Me after watching even 5 minutes of the news.

Fenton? Fenton! FENTON!

Sorry this is a week late – I had written most of it and then the week consumed all of my spoons and I spent several days pupating within the folds of my duvet and I thought I ought to just finish it for the sake of completionism. Don’t ask me how my 100% run on Stardew Valley is going.

Bird Bath’s The Word

This week began with the potters having to make bird baths, the theme of which had to be Stoke-on-Trent as it’s the 100th anniversary of it being declared a city. It’s also the only 100th year anniversary you can really celebrate this year because 1925 gets a little bit… well, history repeats itself, doesn’t it? It was however a missed opportunity to have the potters produce a series of dog bowls celebrating The Great Serum Run

in 2025 all of those dogs would be called paid actors and Balto would become the centre of a Joe Rogan smear campaign leading to the election of the evil duck from Courage the Cowardly Dog as President of the United States

and yet still not half as stupid as anything that’s happened in the last 2 weeks.

The potters’ bird baths had to be built in two parts consisting of a thrown bowl and a slab-built plinth. Or in the case of James, a thrown bowl and a slab-built Bust of Gillian Anderson as Margaret Thatcher

which certainly matched the Molly Leigh theme, because what’s more witchcrafty than using one of the hottest women on the planet for such evil?
I did really appreciate James’s more sculptural approach to the challenge, most of the other potters defaulted to covering their plinths in sprig moulded elements to represent Stoke-on-Trent like a relative got a little overzealous with the holiday postcards and you’re slowly running out of space on your fridge to write rude words with the magnetic alphabet

but to be fair, the plinth was a tough build so I can’t blame anyone who did go for the “sticking a load of gubbins to it” method because at the end of the day, they just wanted to make sure these bird baths stayed upright and if that means just making a tube, so be it

Jonathan’s plinth would be decorated with representations of the various industries that the 6 towns of Stoke-on-Trent all specialised in. Except Fenton, fuck Fenton apparently

shout out to the producer that set Jonathan up there, my God

safe to say, Jonathan’s research for this challenge was a cursory glance through the Stoke-on-Trent wikipedia page and he was fooling nobody

there is just something so funny about reducing J.R. Mitchell to “that guy Mitchell” – and shout out to J.R. Mitchell’s wikipedia page which includes this incredible character assassination from his son, Gordon

I’ve never seen a wikipedia entry with a “Personality” section. Vivian Wilson, we’re waiting…

While Jonathan opted for an aeroplane made by some guy, unsurprisingly birds were a common theme for most of the other potters. Most notably Steve who was representing each of the 6 towns with a different bird

I want the full avian metaphorical breakdown of Stoke-on-Trent, sadly we’ll never know what the robin symbolized

there was no magpie because unlike Steve, the people of Stoke-on-Trent aren’t THIEVING MENACES

if anyone was wondering where all those missing traffic cones are going, you might want to raid Steve’s illicit moonshine shed and cheese cave.

Francesca was going for the much less panicked-year-9-analysis-of-Much-Ado-About-Nothing-SATs-Coursework (RIP, nobody misses you) with her plethora of canal-life (I made double sure I included that C)

her bird bath also had a slight floral motif with her crimped edge which is the sort of thing she seems to excel at, it was just a shame she’d made the bowl just a hair too small

She would, in fact, not try another one later.
Francesca wasn’t the only one to suffer from irritable bowl syndrome though, as Jonathan’s went a little bit floppy and had to be coaxed back into life

I’m just impressed that that worked. Mostly worked at least. We’ll get to it.

Natalie had lofty ambitions of creating a piece worthy of Trentham Gardens

and of course to match this you have to include a nod to Stoke city’s coat of arms which includes my absolute favourite bit of heraldry: a genuflecting camel

sadly the camel was going unrealised (BOO!) but we did get the eagle which looks a bit like its flying away with Natalie’s beetroot lamp if you know what I mean…

she’s putting the Bone in Bonelli’s Eagle

we don’t talk enough about how silly eagles look? Or birds of prey in general – owls are just 3 chickens in a fur coat

I have once again talked myself into a corner that I have no idea how to segue out of, so… DIANA!

she was going for a very elaborate hexagonal plinth which included an internal structure the likes of which would have had me giving up the moment I even had to contemplate it

“It’s just circles, Ariadne!” and to that I say:

I’m sorry that you’re still catching strays, Imy.

Bust to Bust

The bird baths portion of the episode got rather overshadowed by how good this Second Challenge was. Having to make a figurative bust of your loved one in only 20 minutes is peak Pottery Throwdown and it delivered in every aspect from Steve whipping out a bust of Dionysus that has the British Museum salivating a little bit

to Jonathan spending the entire challenge talking about how he was modelling his after his wife only to get to the judges and present what looks like someone in 19th century Ireland carved Bart Simpson out of a turnip

and have the judges talk about how sad and aged whoever Jonathan had made looked

I hadn’t laughed as hard as I did during this whole palaver in a long time. Please bring this challenge back every year – it’s an absolute joy to behold, and the guest judge, Sharon Griffin, was a delight

the bust of the depressed Uruk-hai Jonathan is married to didn’t come last, that went to Natalie who struggled with the facial proportions of her daughter

and before we proceed, I hope we can all understand, that nothing said here is a judgement on the looks of whoever the potters decided to base their busts on – except for James’s hot dad who might have looked like Ansel Elgort?

because the moment I truly lost it with this challenge was when the judging smash cut from Jonathan’s miserable root vegetable to Natalie’s personification of the phrase “I have no mouth, and I must scream”

But while Natalie’s may have read a little too simplistic, Francesca may have wanted to look in the mirror and take off at least 1 accessory

I was looking through my notes to see who Francesca was meant to be referencing, believe it or not it’s not Frida Kahlo as drawn by an alien who has only ever had the poster for Frida (2002) described to them by someone who used to work in Blockbusters 20 years ago. As it turns out, it was just… Someone, possibly that guy who made spitfires who nobody knows about, I’m sure he loved chunky M&S jewellery

I’m on Gordon Mitchell’s side. It’s Hatsune Miku’s Spitfire now.

However, my ABSOLUTE favourite bust of this entire episode was Diana’s of her husband that looked like Charles Dance had been cast in CATS (2019)

if you told me he was playing the part of Skimbleshanks’s father who disapproved of his tap dancing and love of trains (Skimbleshanks is actually really good neurodivergent representation, in this essay I will….) I would believe you

I hope someone one day finds this image in the Google Image results completely devoid of context.

An Official Bust Ranking:
1. Dionysus by Steviteles (Marble. 4th century BC)
2. James’s Hot Dad
3. Cats’s Deleted Charles Dance Scene
4. Francesca’s Anonymous Jewellery Mannequin
5. Jonathan’s Wife’s 13th Reason
6. Natalie’s Ellisonian Daughter

The Bath-termath

This week’s bisque firing process verged on the apocalyptic as nobody’s builds came out completely unscathed. Hit hardest was Jonathan’s whose bowl looked a bit like it had gone through its very own Blitz

but he was just mostly happy that his spitfire had survived because I think this entire challenge was just an excuse for him to finally make his little aeroplane

he tried his best to glue the bowl back together with clear glaze but it was very much a lost cause. HOWEVER, and this might be a hot take, his plinth might have secretly been the best one

I can’t say I particularly liked any of the bird baths, I think they all looked a little bit like the sort of thing your gran buys you when you get your first house and you have to smile through the pain of having to have it in your garden to make her happy. But Jonathan’s, and this is going to sound WILD for something that was competing to win Poppy Wars in February, had a subtlety that some of the others lacked

and the application of his coloured glazes was very deft and had a genuine map-like quality, he had however overcompensated with the clear glaze so it was a bit hazy up close and did make me check my Wi-Fi connection because it’s very 240p. “I liked this one because it was blurry and hard to make out” isn’t the ringing endorsement I set out to make when I started this. Sorry, Jonathan. And the others, I guess. I think this was a horrible challenge – bird baths are ugly at the best of times. But, as a piece of art, James’s was VERY impressive, especially the blackbird on Molly’s shoulder

the bowl didn’t sit perfectly, but the inside of it was decorated absolutely beautifully, which I wouldn’t expect anything less from James when confronted with a chance to slip-trail anything

meanwhile, with Jonathan, aged 4

<3

I think James’s flowers were probably my second favourite piece of any design work from this challenge

my favourite obviously being Francesca’s perfect capturing of Silly Little Guys from Medieval Marginalia

I was so pleased that Francesca managed to decorate her plinth so well because sadly her bowl had become a cropper to the kiln

and became one of the three that couldn’t hold water, alongside Jonathan’s and Natalie’s as Fenton suffered another tragedy

but the biggest concern for Natalie was the fact that a fair number of her tile sprigs had jumped ship plinth

which she ultimately didn’t try to glue back on and just painted pictures on with glaze, which was the advice Keith was giving her as the judges have been big fans of her brushwork in the past

I do have to applaud her for the bravery of trying to draw an aeroplane in the midst of a televised breakdown

I very much enjoy the panicked 10-seconds on the clock in a game of Pictionary while your dad screams “CHICKEN! CHICKEN! IS IT A CHICKEN?” at you vibe. I don’t quite know if that’s what Trentham Gardens would go for but maybe they’d put it in a very shady corner?

it’s not bad, but it was useful to finally be able to feign considering one of the obvious frontrunners for the chop especially when it was easily comparable to Diana’s which was also a plinth decorated like the average football fan’s arm

and a bowl with a map drawn in it – I did really love Diana’s bowl though, it was so neat and precise, her sgrafitto work was extremely effective

AND it had tiny little stepping stones for the smaller birds

brave of her to assume anything other than a woodpigeon just sitting in the middle of it is ever going to get to use the birdbath.

Lastly we have Steve’s bird themed bird bath

I was impressed that of all the sprigs that could’ve thrown themselves off a plinth

Steve’s extremely chunky owl managed to stay put and I would have been heartbroken if it had fallen off because it was quite beautiful in a very “I personally wouldn’t have it in my home” kind of way

but my favourite part of his bird bath was this little piece of word salad at the bottom that looks like it might be someone’s sleeper agent activation phrase

Natalie has suddenly been filled with a desire to kill the president of [NOWHERE IN PARTICULAR].

An Unofficial Bird Bath Ranking:
1. Witchcraft and Tweetery
2. Birds for a Bird Bath? Groundbreaking.
3. Francesca’s Plinth of Goofy Little Guy
4. Diana’s Hostile Architecture
5. Natalie’s Lofty Ambitions
6. Did You Know Hatsune Miku Invented The Spitfire?

With nobody’s bird baths coming out perfectly, it was very much up to either Steve or James to get Potter of the Week based purely on their designs and the amount of effort put in. I personally would have given it to James, I just feel his felt more original and like an actual piece of garden sculpture. Alas, they’re edging him for the semi-final win so Steve got his third piece in the prize room

and then it was down to Francesca and Jonathan for the boot. I really thought Francesca was doomed based on the fact she’s kind of been circling the bottom for a couple of weeks and Keith clearly loves Jonathan. However, to my surprise Jonathan was the one leaving the pottery

He’s just pleased he got to make the aeroplane.

And so, we have our quarterfinalists: