Marks of Process

I have been a life long student of clay. I like to think I am a sommelier of the terre noir of pots. I like to look at handles and try to decide if the potter was right or left handed. If they are more to the left I decide the potter was right handed. Well I'm right handed and sometimes I am delighted to discover they go to the left. I don't try to straighten them. They are telling my story. Here are some bowls I brought home from China. I found them in a shard pile in Chen Lu an ancient kiln site now abandoned. If I remember correctly they simply ran out of coal to fire the kilns. There were kilns under the roads, under little stores and houses. These pots speak of process. They were raw glazed and the glaze was trimmed out of the middle to stack another bowl. I imagine stacks of bowls thus eliminating the need for kiln shelves. We would probably bisque fire the bowls and use wax to resist the glaze so another bowl could be stacked inside. But would our customers accept the raw clay ring in the middle of the bowl? Probably not! I use these bowls almost daily as I love them -well worn, chipped and they speak to me on so many different levels. I am a lover of labour. The makers of these bowls worked hard for very little money. Maybe they farmed in the good months and made pots in the colder months of winter. They didn't read books on pottery. They didn't watch u-tubes on pottery. They didn't go to school to learn pottery. They didn't travel the earth to study from Masters. They then didn't finish that schooling and go on to do more schooling and end with the terminal degree in Ceramics an MFA. How is it these pots are so damn good? Step in Malcolm Gladwell- you want to do something well 10,000 hours. I also believe that necessity is The Mother of Invention. They had to feed themselves and their families. The person is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.-Henry David Thoreau