Dublin Pottery Making: Dublin’s best new pottery studio

Dublin and Pottery

While Dubliners do love spending time in the pubs and clubs of the city, a different kind of creative energy is taking hold: pottery is experiencing a vibrant resurgence. Gracing the city in November 2024, the newly opened Dublin Pottery Making studio, located on Queen Street in Smithfield D7, is a testament to the growing desire for more hands-on creative outlets. I recently had the pleasure of visiting this studio for a hands-on session, eager to explore the world of clay myself and to discover its place in modern Dublin.

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What is Pottery?

Pottery is the craft of transforming clay into any variety of shapes for a variety of uses. Clay can be shaped into something expressive like a sculpture or something more practical, like a bowl. As a potter, you have many options in how you shape your clay. It can be hand sculpted, wheel thrown or slip casted.

Hand sculpting is straightforward: clay is sculpted by the potter’s hands and with a variety of handheld sculpting tools. Wheel throwing is when clay is spun upon a mechanical wheel and the potter uses their hands to guide the clay and alter its form using their hands to smooth it out as it spins at high speeds. Slip casting is when liquid clay called “slip” is poured into a cast in order to solidify into a mould, taking on shapes that may be too difficult to achieve using other techniques. This timeless craft has remained relevant and is thriving within contemporary art spaces.

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My Experience

Dublin Pottery Making studio offers a range of experiences, including wheel throwing in the form of single sessions and 4 week courses, pottery painting, and also “make your own cup” hand sculpting sessions like the one I went on. Upon arrival, the welcoming instructor provided a clear demonstration of what I would be doing. I was shown the tools and their uses and some basic terminology was explained to me. The instructor quickly made a basic mug, outlining what she was doing along the way, and then instructed us to get started on our own creations.

There were four people in my session, including myself, and we all ended up with vastly different mugs. One was plain, another with a braided handle and the other was perfectly square. My own mug is shown in the image below.

Classes run in both the mornings and evenings and are generously 2 hours long, giving you plenty of time to flex your creative muscles. Costing only 37 euros for my session, it is one of the cheapest in Dublin. There is much value in clay making and pottery as a hobby. It soothes the mind and is a playful form of expression. It is therapeutic, liberating and allows full creative expression with no right or wrong solutions. It allows for a unique connection between the maker and the material, fostering relaxation as your hands guide you to peace of mind.

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Pottery is a wonderful way to be creative and unwind. Whether you’re shaping clay with your hands or using a spinning wheel, it’s a unique experience. In Dublin, pottery is becoming more popular, and places like the new Dublin Pottery Making studio are offering something different from the usual nightlife. These studios let people work with clay, find their artistic side, and make special things that show who they are. Pottery lets you unwind, express yourself, and feel peaceful, whether you like the precision of using a wheel or the freedom of shaping clay by hand. With affordable classes like the ones in Smithfield, everyone can enjoy this old craft, showing that pottery is alive and well in Dublin.