Humility and Letting Go and Pottery

What heavy duty issues to associate with making pottery! In the February 2018 issue of Ceramics Monthly, Roelof Uys wrote an article about exactly this. He works at the Leach Pottery in St. Ives, UK. Yes, the pottery factory/studio founded by Bernard Leach and Shoji Hamada, the fathers of us all studio potters.

"Humility is the one thing we can teach to all about the art of making objects from earth and fire." Other than the example of better work, I have never thought to learn humility in learning to make pottery. But  I believe him.

In the "factory" part of the Leach Pottery, the making is really shared: "We maintain our standard by working as a team, relying on each other to do assigned tasks with care and consideration. One person will throw the pot, another will trim or handle that same piece, and someone else will glaze it and load it in the kiln." Imagine! Yes, they make standardized pieces for sale from the pottery, and do not so share their individual art pieces. But still, I've never met a potter, that I know of, who would let someone else choose a handle for their pots, or glaze them with a different eye.

In the shared studio where I work, we donate pots for fundraising sales, and sometimes leave these unsigned for anyone to glaze. We have already let them go after the making stage. I never do that, I sign mine to indicate that I want to glaze them, carry them all the way through the process before letting go. And there are people there so attached to their work that they find it difficult to donate their pots. That's extreme attachment.

Once I saw a pot I made in someone else's house, and said, without thinking, "oh, that's mine." No, it's not, it belongs to the people who own it and use it. I still felt it continues to be mine. Ongoing attachment.

They must get over the attachment and holding on, at the Leach Pottery. "One of the greatest revelations in working as part of a team in this extraordinary place is the way it has affected my personal practice. Preconceived ideas are constantly challenged and the immediacy of feedback from peers encourages quick development and forces you to experiment. " Before he worked there, Uys thought "The beautiful simplicity of their forms and the lack of ego with which they approached their work allowed the materials and processes to speak for themselves, producing pots with a sort of carefree swagger but with a mindfulness that always respected the user."

That's worth learning.

Playing in the Mud

If you are not a potter, do you know how messy it is to make pottery?

For the past two weeks I've been reclaiming used clay, and I'm not done yet. This is the messiest possible part of the craft, definitely playing in the mud.

When you handbuild,with slabs or coils of clay, it never gets very wet, very muddy. This is the cleanest version of potting.

Throwing clay on a wheel requires the clay be slippery and slide between your hands, so it is always wet at this step. We do call it mud. And throwing is very much my favorite part of the making, other than developing ideas. I like playing in mud.

There is always leftover and reusable clay, pieces cut off a slab as you make the right shapes, throwing mistakes to toss in a bag and reuse later, dry chips from trimming pots to refine their shapes. To reuse it, the leftovers all have to have the same malleable wetness, and be blended into one mass. This is reclaiming. And yes, I've been sloppy and let it wait, and accumulate.

I also have new or reclaimed clay I haven't used in too long, which has just gradually dried in the bag until it is too hard to work well and with pleasure. Reclaiming involves wetting it all, waiting til it is malleable, mixing, drying until it can be wedged and bagged again. So satisfying when done, like a fine collection of nuts squirreled away for winter.  Such a wet mess in process.

I've got 9 types of clay to reclaim. Oof.

It seems necessary to me. If I threw away used clay, I'd never dare make a mistake. In a shared studio, used clay can be reclaimed collectively, with a pugmill to do the heavy work. At home, I do it myself, with hands and water.

Hard work, sore hands when the clay is heavy or hard.

And it messes up your nails.

 But I love the mud --  it's protean, changeable, elemental, responsive and all about hands. I love throwing, and I'm not at all interested in 3-D printing with clay.

I love getting something out of nothing  -- including pots as good as I can make them, made out of scraps and mess.