Ah, The Great Pottery Prison Experiment.

Anything can be a brooch if you try hard enough.

The World’s Your Stage

After the last few years in which the final main makes have been great big galumphing behemoths (Tulip towers, man-sized amphoras and those extremely ugly chandeliers, DEAR GOD THE CHANDELIERS) we’re back to collectable miniature nonsense as the finalists had to put together a Model Stage inspired by the Staffordshire figure groups

as part of the brief the potters needed at least 6 moveable pieces and changeable scenery which does give the impression that what the judges actually wanted was a ceramic dollhouse and I think maybe the brief could’ve been better communicated to the potters because they ended up with some impractically large piece. Like girl, where is this going?

Staffordshire figurines’ whole thing is that they haven’t got that match depth because they’re meant to stand on your mantelpiece judging you for letting a homosexual in the 90s convince you a cabinet of baby shoes is a display piece

thoroughly recommend Luxeria’s videos about Decorating Cents (American Changing Rooms but somehow MORE heinous) – they’re endlessly bingeable.

Angharad, having a theatre background, seemed to at least get that a stage is meant to be an illusion of depth, going for something much more theatrically built

it was inspired by her time spent in London working as a wigmaker and caretaker – trust me, wigs need constant supervision and you have to mind that wig trundle like a creche

which would be contrasted with her upbringing in the Welsh countryside

the link between the two being that they’d share the same sunset backdrop – which was another thing about Elham’s that kind of bugs me because her changeable scenery is on the sides which you can barely see from when face-on

the biggest problem she faced with the build was of course the support of the full on farmhouse kitchen floor having pulled a classic Grand Designs faux pas and over estimated how quickly stairs and a kitchen can be installed

the frustrating part is the concept was so good with how interactive her moveable figurines would be with the stage

we’ve all got a drawer of chaos at home that we open once a year at our own peril

I have a drawer at home that has 2 unopened packets of napkins from my parents’ wedding. They got married in Zimbabwe in 1986. They share that draw with a mobile phone from 2012, Christmas cracker prizes from the last 3 years and a deck of playing cards that’s missing the 8 of spades.

Lastly we have Fynn who was presenting a contrast of Canada and Cornwall inspired by the fact his wife’s family live over in Canada

and very much going for the bonus points earned from making a bunch of small little critters. I wish the potters had been less caged in by the need for it to be a personal tableau – I get why, it’s a TV show and a TV show demands storylines but I there might have been more diversity if they’d been given free reign. I don’t mind the occasional Personal Piece challenge but they do begin to merge into one and this series in particular has felt like we’re witnessing an art therapy session with A LOT of overly personal soul bearing. Sometimes I think I begin to know too much about these people and a little more mystique wouldn’t go amiss.

Feeling Blue

I am personally of the opinion that the Second Challenge shouldn’t exist in the final and they’d be better off giving them the 2 hours it takes to rig, shoot and re-rig a Throwdown as extra time for the Main Make. I also think it only really serves to demoralise whoever comes third – I don’t think anyone who has come third in the last Second Challenge has ever won the show, I know it’s been a long time since someone managed it on Sewing Bee.
Alas, there is a Second Challenge and it was for the potters to make a bulbous vase with a sodium silicate finish that gives it a crackled texture that I’d love to see them using in a main make next year

the effect is gained by expanding the bulbousness of the vase after putting on and drying the coloured glaze and sodium silicate solution – meaning the hardest part of the whole thing was resisting touching the outside of the vessel as you were doing it, illustrated perfectly by Elham and Angharad’s Claws of Frustration

meanwhile Fynn was having a splendid go of it all, even having the time to finesse the base

and flew to the top of the leaderboard for his well considered rim

whereas Elham is just not an enthused rimmer

they did at least all manage to get the crackle effect so the challenge thankfully wasn’t a complete washout for everyone – it literally just came down to the exaggeratedness of the bulbocity which ultimately Elham lost

and Angharad finishing off in second position

and that’s it for the rather non-event of a second challenge. Truly 10 minutes of TV that could’ve been an email.

An Official Ranking:
1. Fynn’s Crackling Good Rim
2. Angharad’s Sodium Silver-cate Medaling Vase
3. Putting the RIM in TRIM

Act Your Stage

Coming back after the initial firing wasn’t the most triumphant start to the last leg of the competition as everyone’s stages were suffering from varying degrees of stress cracks. Nothing a little bit of landlord solutioning couldn’t solve though

the judges did do a very good job of trying to keep everything jovial and light – very much focusing on the positives of each piece, which they all certainly had much of. I think in part because as much as they all came in on an even track record, I think most of us would’ve eaten a debranded aztec-patterned baseball cap if a certain someone didn’t win

that being said, I do think ultimately this felt like a more balanced challenge than some of the previous ones with there being facets of it that suited all three of the finalists. Elham is extremely good at small, cute little details and the strongest parts of her final model stage were undoubtedly the figurines

sure, they’re living in a haunted house someone is trying to renovate on Homes Under The Hammer without having had a survey done for subterranean lairs in the basement and I have some concerns about the nappyscape of the abode

but I think the little model that hung from the chandelier was my favourite part of any of the builds

which is in fact a lie because… Fynn made dachshunds and I am but a simple bitch

Fynn’s certainly lives up to his extremely strong illustrative style and I really do love it, it reminds me a lot of the aesthetic of Mary and Max

but I do wonder if it perhaps needed a couple more pops of colour, just to help everything read a little more clearly? The Canadian side did have the forest backdrop, which helped

and next series I assume we can expect to see Keith dabbling in statement jewellery

can the first Throwdown Challenge be for them all to make personal brooches which Keith wears for the remainder of the series and takes one off every time someone gets eliminated in the style of Miss Jay’s blazer on ANTM

there is a potently strong temptation to recap Tyra Banks’s Next Top Faustian Reboot – I don’t know how she thinks this can end up any way other than bombastically terribly for herself. But I do look forward to the episode wherein the models have to do a photoshoot as the flavours of Tyra’s ice-cream brand and some poor meek Mormon girl called Crystalynne gets eliminated for not embodying the spirit of Matcha Mochi Dough-chi to her full potential

BRING ON THE REPARATIONS CYCLE!

Lastly we have Angharad who had a very strange edit in the second half of the Main Make, leading us to believe she had like 30 minutes to glaze all of her figurines and given how well detailed and neat they all are, I just don’t think she was as “scatterbrained” as they were kind of making out she was

I do quite like the Weeble-ness of all her figurines and from what we saw of everyone in the Family VT Insert – she got amazing likenesses for everyone. Unfortunately, Keith didn’t say that he would wear the London skyline as a brooch

in terms of changeability between the scenes, I think Angharad definitely took things the furthest – there could maybe have been a couple more details to flesh out the family farm side of things which looked a bit flat

but she was very dedicated to huffing glaze fumes for her wigs instead

really craving a forbidden milkshake right about now.

An Unofficial Model Stage Ranking:
1. Fynn’s Cana-do Attitude
2. Wig? Did you just say Wig?
3. Elham’s Diorama of Barbarian (2022)

In an ideal world all three of them would have finished with flawless model stages, thus doubling the population of Model Stages in the world (I’m convinced this is another clay ring water bottle situation)

however, all of them had some quite significant crackages but Fynn did greatly benefit from having the least visible of them all

and he is, extremely deservedly, our Pottery Throwdown 2026 Champion

you could tell from that very first Soup Set challenge that there was something special about him and his approach to pottery. And a very well done to Angharad and Elham as runners-up

Angharad was another one that I had picked for the final from that very first challenge and she very really came at risk of being eliminated until the very end whereas Elham was a bit more of a grower but I’m very happy for a local girlie to have made it so far!

And thank you to everyone who has enjoyed the recaps, I know the schedule has been a bit patchy but we got them all done! And if you have enjoyed them and feel like contributing to the running of the blog, you can drop a tip over at my Ko-Fi HERE.

And now for my personal favourite part of every series, The Alternate Montage!

And that’s it for another year!