After my first term of pottery classes I wanted to create a space to practice making pottery at home. The classes just passed too quickly and there was so much more I wanted to learn.
I started hand building in a small corner of an enclosed verandah while looking at options for making a small pottery studio. In the end the cheapest option for me was to convert our existing shed. This meant insulating and lining the walls and ceiling, replacing the broken window, installing a sink and buying some outdoor storage for the garden supplies and tools that had been evicted from the shed.
I bought a pottery wheel (Nidec Shimpo RK55), some second hand shelving, a work bench and eventually a small kiln (Nabatherm Top 45). All of my future pottery classes budget went into creating a home pottery studio instead. This worked well for me because I love practicing daily and I found some great online learning resources such as this one.
My home pottery studio is about 3.5m x 3m. As I have a wooden floor the kiln is elevated on concrete building blocks and there is also an area around the kiln that is kept clear for fire safety reasons. The kiln can only be fired when I'm not in the studio (generally I fire overnight) as kilns release noxious fumes during the firing process.
There is room for the work bench where I recycle and wedge clay (that's my plaster wedging board in the foreground). I can also use this space for hand building and glazing clay. Underneath the bench I store buckets of recycled clay, glazing and other clay tools. As you can see it's pretty tight but there is room for a very cute little dog.
On the wall adjacent to the pottery wheel I have shelves for drying thrown pots. Some I dry in plastic boxes if I need to slow the process down. I also have buckets of glaze and glaze ingredients as well as packaging materials.
