The PotteryExperience

Hazel and Oli opened The Pottery Experience on Fern Avenue on 19 April 2019, after Hazel spent eight years managing a rival painting-pottery café and decided to run her own version of the idea. Customers choose between painting ready-made blanks, hand-building or throwing on the wheel, with pieces glazed and fired on site before collection weeks later. Hazel studied sculpture in Brighton, where she and Oli met, and the classes are pitched at complete beginners rather than practising ceramicists. Sessions run for both adults and, in the case of painting, children from any age, with wheel-throwing tasters restricted to twelve and over. The pair built out much of the studio themselves before opening, and the business now runs birthday parties and corporate bookings alongside its regular timetable of classes.