Pottery is Popular

I recently was given an article from the New York Times, last December 17th, "The Budding Ceramics-to-Table Movement". I keep finding it strange.

What is newly popular seems to be not individual pieces  --  artwork. Nor industrial products. Rather the in-between, what we call production pottery. This might be a batch of related dishes to supply a restaurant, or a line of vases that a gift shop could reorder and match. This is real craft work, like mass production before machine-made work. But dishes, yes, for daily use.

Certainly this is not a new kind of pottery nor production. Nor is it new for potters to try to make a living at the craft. It's just newly "in" for some people. To me, there is something odd about that, pottery being such a deeply rooted, ancient craft. But why not? Certain styles of pots have been "in" before. For some of the crazier versions of that, check out Edmund de Waal's The White Road.

And the article describes ceramics as the"craft du jour." That's a warning; it's a fad. It doesn't mean that we will all be commercial successes as potters from now on. But some of us will be, are now and perhaps can continue. A fad market grows fast, shrinks fast, and has a short bloom. What good is it? Besides temporary but bigger possibilities to earn money selling pots and lessons, it provides great exposure to something that is, sorry folks, a very niche interest. If lots of people, however faddish, see handmade pottery or try to make pots, some will continue to care and stick with the craft, as makers or buyers or admirers. All welcome. 

Two more odd aspects of this fad. The article quotes people reporting it (from Vogue, for example), as discovering more and more potters, as if we are appearing suddenly. No, the world is full of us, and has been full of spectacularly good makers of wonderful pots. Yes, some are artists and would not have the interest or patience or facilities or management skill to produce lines of work.

And, of course, dishes are tied to food. Should we have been able to predict that a widespread interest in craft food, and in locally sourced food, would expand to an interest in craft, and locally or identifiably sourced dishes? In retrospect, yes, but who knew it would be now? Craft people have long touted craft production as a stand against the sameness, machine-orientation, and excessive amount of industrial products. Robert Sullivan, from Vogue is quoted in  this article: "ceramics are popular now because they are "among the most obviously and literally handmade things.""

But why this year?