So, how’s 2026 treating you?

How’s your Javan head?

Animal Magic

Throwdown themes are like buses, you wait for your favourites to come along and then they all come at once! Not only was it Raku Week but it was also Realistic Animal Sculpture Week, with the potters having to make a sculpture of an animal parent and their offspring

This did of course lead to a lot of very cute sculptures emphasising the maternal side of many animals with titles like “The Embrace” or “Nestled Hearts” and then you had Whitney and the mother whose stomach occasionally makes the rumblies that only her own child can satisfy

one of the specifications was that the sculptures had to feature the two animals interacting so that it was technically all one piece and because of this there was a brief moment where I thought Whitney was going to have the shark mid-Saturn Devouring His Son. However this was one of the 60% that survive infancy

a shark was quite a shrewd choice because it meant Whitney didn’t have to worry too much about fur or feather textures – a fact that he was maybe a little too pleased about

he was however the only that was going the extra mile and carving his shark’s cloaca

Her surgeon is an artist. Everyone else was too cowardly to render their cloacae, sheathes and gypsobelums. The show also clearly didn’t fork out the extra £500 for the official Throwdown illustrator’s spicy content fee. FREE THE CLOACA.

Joining Whitney’s in unique animal niches were Angharad and Kayleigh who were doing snails and a Great Crested Grebe respectively. I was glad to see at least one bird and the Great Crested Grebe is a top 10 all time bird

the rest of the list being:
Lyrebirds
Kori Bustards
Long-tailed Paradise Wydahs
Hoatzins
Ocellated Turkeys
Smews
Stupid Canadian Wolf Birds
Black Herons
and Bateleur Eagles that look like someone got bored of making a bird three quarters of the way through

imagine being born into an order of birds regarded for their majesty and you’re the one that looks like someone put wings on an olive?
Podcast idea: me just talking about my favourite birds?

Angharad’s snail was inspired by her mum who is deaf (not slimy)

despite choosing the smallest animal of the bunch, Angharad was also very much making the largest sculpture in the room. Which is a complete reverse of Whitney who was slowly realising his Great White Shark was something of a Lesser Great White Shark

but if you don’t specify a size in the brief, can you really be a selachian size queen?

According to the show, two potters were going for primates

which they then implied was Bill doing a Silver-backed Gorilla and Naveed sculpting Bill cradling his flat cap

so you know, fuck Fynn’s Lemur’s drag right?

I wanna sit the script writer down and ask them what they think a lemur is, I didn’t rewatch every episode of Zoboomafoo on a dodgy Polish website during lockdown so I could feel an ounce of joy to have you play in the faces of my favourite gay dads and their adopted son

but Fynn’s lemur was another fun choice because Raku plays very well to a black and white animal – I think I definitely would’ve gone a similar route. Do you think you could get away with doing a California Kingsnake with just an egg?

I’ll throw in a free hemiclitoris?

The third of the two primates in the room was Bill’s silver-backed gorilla mother and baby

remember it’s a mother gorilla because it’s important later when I have to have someone hold me back from writing a screed about the sexual dimorphism of gorillas and use this as evidence to defend Whitney like he’s on death row – MY CLIENT IS INNOCENT, YOUR HONOUR!

you’re not allowed to call me insufferable, I have ✨a diagnosis✨.

While most of the potters were building around a former, requiring them to remove an entire blue bin’s worth of paper from their non-cloacal orifices

or in the case of Bill, performing delicate surgery like you’re on an episode of Animal Park and one of their gorillas accidentally ate a plastic bag

however a couple of the potters had gone for alternative building methods – Fynn was pinch potting his lemur and Elham was coil building her Koalas

I was very relieved for everyone that there were no double ups of species – the closest we got was between Bill and Naveed because what is a Mandrill but a Gorilla that decided to put the ATE in PRIMATE

that’s the host of Drag Race Equatorial Guinea right there.

I would like a challenge dedicated to just making a sculpture of the weirdest animal the potters can find, I just think eventually someone has to sculpt the horrible dinosaur bird that screams like a machine gun

or the Maned Wolf which I still don’t believe isn’t someone’s DeviantArt OC from 2008 and a thinly veiled dipping of the toe into furry art. I’m sorry, I just don’t believe the Naomi Smalls proportioned dog is real

or can I interest you in the tufted deer that really buries the lede in terms of what its defining feature is

ma’am…? We can see them!

Andrew was the only one to do something that routinely features on the Top 10 Weirdest Animals Listicles

continuing the strong couple of weeks the Pangolin has had on reality TV franchises after Juicy Love Dion’s Pangolin cosplay on Drag Race

that got RuPaul to finally pledge her end of snorting fresh pangolin scales in the Drag Race restrooms

WILL KEITH DO THE SAME?

Lastly we have Emily who was doing a Eurasian Lynx and one of her cubs

much like Angharad with her snails’ eyestalks, Emily had a risky build with the Lynx and the fact the thin tufts of hair on their ears are kind of their defining feature and the raku process does not always look kindly upon fine details and delicate touches.

Why So Rhinoceros?

For this week’s Second Challenge, the potters were trying to recreate a sculpture of a Javan Rhinoceros in the style of guest judge, Nick Mackman

who enjoys an absolutely cursed blunt rotation of celebrity clientele

I don’t know how many photo references the potters had to go off but they did at least get a demonstration and Siobhan could do a pretty good Javan Rhino impression if anyone ran into any difficulty

Elham only needed a slight intervention to pull out of the uncanny Rhinosaurus territory

she ended up in 8th place, complimented mostly for the wrinkles around her rhino’s face

thus beating Whitney’s Javan Rhino that looked a bit like an AT-AT had a midlife crisis and got botox from someone without a license

I imagine he ran out time because he began carving genitals again

ON THE NAUGHTY STEP!

The judges really wanted the sculptures to have a little bit of a narrative, so Kayleigh got third place for thinking to put a leaf in the rhino’s mouth at the risk of it looking slightly like it’s gooning (I only wrote this for the pun that comes later)

I was surprised that Naveed’s squashed accordioning rhino only got fourth because the story of its crippling constipation was pretty evident

I look at that face and I can hear Homer Simpson’s scream – it’s the exact same emotion

ultimately it was Bill and Fynn up on top again – this time Bill winning out but sadly passing up on the ultimate narrative of giving his rhino a little hat

you can’t beat a rhino in a hat, just ask Lord Rataxes

and now that I’ve seamlessly brought up Babar, I just need to point out that Keith and Basil are the same person

although the show will insist he’s a cub

HE’S A BEAR, AT LEAST.

Fynn had a moment of self-doubt and thought he’d put the body of the rhino on upside down (I feel like a rhino with upside down legs a lot of the time)

so he did very well to make up the 5 minutes he lost, which are crucial in a challenge that only gave them 45 minutes

he even got commended for having the most accurately Javan head of all the rhinos

but it was no match for Bill’s randy rhino

PUT THE SCALPEL DOWN RIGHT NOW, WHITNEY.

An Official Sculpted Rhino Ranking:
1. Bill’s Unhatted Rhino
2. Fynne’s Undeclinable Javan Face Card
3. Kayleigh’s Karma Sumatran Rhino
4. Naveed’s Screaming Homerhino
5. Andrew’s Scruffy Rhino
6. Angharad’s BBL Rhino
7. Emily’s Freshly Ironed Rhino
8. Elham’s Rhinosaurus
9. A Smooth Rhino Operator

Raku-na Matata

Coming back from their initial firing all of the little animal critters were intact. Which is something of a miracle considering the added risks of anything that’s hand sculpted and the small details they all had – some much smaller than others

that shark doesn’t need a bigger ANYTHING – she’s well endowed enough!
Angharad did have the only crack in the pottery – or at least the only nonpurposeful crack

but Angharad’s was just along the base and the general consensus by the end of it was “why did I even bother with the base, literally nobody else did this?????”

crack and all, I would still argue for her getting Potter of the Week because the slime effect she achieved on the snails and the metallic sheen on the shells is OOOOOH, so damn good!

and she had the hardest time getting a firm hold on it with the tongs due to its size and the fact snails are not known for their ergonomic design

the day someone drops their raku project on those cobbles inches closer and closer every series – I was so sure that grebe was going

and if they didn’t smash then there was the combustible phase where Elham’s koala decided to scare the shit out of everyone

at least she had her grounding techniques down

love a fellow DBT queen!

In the end, Elham’s koala was completely intact, or she switched it when she disappeared into the smoke like a stage magician

so the only thing the judges could really critique was that it is slightly cartoony

and also have the longest limbs of any koala I’ve ever seen

you’ll never escape the long arm of the koa-law.

Elham seemed to be the only one really putting any emphasis on her combustible, there was of course Bill and his banana peels and sacrificial hobnobs

Elham however was using lavender and her husband’s beard trimmings

not entirely sure if Elham was doing Raku or performing one of those spell rituals you can buy on Etsy to curse someone of your choice. Or she’s protecting him from SOMEONE

THOU SHALT NOT STEAL, SIOBHAN.

What the judges were really looking for was the potters to use the raku technique to its full potential and I will say that I think Emily’s patterning on her Lynx was really good

it’s not my personal favourite of the sculptures, I think it’s in part that the pose is a little twee and unnatural? It’s very Hallmark, which is fine and certainly has its audience. I just preferred the more rugged mammalian sculptures. I think she was completely right not to carve in the fur texture because it would’ve busied up the sculpture too much whereas something like Fynn’s black and white lemur needed him to go really ham on the texture and naturally with Fynn, that was a grand success

the judges did critique him for the eyes looking a little bit too Madagascar-y

However I’ll defend him on the grounds that Black and White Ruffed Lemurs do always look a bit like they’ve just received the worst news imaginable

this is the face I pull whenever the phone rings.

Over with the other primates, Naveed was a little disappointed that both sets of his Mandrill’s colourful cheeks had somewhat faded in the raku firing

however, it was ultimately to his benefit because it does look more natural – even if Mandrills do naturally look like a gorilla with a beat face, laid wig and snatched waist (can you tell I’m having a BAD dysphoria day? I feel like a gorilla, Stacey!) it’s hard to replicate that in art without it looking uncanny.
The one thing the judges were slightly disappointed with was that the baby mandrill did look a bit like the Eraserhead baby

but who knows, maybe Mandrills did give birth to pupae. I’m not a zoologist, I’m just an autist with a bone to pick with a gorilla

I actually do think Bill’s is probably the most overall successful sculpture – I think it’s damn near perfect. I personally wouldn’t have chosen an animal that was so predominantly black for this challenge but he did a pretty good job of getting some brownish tones in the fur to add some depth. And of course, there was the silver back

choosing to believe that Bill didn’t get Potter of the Week because someone pointed out to the judges that only the male gorillas develop the distinctive silverback. And to that I say, how dare you discriminate against the genderfluid primate

the GB in LGBT now stands for Gorilla, Bill’s.

Andrew’s pangolin was also a real success, which ultimately isn’t *too* surprising considering that pangolins in general look like someone made them out of clay

the only thing really letting it down is that it does have the stance of a Minecraft Cow that’s squaring up for a fight

and Pangolins generally walk around looking a little bit like an anxious priest that poisoned the communion wine

the nefarious viziers of the animal kingdom.

Andrew’s was the only sculpture that felt just a little bit too stiff, with Kayleigh’s grebe maybe lacking some of the elegance one would expect from the bird – it looks like a warship designed to look like Dr. Yaffle

I think it just got a little muddied in the process – Great Crested Grebes always look so immaculately clean and slightly cunty, they’re basically a duck that got that red bob that hung on the wall of every salon in the late 2000s

HOWEVER! I do think that Kayeligh’s grebe chick was an inspired choice for raku given that they basically do look like someone tarred and feathered a humbug for being the worst sweet

I feel that this was a piece that was very much designed baby-first and at least the baby was successful.

Lastly we of course have Whitney and his medium-banana-sized Great White Shark

one cannot deny that this is not an impeccably good sculpture – the close-up of its face is SO GOOD

and it was Whitney really playing to his strengths with a clean and simple piece built to absolute perfection. The judges however were having none of it

and I can see their point – it doesn’t immediately strike you as being made with the raku process. I know he really wanted to do the flip of a coin baby eaters but if he *really* wanted to do a shark, maybe the Whale Shark would’ve been a better option because of its patterning

I still think Whitney’s was the one I’d be most likely to actually put in my house. I mean, it’s mostly because it was the only one with eyes that I’d feel comfortable watching me watch TV.

An Unofficial Raku Animal Pair Ranking:
1. Based Snails
2. Gorilla/illo
3. The Eyes of a Lemur-derer
4. Emily’s Family Lynx
5. Keith Goes Cold Turkey Pangolin
6. Whitney’s Complete Lack of a Maternal Instinct
7. Maury, That’s a Mandrill
8. You Sunk My Battle Grebe!
9. The Long Arm of the Koa-law

This week the judging very much felt Narrative First, which I understand and if it means spreading the wins around a bit to make it a more even seeming competition, by all means! And Emily did unarguably use the raku process to its full potential

Emily’s work clearly resonates more with the judges than it does me and at the end of the day, they’re the ones with the trophy, I am merely a peanut gallery jabbering into a slowly dying internet.
As for the elimination, I think Elham is probably the one that most benefits from the fact Whitney just wasn’t picking up what the judges were putting down and ran out of lives

the judges weren’t really featuring Whitney’s cleaner and more modern aesthetic but he was quite often in my personal top 3, so I’m gutted he’s out but he’s the sort of artist that does suffer when it comes to a competition for a TV format.

And so 8 go on to Holiday tat Week!