Thurlestone House Pottery

After retiring from General Practice, I enrolled on a ceramics evening class, and now have my own pottery studio in my garden shed.

I retired 10 years ago and, after spending a couple of years renovating an old property, I felt I needed a new challenge and started art classes. After 18 months I realised that painting was nor my forte and I enrolled on an a Ceramics for Beginners evening class in Winchester. I found working with clay extremely satisfying and, inspired by my evening classes, during lockdown I refurbished my old garden shed as a pottery studio, complete with wheel and kiln. For the last 4 years I have been experimenting in various techniques and have particularly enjoyed making moulds for slip casting, which I use to create Art Deco shaped vases. I also like to create interesting pots by cutting or drilling into leather hard clay. Glazing is still a new science to me and I have had plenty of disasters to accompany my successes. As a child I would wake up excited at the thought of working on one of the many Balsa model aeroplanes I made, and Ceramics has rekindled that childhood excitement.
David Entwisle