Uploaded July 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
This is a complicated thing to describe… but the way I viewed making a bowl 10 years ago is drastically different from how I view making a bowl today. In one way, I miss the simplicity of trimming a straightforward curved shape and then trimming a shallow foot on them, yet in another way, I relish in what’s become a relatively complex and thoughtful process, as is required with these far more convoluted shapes. They aren’t convoluted because they’re visually elaborate, rather the steps that go into creating them are.
In another way, the more time I’ve sunk into making pottery, the more I’ve started to consider all of the very subtle steps that go into creating a piece, and as time has gone by, this thought spreads across the entire range into all of the pots I make. The thing is, I thought that as I gained experience, threw and trimmed more pots and spent decades making, that my thoughts on the objects would lessen, whereas in fact, the opposite is true. Perhaps it’s a result of my practical skills reaching a certain level that allows my mind to wonder in ways I couldn’t have done before as I crafted ceramics, or maybe it's simply that familiarity reveals complexity rather than removing it.
What once felt like a straightforward process has become a collection of countless small decisions, each leaving a small trace on the finished piece and the longer I've made ceramics, the less I see a piece as the result of a single act of making and the more I see it as an accumulation of tiny choices, most of which probably go unnoticed by anyone else. For me, experience hasn't simplified the work; it's made it richer and more layered.
#pottery #bowl #craft #ceramics #handmade
This is a complicated thing to describe… but the way I viewed making a bowl 10 years ago is drastically different from how I view making a bowl today. In one way, I miss the simplicity of trimming a straightforward curved shape and then trimming a shallow foot on them, yet in another way, I relish in what’s become a relatively complex and thoughtful process, as is required with these far more convoluted shapes. They aren’t convoluted because they’re visually elaborate, rather the steps that go into creating them are.
In another way, the more time I’ve sunk into making pottery, the more I’ve started to consider all of the very subtle steps that go into creating a piece, and as time has gone by, this thought spreads across the entire range into all of the pots I make. The thing is, I thought that as I gained experience, threw and trimmed more pots and spent decades making, that my thoughts on the objects would lessen, whereas in fact, the opposite is true. Perhaps it’s a result of my practical skills reaching a certain level that allows my mind to wonder in ways I couldn’t have done before as I crafted ceramics, or maybe it's simply that familiarity reveals complexity rather than removing it.
What once felt like a straightforward process has become a collection of countless small decisions, each leaving a small trace on the finished piece and the longer I've made ceramics, the less I see a piece as the result of a single act of making and the more I see it as an accumulation of tiny choices, most of which probably go unnoticed by anyone else. For me, experience hasn't simplified the work; it's made it richer and more layered.
#pottery #bowl #craft #ceramics #handmade
