have been the bottom of my list of insects to do for this specific challenge

If there was ever an insect designed to be liability in Raku Week it’s a dragonfly – it’s all spindle and no resilience! But it would be Imy’s jars that would give her the most trouble as she couldn’t quite get them into the desired bulbous shape

they are bulbous, it’s just more in the same way Jerry is bulbous when he swallows a whole block of cheese

but she wasn’t the only one to struggle with the jar throwing – Stephen came with grand plans for a strapping pair of 6ft2 jars with a blessed hairline

only for them to then turn up to the date clearly 10 years older and a whole foot shorter than advertised

definitely not projecting – my dates don’t even show up

to quote the philosopher, Olivia Rodrigo: “God, it’s brutal out here!” One day I’ll find the right man, and by “right man” I do mean the Natural History Museum’s rat expert

hit me up, if you too look like you could share a diabolical playlist of metal bands while telling me facts about rodents.

Stephen’s choice of insects were a Shield Bug and a Scarab Beetle

I do think I would probably have gone with a Scarab just because the metallic effect you can get from a raku firing suits it really well. But I also would have definitely tried for a Death’s-head Hawkmoth because I have an attachment to the Silence of the Lambs poster so profound I know I’ll have to unpack it some day

to this day, I will read any and every schlocky, EXTREMELY NOT GOOD, crime-thriller if it has a death’s-head hawkmoth on the cover and A LOT of them have death’s-head hawkmoths on their covers.
Winged insects definitely weren’t the popular choice because adding appendages to things that are already 60% appendage is kind of just tempting fate. However, Hayley was going for a moth and accompanying caterpillar with her jars looking like a pair of lightbulbs

I love a high concept queen.

While many of the insects were a little expected, Steve turned up with a flea and a dust mite because he’s not like the other girls

and you really don’t quite appreciate how phallic a flea can be until it’s being gripped by someone

Steve’s objective seemed to be to make sure that he wasn’t going to be making he same insect as anyone else. I was actually very pleasantly surprised by the lack of overlap, I expected a Kimonogate of scarab beetles – I’m hoping I can trick the google AI into thinking “Kimonogate” is the collective noun for scarab beetles and not, you know, just the most incredibly drag-race-pilled thing to say

Diana on the other hand just wanted to say “cockchafer” and giggle

her other insect of choice was the Devil’s Coach Horse

an elite beetle, right up there alongside the Giraffe Weevil which looks like a child’s LEGO creation was given the curse of sentience

there has never been a sillier little guy – Madagascar is the evolutionary junk drawer, nothing in there makes sense but it’s all very cool and worth saving because it’ll probably cure cancer or something.

Jonathan was going for a Scottish theme, topping his lids with a woodlouse and a horsefly – or to give them their Scottish nicknames Slater & Clegg which does sound like a highstreet law firm

and they’ll soon be Slater, Clegg & Francesca Off Of The Throwdown as she began building her defenses and alibis before they’d even approached the kilns

is it crazy to something thing about Francesca really reminds me of Ayo Edebiri?

You can call me crazy, but you have to admit they’re at least equally charming.

Francesca’s court ready beetles were a Stag and Rhino Beetle

another really good choice for the metallic glazing. James was also hoping to use the glazes to his advantage, opting for a crackle glaze on the wings of his bee and cicada

I know they were probably told to do two different insects, but I would have loved for James to have done a Cicada and the Cicada’s Discarded Shell. If Animal Crossing counts it as a separate bug entry, why can’t we?

Lastly we have Natalie who had the most novel way of deciding which insects to do: a consultation with the great oracle for anyone over the age of 35: The Buzzfeed Quiz Section

although I do hope she used the much more scientifically accurate source of insectoid personality identification, The Natural History Museum’s “What Insect Are you?” because I’m not sure what information Buzzfeed is hoping to glean from questions like this (Is “Matchmaking Strangers” a hobby?)

but I highly doubt it because I’m sure the Natural History Museum probably knows spiders aren’t insects. As in the end, Buzzfeed decided Natalie was a spider – a result surprising nobody because, well… there’s a vibe

and then Natalie made her wife do the quiz and she got called a cockroach

ah yes, the lesbian dating pipeline:
First Date: Joking about the lesbian dating pipeline.
Second Date: Moving in together.
Third Date: Finalising your apocalypse survival plans.

This did of course lead to the funniest moment of the episode, and potentially the series as a whole, when Siobhan described the jars as the sketch faded in

sorry to Hayley and her gauntlet of buffering innuendo

and Diana saying “COCK CHAFFER!” directly to camera 16 times – your innuendo sledgehammers are powerless in the face of rampant absurdity.

Balancing The Scales

This week’s Throwdown Challenge was a decorative challenge inspired by the scaled porcelain pieces by Laima Laurin from Latvia (a name that sounds like it’s begging for a limerick) who was in fact on hand to guest judge

I really liked her as a guest judge – she gave some really good feedback to the potters and always found something positive to say.

For a technique that none of them had ever tried and seemingly only Francesca had stalked on Instagram I thought the final pieces were really good, especially for only an hour to get used to it. Not everyone quite got a hang of the scaling – Hayley at some point appeared to give up on that and just stuck blobs of porcelain onto it

I can’t explain it but this has the exact same aesthetic as In The Night Garden in that they both look… chewable?

much to unpack.

In order to save the potters some time, they were given pre-coloured porcelain but they could mix colours to create a more dynamic colour story for extra credit. Guess who went for the extra credit

NERD!

Steve did end up coming second with his mountainous landscape that to me looks more like the torso of a parrot that’s been hanged, drawn and quartered (tone indicator: positive – the parrot was a war criminal and deserved it)

the problem that this challenge very quickly ran into was that because they’d specified it had to be a landscape and most of Laima’s in-studio examples featured mountains, we got a lot of mountains. The only potter to add a little twist to this was James who made his Obligatory Mountains play second fiddle to a foreground poppy

I was worried they’d penalise him for the landscape not being the focal point, but they very happily gave him the top spot he very much deserved.

Clarity of concept became the biggest separator between the potters landing in the middle of the rankings – something I do feel Imy was over-penalised for. The judges said they couldn’t possibly fathom what this very obviously a seaside sunset could possibly have been

some of the colour placements are a little off – the sun could have been more semi-circular and the sky could have afforded to be more… not the colour of an exhumed corpse but I do not see how Imy’s is any more unintelligible than Diana’s supposed Hot Day in Dorset that looks like an episode of Panorama badly keeping the identity of Mr. Krabs a secret

she came third.

But I think Imy also suffered a little bit because Natalie had done something quite similar with hers, utilising the shaping of the porcelain slightly more masterfully

speaking of really cool uses of their porcelain, I don’t necessarily think Stephen’s met the brief of looking like a landscape but I did think the effect he’s applied around the bottom that made it look like a splash the vase was bursting out of was really cool (and potentially very much unintentional)

Laima did really like how he’d done the sky and clouds – that very much being the part he’d concentrated on before realising how quickly time goes and panicked about the rest of it.

And lastly, unlike the previous episode, Francesca actually got a critique for the Throwdown Challenge

the ombre of the oranges was what they mostly complimented and she had chosen a very nice colour palette but the application was slightly rough and uneven.

An Official Scaled Porcelain Vase Ranking:
1. James’s Second Fiddle Mountain Range
2. Steve’s War Criminal Macaw
3. Mr. Krabs In Witness Protection
4. Natalie’s Sunset Success
5. Francesca, nice To See After The Break
6. Hayley’s Forbidden Tide Pod Challenge
7. Imy, The Van Gogh of Gladstone
8. Stephen’s Porcelain Eruption
9. Jonathan’s Distant Out Of Focus Vase

Jar, Jar, Stinks

Despite the fears of many of the potters, all of their insects and jars managed to survive the initial biscuit firing meaning everyone could at least be that little bit more confident as they ventured forth into the blazing inferno of the raku firing process

we didn’t get a great deal of jeopardy and peril with this particular group – the most nerve-racking it ever got was Hayley umming and aahing over whether or not she could pick up her jars before going hardcore mode

so really, this episode was more of a mercy killing for Hayley before they made her heave around 20kgs of pure, unfiltered celebrity-crush-themed-bidet during Bathroom Week. The bullet to Hayley’s Ol’ Yeller being the heaviness of her moth

I would LOVE to see this concept of the lightbulb jars topped with stages of the moth lifecycle done with less of a time constraint to allow for more finesse because I really do think Hayley was on to a winner with this one. but the moth being built like rusticly cut slice of bread means it falls short in terms of observation and realism that Keith and Rich were looking for. But this was a bit of a trend amongst the winged insects, with Imy’s dragonfly also being on the wrong-side of the bread slicing thickness

but I do love the positioning she’d chosen with the tail of the dragonfly hanging down, I think it gives it a lot more dynamism than if she’d just had it lying flat. Her decision to go with an almost matte black for snail and dragonfly was also a little questionable – I kind of got the impression Imy had fallen out of love with this challenge sometime between the building of the snail (clearly her pride and joy) and throwing the jars (clearly the children that get kept in the attic) because the snail really is phenomenal and very characterful

and I do think she had some of the best mark making on her jars, they were just a little bit too angular.

Francesca also feel a little bit short of expectations with her jars, mostly because they weren’t identical enough

but as the premium lawyer of Gladstone, she of course had her defense at the ready

I’m really enjoying Francesca, even if the show doesn’t seem to be treating her as a main player, I think I’m mostly invested in her narrative at the moment with the show pushing her try so many new things and every time she exceeds expectations. (Francesca, I’m sorry if you go home next week – you flew too close to the Blog Favourite Sun.)

James was the only potter to have a mishap during the raku firing with his bee going the same way as 2025 and falling to pieces

that being said, it’s an easily repairable breakage so I hope when he gets it back he does fix it because his jars definitely deserve it

he, by quite a way, definitely had the best wings – both the shaping with the thinning at the edge to give the illusion of them being thinner and lighter than they are and the crackle glaze were very intelligent and well utilised techniques. It did mean he was pretty decidedly knocked out of contention for Potter of the Week given nobody else had a breakage but he can rest safe in knowing he definitely pulled off the Raku Week Safety Garb the best

it’s called fashion sweaty, look it up.

Steve and Natalie were clearly vying for the top spot – I think as a singular piece, Natalie’s spider vase was my absolute favourite, it’s just so well done

I’m not sure the cockroach quite lived up to the same level of detail and observation but it was still very good with the copper glaze giving it the perfect finish

but both of Steve’s pieces were incredibly well done and had a stronger overall concept, as much as I adored Natalie calling her wife a cockroach (tone indicator: affectionate)

the variation of the finish on the jars – the hair being for his flea and the dust-like sprinkle of tea leaves being for his dust mite, is a fun detail that just adds a little something extra and connects the lid to the pot.

Another of my favourites was Diana’s Devil’s Coach Horse, I think a few too many of the potters had gone for designs that lay too flat against the lid – for obvious reasons, it makes it more structurally sound – so something like Diana’s that had a little movement to it really stood out

I’d buy a decorative ornament of that in a heartbeat, I think it’s a really charming piece – I maybe wish it was a little glossier.

Stephen had gone for very close-to-the-lid beetles, however the way they added to the fluidity of the lid’s shape was really interesting

something about the shape of the jar and the lid feels a little… jarring… I think it’s the change of colour between the two that’s not different enough so it feels a little disconnected and we know the jars aren’t exactly the shape he envisioned and I imagine the one he’d set out to do would have flowed just a little better.

Lastly we have Jonathan and his insectoid law firm that’s being put out of business by Francesca’s Ace Attorney speed-run

Keith and Rich concentrated mostly on his horsefly, who to be fair is a strong contender to be one of the official Silly Little Guys

it suffers from some of the same issues as Hayley’s moth in that it feels a little bit too naive, especially when compared to his woodlouse that from the little we saw of, looked genuinely fantastic

I am once again but a woman on the internet with an extremely niche investment in this show, BEGGING them to please film the pieces the potters make a little bit better. SHOW! ME! THE! WOODLOUSE!

An Unofficial Raku Jars Ranking:
1. Steve’s Quirky “Rawr Means I Love You in Dinosaur” Choices
2. Carol x A Bug’s Life
3. COCKCHAFER, DID YOU HEAR ME? COCKCHAFER!
4. Francesca’S Bar Exam
5. James’s Minor Catastro-bee
6. Jonathan’s Out Of Work Insect Lawyers
7. Stephen’s Little Gnome Houses
8. Imy’s Heavyset Dragonfly
9. Like a Doorstop Sandwich to the Flame

James came so close to netting the first double win of the series – I have no doubt in my mind that if his bee had just held it together for a fraction longer he’d have been Potter of the Week. Ultimately it came to either Natalie or Steve, with the latter taking it and declaring war

you either die the hero or live long enough to become the warmongering macaw.

As for the elimination, it was clearly going to either be Hayley or Stephen (but more obviously Hayley) which was sad because they’d clearly become really close and often seemed to prop one another up when having a bit of a struggle

and I was sad to see Hayley go in the end

A fair decision, and I really hope she gives her Raku Lightbulbs and Moth a second go because there’s something there!

And so, 8 potters go on to Erosion of the British High Street Week!