How much Do You Plan?

There are people who plan a pot in detail before starting to make. They sketch the pot and its parts and decoration, and decide what glazes will go where. They do design. But what do they do when the plan doesn't work?

There are people who follow what comes, who make "what the clay wants". They work through intuition.

In Potters on Pottery, a lovely very British book from 1976, sculptors Alan and Ruth Barrett-Danes describe the ways they work:

Ruth: "I... probably draw a lot around the subject before I begin, but my work is not something which is thought out beforehand. I feel that ideas come through working  -- what might not necessarily have been a very good idea to start with has to go through the process of working, and from that other things follow."

Alan: "The making has got to be directed at an idea. A lot has to be thought around the subject, and then you move into the making slowly, going farther and farther from the original thought, until finally you make something which has nothing to do with it and throw the work away."

Most of us, I suppose are in the middle, in the amount of preplanning we do and the value we place (or see) in pots which come out very different from our intentions. The Barrett-Danes are competent; when their pots diverge from the original idea, it is probably not from mistakes in the making.

Mine, yes. I make mistakes and benefit often from them. With the intent to make teapots, I've made a couple of jars I like. Just too big to be practical as teapots, but skip the spout and handle and they will be fine jars.

Most of the interesting detail in my pots start as mistakes.

I very much like the bent footring. Sometimes I make it on purpose, often not.

The braided edge is the most interesting part of this bowl, added because the rim was thin and irregular without it.

All this says I am inclined more to the intuitive, a way of keeping the process loose, in hopes of results with a light looseness. Fun, too. It requires constant close looking, to see how the pot may develop.