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Final Class Party – Fall 2019: One-Handed Throwing Competition!

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After the resounding success of our blindfolded throwing competition, we thought: ‘how else can we screw up a thrower’s capability?’.

Each pair of competitors had only one hand to use each to throw the tallest vessel in 6 minutes! Some pieces were remarkably well formed. Others, not so much! But in the end it was all for the prestige of the title, not the art.

A late addition to the rules was to demand competitors fill their free hand with their drink! Why did it take so long to figure that one out? Better late than never.

All of this restricted pottery training should produce some Kung Fu level throwing skills!

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Blindfolded Throwing Competition Throwback (Winter Final Party 2019)

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This idea emerged from other final party contests, like head-to-head speed throwing and throwing the tallest pottery inside of several minutes. It was time to make things really interesting!

This time a student at a pottery wheel was blindfolded (even before their clay was centered) but had the benefit of a coach. The first potential side benefit might’ve been to allow students to better focus on what they were feeling through their hands. However it quickly became clear how important the coach/thrower relationship was, and it was fascinating to watch the teamwork play out.

It was immediately apparent how the quality of the coaching became key to adjusting to the nuances of getting a cylinder thrown and gaining some height to ‘win’. In addition to providing a squirt of water here and there, the coach had to learn how to communicate to the thrower in a whole new way, since nobody was familiar with strictly verbalizing specific throwing movements or corrections. So both coach and thrower had to work together to overcome their respective handicap!

It was suspenseful throughout! By the end of each session it was genuinely impressive how well the students could throw blindfolded, and just about everyone was surprised and fascinated by the ‘social experiment’ aspects too!

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Yes, Even Our Dog Throws Pottery

Puppy Epiphany was one of the first videos we made here at the studio. It was a completely scrappy and spontaneous thing and done basically in a day on a pre-HD video iphone 3.

We leveraged many of the things Russell already did regularly, including looking completely bored for the “pre-inspiration sequence”. Russell was so eager to please and loved every task. Maybe not the throwing shots as much, that was a bit more complicated.

We initially weren’t getting a convincing shot of him focusing on what was happening below him as he worked the wheel. As we held him in a sitting up position we finally we realized a light shimmy made it look like he was actually gettin’ busy! After about 5 minutes of laughing we finally got the shots we needed.

The music became a critical aspect to reinforce the silly. Some hard creative commons digging on the internet for vintage recordings gave us the right tone and energy.

For the rest you’ll have to wait for the documentary! 😉