Pottery Painting at Emma Bridgewater

We decided to try pottery painting at Emma Bridgewater in Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent. This was booked online for Thursday morning from 11am to 12.30pm, and we paid £5 each to secure the booking. There is plenty of free parking nearby and you enter via the shop. Once you go through the door, there are steps going up but it is accessible as there is a small lift to the right hand side of the stairs.

Heading through the shop, there is a door on the left which takes you outside to a courtyard. On the left is a cafe and on the right is the decorating studio, with the factory shop a bit further down on the right.

Heading through the door to the decorating studio, there is a podium where someone greets you and checks your booking. You are then told which table you will be working at - we were at table 3. The first thing we did was to wander to the back of the studio to decide what we wanted to paint. There's a lot of choice and and the price of each item is clearly marked. There's cups, saucers, plates, jugs and even a dog bowl among the items you can choose. We decided that we would each paint an 8 1/2 inch plate.

Once we had made our choice we went to our table and waited for someone to come and ask what we had selected. Once we had done that, George and I headed over to the cafe to get some drinks to takeaway. I had a hot chocolate, which was delicious.

We each had individual palettes at the table, so we could go and collect, from the back of the room, whatever colours of glazes we wanted to choose to paint with. On each individual table was a plate showing what each colour would look like once it had been fired. I collected paints for John and I, and George fetched his own. In addition, there are also pencils, paint brushes and bowls of water on the table, along with instructions. At the front of the room are shelves with lots of different pots on that contain sponges which have been shaped in a particular way. For example, I used ones that were a butterfly shape, star shape, heart shape, treble clef and one in the shape of musical notes. They were used by dampening the sponge, painting whatever colour you wanted on the pattern, then pressing it on to your pottery. Both George and I used the sponges, and John painted freehand with his paintbrush, completely on his own. While we were working, someone came round and collected the payment for the plates we were painting, and gave us a receipt so we could collect them once they had been glazed and fired. They do ask that you don't paint on the bottom of whatever it is you are painting, as there is a number on there that identifies the item as yours.

The picture above shows John and George sitting at the table after we had finished painting our plates. When you have finished, staff ask that you take everything that needs washing over to a large sink at the back of the room and put them in there. I took over the palettes, water bowls, and used paintbrushes and sponges. The plates we had decorated were left on the table to be collected.

We really enjoyed ourselves and our three individual plates are shown below.

We can collect our decorated plates in about four weeks and we're really looking forward to seeing how they turn out. If you are unable to collect your painted pottery, they will send you your work for an additional charge.

If you would like to see the video of our morning, the YouTube video is available below.