About the class

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Create a beautiful, botanical-inspired vase for your home, garden, or office in this creative and rewarding short course. Suitable for both beginners and those with clay experience, this 12-hour workshop guides you through the full process of designing and hand-building a unique ceramic vessel that is both functional and artistically expressive.

What You’ll Learn

Session 1: Form & Design
Begin with inspiration. Dee will provide a range of botanical references, and you're encouraged to bring your own images or samples of your favourite plants—think banksias, hakeas, flowering gums, grevilleas. Together, you'll explore how to translate organic forms into ceramic design.

Session 2: Construction – Skills & Techniques
Working with a beautiful hand-building clay, you’ll learn a variety of techniques including slab rolling, pinching, extruding, and modelling. Dee will guide you through the construction of either one large vessel (approx. 40cm) or several smaller pieces. Use provided templates or create your own forms, and bring your ideas to life with sculptural additions and personal design touches.

Session 3: Colour & Finish
Add vibrancy to your piece using a wide selection of underglaze colours. A white slip base will be applied first to ensure bright, bold colour results. Dee will demonstrate how to bring your botanical designs to life with colour, pattern, and detail.

Firing & Glazing

Please note that it’s not always possible to fire and glaze all pieces before the end of your course. Several factors can affect when and whether your work is fired, including drying time, thickness, size, the volume of work submitted, and when pieces are completed—especially toward the end of term when kiln space is limited. We do our best to fire as much work as we can each week, but we encourage students to plan ahead if they wish to glaze in their final class.

Once your work has been fired, it will be placed on the collection shelves and you'll receive an email with collection times. Please make sure to identify and collect your own work.

If you’d like more time to finish your pieces, we offer stand-alone glazing classes each term—these are a great option for returning to complete your work.

What to bring

• Notebook and pencil
• Apron
• Hand towel

Building Accessibility

Walyalup Fremantle Arts Centre is a heritage-listed building with access limitations. While there are no lift facilities within the main building, the ceramics studio is wheelchair accessible.

We acknowledge these limitations and are committed to improving accessibility where possible. We continue to explore ways to make our programs more inclusive and encourage you to reach out if you have any questions.

Other Additional Needs

Should you, or the person you are enrolling for, have any other additional requirements, please include these details when booking. Should you wish to chat to one of our friendly team, feel free to contact Reception on 9432 9555 or email ArtsCentre@fremantle.wa.gov.au to discuss any individual needs.