What actually happens in a three-hour workshop

People sign up for a workshop expecting a class and are usually surprised by how little talking there is.

The instruction takes about fifteen minutes, because the techniques are genuinely simple. The remaining two and three-quarter hours are you doing the thing, badly at first, with somebody coming past every few minutes to adjust your hands.

You leave with the piece

Fibre and paint sessions send you home with a finished piece the same afternoon. Pottery cannot — a thrown mug has to dry, be trimmed, be fired, be glazed and be fired again, so those pieces are collected about a fortnight later.

Every session caps at a low number, usually ten to fourteen, for the boring practical reason that one person cannot correct thirty pairs of hands.