Ardchattan Pottery Course Autumn 2026

Ardchattan Pottery Course – Autumn 2026

7–8 November & 14–15 November 2026

The Ardchattan Centre, Bonawe, near Oban

Join us for a complete pottery experience at The Ardchattan Centre, taking clay from your first throw on the wheel through to hand-building, trimming, decorating and ultimately finished, glazed pots.

The course runs over two weekends, with the week between allowing your freshly made pots to dry to leather hard, ready to be trimmed, refined and decorated when you return.

Teaching is relaxed and hands-on, with just five people on the wheels at a time and two experienced potters guiding you throughout. During your booked sessions, everyone has a wheel entirely to themselves.

No experience is needed. Complete beginners are very welcome, while those who have thrown before will have plenty of opportunity to push things a little further.

Your Wheel, Your Time

Each day is divided into three wheel sessions: morning, midday and afternoon.

When booking, you choose your preferred 2-hour wheel session. That reserves your own wheel for the same time on both weekends, giving you:

2 hours on Weekend One + 2 hours on Weekend Two = 4 hours of dedicated wheel time.

But your booked wheel session is not the limit of your day.

On your chosen day, Saturday or Sunday, you’re welcome to arrive as early as you like, stay as late as you like and spend the whole day making.

Bring some lunch, settle in and make a day of it. The Ardchattan Centre has some of the best coffees available to keep us all caffinated on the day.

More Than Just the Wheel

Outside your dedicated wheel sessions, the workshop remains open for you to explore pottery at your own pace.

Try slab building, coil pots, hand-building, sculpture, carving, texture and whatever other peculiar clay-based idea enters your head.

We’ll have tools, clay and guidance available throughout, so you can follow a project of your own or simply experiment.

Sometimes the things made away from the wheel end up stealing the show.

New for Autumn: Two Stoneware Clays

Alongside our forgiving class stoneware, we’re bringing a beautiful white-firing stoneware to Ardchattan this autumn.

The white clay is particularly suited to more refined throwing and anyone wanting to push their wheel skills a little further, but it is still perfectly suitable for beginners who simply fancy trying something different.

And that lovely clean white surface gives us another excuse to introduce more colour...

Paint, Draw, Carve & Decorate

We’ve considerably expanded our collection of underglazes, giving you a much broader palette for adding colour, drawings, patterns and fine detail to your work.

The new white stoneware makes a particularly good canvas, so this autumn we’re adding something new to the course:

Make & Decorate Your Own Ceramic Tile

Make yourself a tile from the white stoneware and then treat it as a miniature ceramic canvas.

Paint a picture. Draw. Carve. Stamp. Add patterns. Attempt fine art. Produce something magnificently questionable.

Bring photographs, sketches or saved ideas with you if you fancy. The more creative the better. We love a challenge.

Once finished, your tile will be fired alongside the rest of your work and become another permanent piece from the course.

Weekend One – 7 & 8 November

Weekend One is all about making.

During your dedicated 2-hour wheel session, we’ll introduce or refresh the fundamentals of throwing, from centring clay through to opening, pulling walls and beginning to control shape.

With only five wheels and two tutors, there’s plenty of individual guidance and plenty of clay to practise with.

Outside your wheel session, the rest of the day is yours for hand-building, sculpture, tiles and experimentation.

At the end of the weekend, we carefully tuck everything away and allow your work to slowly dry to leather hard.

Weekend Two – 14 & 15 November

A week later, you return to discover that your soft, wobbly creations have become considerably more cooperative.

Your second 2-hour wheel session focuses on the next stage of the process: trimming and refining your pots.

We’ll work on bases, curves and proportions, remove unnecessary weight, carve, decorate and generally persuade everything towards its final form.

Again, the workshop is yours for the rest of the day, so you can continue hand-building, decorating and finishing other pieces alongside your wheel work.

This is often the weekend when things suddenly start looking suspiciously like proper pottery.

Glazing & Firing

On the second weekend, you’ll choose from our selection of glazes and finishes.

Then the slightly less glamorous bit becomes our problem.

We carefully transport everything back to the pottery, finish drying your work and begin the firing process. Your pieces are bisque fired, glazed and fired again before finally emerging as finished ceramics.

The whole process can take up to four weeks, after which we’ll arrange to reunite you with your considerably shinier creations.

All the kiln anxiety is ours. You just get the pots.

Important Booking Information – Please Read

When you receive your ticket, you may notice that it shows 10am on Saturday 7 November as the event start time.

This is the overall event start time generated by the booking system. It is NOT necessarily your booked wheel time.

👉 Your actual wheel session day and time is shown separately on your ticket and corresponds to the time you selected when booking.

For example, if you book the Sunday 3pm–5pm session, your wheel is reserved for you from 3pm–5pm on Sunday of both weekends, regardless of the 10am Saturday event time shown elsewhere on the ticket.

You can still arrive earlier and stay later on your booked day. Outside your allocated wheel session, you’re free to get stuck into all the other making activities.

Because there are only five wheels, your allocated wheel time cannot normally be moved on the day, so please double-check the session shown on your ticket before setting off.

What Your Ticket Includes

• Two full weekends of pottery

• Two dedicated 2-hour wheel sessions

• 4 hours total wheel time

• Your own wheel throughout those sessions

• All-day workshop access on your booked day each weekend

• Maximum 5 people per wheel session

• 2 experienced tutors throughout

• Two stoneware clays, including our new white-firing body

• Hand-building, slab, coil and sculpture

• Expanded underglaze colours and decoration

• New make-and-decorate ceramic tile activity

• All clay and materials

• Glazing and firing of your finished work

• Absolutely no previous pottery experience required

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From your first lump of clay to finished ceramics, this course gives you the time, materials, space and support to experience much more of pottery than simply having a quick shot on a wheel.

Come for your wheel session. Stay for the day. Bring lunch, bring ideas and prepare to get muddy.

Ready to Book?

Below you can choose your wheel time. Your booking secures the same 2-hour wheel session on both weekends.

Remember, that is simply your reserved time on the wheel. On your booked day, you’re welcome to arrive earlier and stay later to make the most of everything else happening in the workshop.