Make your own ceramic piece in a morning

Hand-building means making a piece from clay without a wheel: with your fingers, a board and a few wooden tools. It's the oldest way of working with clay and it's still the first one people learn, because it doesn't depend on mastering a machine — it depends on understanding how clay behaves when you squeeze it.

There are three ways of building up a wall, and in the workshop you try all three. Pinching means starting with a ball and opening it up with your thumb until it becomes a bowl. Coils are ropes of clay stacked in a spiral and joined with your fingers: that's what lets you build as high as you like. And slabs mean rolling the clay out like dough and cutting it, which is what gives you straight shapes.

What people take away isn't the technique, which can be explained in twenty minutes: it's finding out that they can do it. Almost everyone arrives convinced they're no good with their hands, and two hours later there's a mug on the table that wasn't there before.

The workshop takes place at Gede Studio, in the Santa Eulàlia neighbourhood of L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, right next to Barcelona and a short walk from the metro. You'll find the exact address and how to get in on this website: people come from all over the metropolitan area, and quite a few take the train just for this.

It's two hours on a Saturday morning, so it fits into a weekend without taking it over. Lots of people use it for exactly that: something to do with a friend, a birthday present, a different kind of first date, or a way of finding out if they like ceramics before signing up to a monthly plan.

The studio is 270 m² with natural light, big tables and all the materials ready. All you need to bring is clothes that can get dirty.

Nobody takes their piece home the same day, and it's worth knowing why: freshly shaped clay is full of water. If it went into the kiln like that, the water would suddenly turn to steam and the piece would burst. First it has to air-dry for days, until it turns a lighter colour and feels cold to the touch.

Then it goes into the kiln for the first time, at around 1,000 degrees. It comes out “bisque-fired”: it's ceramic now and won't dissolve in water, but it's still porous and can't be used. That's when it gets glazed — which is what gives it its shine and makes it waterproof — and goes back into the kiln a second time.

We do all of that and it's included in the price of the workshop. It takes about 20 days from the day you make it until we write to tell you it's ready to collect.