Living by Your Hands, Part 2

I've just finished reading one of Edmund de Waal's books, The Hare with Amber Eyes. De Waal is a major contemporary potter; check him out; EdmunddeWaal.com. He has been a potter since childhood, and has written several books on pottery. This one is a sort of family memoir. No, not memoir, rather a search for his family history, built on a search for some history for a collection of netsuke he inherited. Netsuke are a kind of traditional Japanese fastener, small clever carvings. It's a wonderful book, personal, thoughtful, expansive, and, basically very sad, I think.

What struck me in the book, for purposes of this blog on pot-making, is his emphasis on touch, his extraordinary sensitivity to all things tactile, the way he lives through his hands. The netsuke are objects to handle, with "passionate touch, discovery in the hands, things enveloped lovingly..."

The best I can say here is simply to quote what he writes about handling and touching and making objects, and about his understanding from experience by touch.

"I spent the first twenty years of my life as a potter earnestly trying to get objects out of the glass cases in which my pots were placed in galleries and museums...'Out of the drawing room and into the kitchen!' I wrote in a sort of manifesto...But the vitrine   --  as opposed to the museum's case  --  is for opening. and that opening glass door and the moment of looking, then choosing, and then reaching in and then picking up is a moment of seduction, an encounter between a hand and an object that is electric."

"Everything in this place, I realize, is very shiny. There is nothing to grip onto with these marbled surfaces. Its lack of tactility makes me panic: I run my hands along the walls and they feel slightly clammy."

"'Don't you think those netsuke should stay in Japan?' said a stern neighbour (yes, he's British) of mine...No, I answer. Objects have always been carried, sold, bartered, stolen, retrieved and lost. People have always given gifts. It is how you tell their stories that matters.
     It is the counterpart of the question that I am often asked: 'Don't you hate to see things leave your studio? Well, no, I don't hate it.I make my living from letting things go. You just hope, if you make things as I do, that they can make their way in the world and have some longevity."

I think relatively few people are so touch-oriented. Here is what that is like.

And I grew up with an aim not to be materialistic, and so devaluing the material. His perspective is very different; he focuses on objects, with great respect and care. It is certainly no crass materialism, and not in opposition to more intellectual or spiritual values. And I make pots, and value them, and have felt somewhat uneasy with the contradiction I felt.  So I read this book partly appreciating the invitation to say more "yes!", to include more in what is valuable.

A Pot in the Hand is Worth Two on the Shelf

That's a quote from Mark Hewitt, in Kevin Hluch's lovely book: The Art of Contemporary American Pottery. I love it. So true.

When I sell my pottery at craft shows, I so often see people looking at the pots with hands firmly behind their backs or arms crossed. And I always say "please handle."  I think you only know if you really like a pot by testing it with your hands. It's about feel at least as much as sight. So pictures in a blog or online shop lack something important. It's the body connection, and pottery is very bodily. All about hands, especially, in liking and in making. This is so for handmade pots, but also for appreciating industrial products, why not? You live with them in your hands, unless they are just for diaplay.

It's a hand skill, though we make pots with mind, eyes, arms, torso as well. From, Hluch: "the experienced potter's gestures are fluid, sure, economical  --  almost nonchalent" and the pots show it. I see the ease and sureness in making and like it, even in pots very much not to my taste. Throwing pots on a wheel is actually playing in the mud, bodily immersion in material.

The finished pots show the marks of the making hands; the horizontal grooves in this jar are effects of throwing. (That's lifting and shaping the clay on a potting wheel.) Usually I choose smooth surfaces and trim off this sort of thing. Here I like it.

We talk about pots in terms of body parts.

This pitcher has a foot, a belly, a neck, a mouth, a lip, almost as much as you do.

These have shoulders, rather than bellies.

Hluch suggests that though we never say it,

it is erotic to throw pots. Could be; certainly it's bodily and sensual, especially when we're working with people-colored clays.

"The link between the hands of the maker and the hands of the user" (Charity Davis-Woodward, quoted in Hluch)  -- that's it, and it's an intimacy, even if I do not know the users of my pots in any other way.

If I do, so much the better. It adds a dimension to a relationship. It also, maybe unfortunately, keeps me judging the quality of the pots  -- because this is the quality that matters most.

Oops, the handle isn't right, the balance is way off.

Here's a commercial teapot, good balance, but the handle is a bit odd in the hand. You really have to grab it.

The plate is by Ellen Fager. Good looks, good feel.

Thanks Will.

Calla Lily Vases: Developing the Form

I like where I've arrived. Of course, I did earlier too. Every improvement feels great. I suppose there are many more to go, in everything that can develop. Here's the story of one development.:

I've liked the form of calla lilies, a graceful, loose, wavy curve. Thought several years ago I'd try to make vases in a similar shape.

OK. Rather clumsy, and a flared shape isn't good for many kinds of flower arrangements  -- they flop.

Sometime later, in a class I learned this idea. Thank you again, Reiko Campbell.

Interesting. How to make it better?

I like the looseness of both of these early ones, the curves, the cut top. Not the stems I didn't attach well enough. They broke, immediately. And the shape of the pot? Eh. And the proportions? Something very wrong.

Next try:

 Ah, better with a flared base for stability. Stability is a big issue for vases. Bouquets are so often top heavy, and cantilevered arrangements are tempting. The vase needs to stand up under all sorts of inspiration.

 But stiff and a bit dull.Try this:

Much better with a looser shape. I like the emphasis on the flowers. Thought I'd try to make them realistic.

 

 Not enough control. Forget it. Better like I did it before, just something in the glaze that marks the flowers as a bit different from the body of the vase. Note: development is not, nothing like, a straight line of progress.
 
 So what shapes really work to make something that holds flower stems close together, is stable, and looks graceful and organic? These seem more successful.

I started adding a leaf, as the vases got bigger.

 But get rid of those horizontal throwing rings. They fight with the general vertical form. Here are the current best, and a new glazing idea that I like. Wonder what's next...

Are You Thinking about Christmas Gifts?

Seems awfully early. This is busy season for craft sales, usually named holiday something. Get in the mood!

Come by if you like. I'll be at the

Marie Curie School Craft Sale, Saturday Nov.2, 9-3; 4080 Governor Drive (1 block east of Genessee), parking off the side street, in the corner by the food.

Kate Sessions School Craft Sale, Saturday Nov.16, 9-3; 2150 Beryl (on the east  side of Pacific Beach).

And I'm now in the Coronado Art Association and will be at their

Art in the Park sale, Sunday Nov.17, 9-4 and December 1; Spreckels Park on Orange in Coronado.

Do I have a lot of pots? Yes. Onward!

What are these? They are pansy rings.

So what are pansy rings? Evidently a very traditional vase for short-stemmed flowers. I'd never heard of them until the Maertzweilers stopped by my booth at a craft sale and asked for some. I looked online and tried some before I saw the one they had  -- not a great way to see reality, it turns out. How big, how wide is the opening, how high? What's the bottom like? 

It turns out to be a very useful vase shape. How else would you display pansies? hibiscus? plumeria? anything your little kid picks short-stemmed and brings you? 

 I've tried several colors and minor decoration, but here is the one they showed me, as their source for the design, much more elaborate and decorated, with carved, added feet.I like it.

And somewhere I have never looked, clearly there's a tradition. At the last sale I attended, someone stopped, petted the ones I had for sale, and lovingly described the pansy ring she remembered from her childhood. I feel, happily, like the village potter.

I'm in! Come if you like

Sales for the next months:

October 6, Sunday, 10-5: the Del Mar Taste and Art Stroll; on Camino del Mar (101) and 15th St. It's a juried show, and I'm glad to be in it.

November 2, Saturday, 9-3: Holiday Craft Fair, Marie Curie Elementary School grounds, Governor Dr. just east of Genessee. Entrance to parking is off the side street, Edmonton. It's hard to think holiday already, but maybe by then. Yes, hand-made gifts.

     
                                                              What are they, anyway?

Who's the Village Potter?

When this blog was new, it was hard to find online; there seemed to be many other people with blogs or websites with the same name. I thought, idly, I'd check who else is the village potter, googled the name, and quit looking on page 17, still finding some new and relevant websites named village potter, potters, pottery.

Why do so many of us choose this name?

 Some simply are located in what I think is a village, like Guilford Village Potters, near Perth, Australia. Some are in commercial or would-be villages, like Village Potters in La Grange Park, Illinois. The name just seems to mean "I am in the village".

 Others are really traditional potters in a folk tradition: I found websites with this name in Nicaragua, Malaysia, Vietnam, India. Some studio potters take on a tradition, like Ned Foltz in Lancaster County, PA, reviving and continuing Pennsylvania redware.

Many of us seem to mean something looser, making pottery that is traditional in style, homey, or aiming to give pleasure through functional pots in use, like the Village Pottery in Clifton Village, near Bristol, England, or in New London, Prince Edward Island, Canada.

For me, it is important to remember the traditional aspect of making pots by hand, for people's daily use, though I am not part of an ongoing tradition. The village potter was/is the one who makes useful items for local use and pleasure, need and fun, maybe sometimes art.  That feels like home.

I suppose we could fight over rights to use this name and identity. I rather like the idea that we, who choose to be village potters, have something in common, all around the world.