She’s more of a Tomato Figurehead, really.

I started reading about pet eels in Ancient Rome and suddenly it was Wednesday.

Trevi, Set, Go!

Bathroom Week remains on permanent hiatus as the show refuses to engage with my wish for a bidet inspire by favourite haikus

Bathroom Week is dead and we have killed him. Instead we have devolved into a sort of agnostic Waterworks Week, with the challenge this time to create a Wall-mounted Fountain inspired by The Trevi Fountain in as much as they wanted something vaguely baroque and because they knew Elham had been there one time

naturally all of this resulted in a slew of Gods and Goddesses – both named and unnamed, Angharad sort of gestured vaguely in the direction of some naiads

while Bill went with the slightly more expected facade of Neptune that got a generously flattering sketch

and adding a bit of Percy Jackson flare by basing the face of Neptune on his own father

this episode was put together in such a way that from about the 10 minute mark there was very little suspense as to who would go home because Bill seemed to just be looking for a quiet place to go and cry in

he had a real struggle with his inner bowl (I will not be explaining the double-skinned bowl, I did not understand it, I shall blindly trust this show on that front) but Bill jumped the gun slightly, taking it out a little bit too early

he had initially had grand plans of laying an octopus within the bowl of his fountain but this gradually grew smaller in scope to the point of just being a collection of tiny octopi sprigs

and while Bill pondered if he’d rather fight 1 octopus-sized minnow or 15 minnow-sized octopi, Elham was helping her neighbour ascend to her rightful Godhood status

Sebastian took 50 arrows to the stomach and all he got was a lousy sainthood! if he’d known he could just prune some hedges…

I would say “Where’s my recognition as a Goddess!?” but my family read this and I can’t have the fact I don’t do anything around the house getting out. MY NAILS ARE TOO PRETTY FOR MANUAL LABOUR

I’m still trying to manifest that long-rumoured and never materialising Nail Art version of Glow Up. I blame Netflix for stealing the title “Nailed It!”

The only potter not going for a humanoid facade on their fountain was Fynn, who was instead going for a blinged out eel and not a diagram of the internal structure of an ear as the illustration would have you believe

adding “Eels” to the list of things that are actually really hard to draw, just below Horses, Motorbikes and Cowboy Hats.
I was fascinated to learn about wealthy people in Ancient Rome keeping Moray Eels as pets and giving them sick piercings. And being so attached to them that they often resulted in the most searing of reads, Nero wasn’t the only one watching Rome burn:

Source – it’s a really interesting short read about eels kept in Rome.

Tile Away The Hours

This week’s Second Challenge was being overseen by guest judge Cleo Mussi

the challenge being only tangentially related to pottery, with the potters having to break up plates in order to make a mosaic tile, somewhat in the style of Cleo’s own works

the subject of this challenge being this little crate of sliced fruit which makes me feel physically unwell

I think it’s the palpable obviousness that it was all cut 2 hours before this challenge started, so I can’t really blame Angharad for ignoring the crate of rotting fruit to instead try and conjure up her best memory of a tomato

I think that approach both helped and hindered her – it meant she didn’t get bogged down in the small details of a chosen fruit but came at the expense of maybe looking a little bit like it was made by someone with level 3 aphantasia

especially when you put it next to something like Elham’s pomegranate pieces

she was definitely the runaway success of the challenge. I wasn’t that surprised that she was so good, she’s got a very good artistic eye for work like this. Whereas I also expected Bill, who does really well with more tactile builds, to kind of struggle with something that required a bit more finesse

his final pieces wasn’t bad, it was just a lot more jagged and sharp in its visual style than what Cleo was obviously looking for

he probably also should’ve just concentrated on the lemon rather than creating his own Dutch Golden Age still life about ones own mortal flesh and the ravages of time

the lemon could’ve been so effective if he hadn’t been doing the kiwi too, especially given that Fynn was doing the kiwi

and that sound you can hear is the chorus of that obligatory person everyone knows who tells you how good kiwi fruits are for dealing with constipation and how that’s the greatest piece of advice that Michael Moseley ever gave the world. They’re a vocal and dedicated minority. I will remain of the opinion that kiwi fruit are horrible things that should stop stealing the identity of honourable beings such as the Kiwi Bird

he is a precious baby who doesn’t deserve identity theft.

An Official Mosaic Tile Ranking:
1. The Top Seeded Player
2. A Ki-wee Bit Short of Gold
3. What’s Your Best Memory of a Tomato?
4. Lemon Arty

Trickle or Treat

Despite having gone through the ringer with the making of his basin and occasional personal fortress of solitude

Bill returned to a yet-to-be-wall-mounted fountain that was remarkably intact

whereas the others were coming back to cracks and fractures of various sizes and concerns

but there’s that old Get Out of Jail Free card with the fountains having to look old or aged

an effect that the judges were looking to be achieved more through glazes than combustion. Speaking of the glazes, I was really worried for Bill because every time they cut to him he was just slathering more and more colours onto the face of Neptune

Rich and Keith did their best to stage an entirely unsuccessful picketing of the glaze station

it’s like Bill was set on a one man mission to discover what happen when you layer every single oxide! So I can’t really be shocked that it ended up looking a little bit like something that Dolce and Gabbana gets in trouble for making

which is the wrong flavour of Italian we were going for!
The whole thing was just a little bit too heavy – the deep, almost black, blue of Neptune’s face and the rust-coloured trim really take away from the more subtle and deft work on the kelpies at the bottom

if he’d glazed the entire thing in the same style as the Kelpies, I genuinely think he might not have gone because of how indecipherable Angharad’s ended up being

if they wanted aged, it does look old and worn enough for there to be a real risk of a Spanish grandmother trying to retouch it

she did have a slight scare with her glazing, which I’m sure may have impacted the broader picture, as she mixed up the Black Iron Oxide and the Cobalt Oxide

luckily she had Bill on hand to try and discern the mistake for her, after all he was extremely familiar with every shade of blue oxide by the time he’d finished shellacking Neptune’s face into oblivion

that being said, the accidentally blue basin was maybe the best part of Angharad’s build

although I did appreciate the effort she’d put in to crafting an internal structure that allowed her to give the effect that the jug the Unnamed Water Goddess No.352 was gently pouring

whereas Bill’s Neptune was sort of just projectile vomiting

which I get some fountains do, but part of the point of this challenge seemed to be about how the back wall of the fountain interacted with the water and his just didn’t.

Elham and Fynn were the clear frontrunners, I really appreciate Fynn for going for something a little more colourful, it helped set him well apart from everyone else

I do think it struggles to read coherently on TV because the camera sort of flattens the 3D of it all but it’s creative, well built and had a very good control of the glazes – the effect he got in the basin is absolutely spectacular

I wanna lick it so badly.

Elham also had a really good handling of her glazes, I’m not a huge fan of the overall design, but she’s just very good at creating soft textures in clay

and the way her water spilled over the basket was probably the best utilisation of water amongst all the builds

An Unofficial Wall-mounted Fountain Ranking:
1. Pierced Fins by Pierced Fynn
2. Debbie’s Cup Runneth Over
3. Angharad’s Fountain of Aquari-ish
=. Defending Bill Until I’m Blue In The Face

Fynn and Elham were the clearest contenders for Potter of the Week. Part of me did think that Fynn had edged Elham out just for the unique and slightly more interesting take on the challenge, but I fully get why they went with Elham

it also means everyone is going in to the final with 2 wins under their belts as unfortunately it is Bill we’re saying goodbye to ahead of the final

I’ve loved seeing him grow as a potter and presence on the show over the last 9 weeks, not to get all Parasocial™ about it but it’s been a long time since I’ve felt more connected to a contestant on a TV show.

And so, we have our finalists!