How I became a potter

And can I really call myself that?

dug from my uncle’s garden, in Porto Santo, Madeira

When I decided to start this newsletter, the idea was to take you along on my pottery journey. Tell you how I run my studio. Show you the making process from start to finish. Share with you how it feels when I show a finished piece to the world; how it feels when someone likes it enough to buy it and how it feels when I don’t sell anything for months.

For that, I think I should start at the beginning. How did it all start?

If you read my first post, where I introduce myself, then you already know a bit of my story, the outline. This post will focus on how clay became a part of my life, and how, now, I cannot imagine living without it.

As with all meaningful things in life (at least, so it seems), clay came into mine totally by chance. Our encounter could very easily not have happened and I wonder how different my life would be.

At the time, I was working as a in-house translator in a big tech company in California. My work took most of my time. I would check email first thing in the morning, as I drank my first coffee. I would be in the office by 8am, sometimes earlier, and leave around 6pm, only because I didn’t like leaving my cat alone for so many hours. At home, I would play with Piqui (my cat), check email, eat a light meal, check email, watch tv, check email… You get the idea. Weekends, were also dictated by work. We were “on call”, always. We could be “out of office” but the understanding was that you were available 24/7, unless otherwise requested.

At this point, I have to say that I loved my work. I was proud of myself for being where I was, I loved the company I worked for, I loved what we did, I loved my team, I actually enjoyed going to the office and I didn’t mind that I was expected to always be checking email. It gave me a sense of meaning, of worth. My work was valued, it meant something.

I didn’t really have much free time and all the free time I had I spent at home, reading and sometimes watching the DVDs I’d ordered from Netflix (yes, it was that long ago), hiking, going to the cinema and occasionally meeting friends — do I need to add that I was single at the time? Probably not, right? In any case, it felt like I didn’t have any room for anything else.

So, when a friend mentioned she was doing a ceramics class and suggested I join, my first instinct was to refuse. And I almost did. But she insisted, “come on, it will be fun”… And so I went. And the rest, as they say, is history. Or in this case, mystory.

It was a Beginner Potter’s Wheel class, in the evening, once a week for 6 weeks (I think), at the Wilson Park Ceramics Studio, in Cupertino, CA. It’s where I met Trudi Burney, who patiently taught me how to throw on the wheel and put up with my crazy antics long after that course was over. To her, I am forever grateful.

I don’t remember exactly how that first class went. I do remember wanting it to never end and anxiously looking forward to the next one (I tried to find pictures of those classes because I know there were some, very bad ones, this was the beginning of the smart phone era, and the cameras on the phones were basic. Still, I wish I knew where those pictures are. I will keep looking).

Trying to centre the clay on the wheel was both frustrating and deeply satisfying. I must have gone through a whole bag of clay (10 kg!) trying to centre less than 250g of clay at a time in that class. And centring was just the beginning. Then there was making a hole, then opening and, oh no, now pull up the walls to make a cylinder… sorry, what? Can I make a bowl instead?

I did, I made a bowl. My first bowl. You can see it in my previous post, here.

Learning to throw on the potter’s wheel was very difficult. There were all these steps (see above!), plus I had to remember how to position my body and my hands at all times. It was frustrating and very uncomfortable, my back hurt and my hands were sore and dry, not to mention the state of my nails…

After that beginner’s class, I took another. And I started going to the studio every free moment I had, including during lunch time. I must have driven Trudi crazy. I think I even asked her for the keys to the studio so I could go there on weekends. I was totally obsessed.

I went to my local library and took out every book on pottery I could find and read them. I think I photocopied parts of some of those books… And then started buying my own. This was before pottery and ceramics became as popular as they are now, before you could binge-watch pottery videos on YouTube. I learned about legends like Shōji Hamada and Bernard Leach, and read Michael Cardew’s biography. I fell in love with their functional pots, often simply decorated with slip.

some of the first pottery books I bought

I dreamt about clay. I think I learnt how to better throw by doing it over and over in my head and then trying it out on the wheel as soon as I could.

In 2011, I had to move, and in the new house there was place for a wheel, so I bought my own. I made mugs, vases, bowls, and took them to Trudi to fire them. I kept some for myself and gifted others to friends and family. At this point, pottery was a hobby and it hadn’t occurred to me that it could become anything else. But I was hooked.

the only picture I could find of my small space, in the storage shed my then landlord kindly allowed me to use for the wheel

When I moved to Poland, in 2013, my life changed dramatically. I was pregnant. We bought an old house with the intention of renovating it. I quit my in-house job but continued working for the same company, as a freelancer, from home.

For some time, there was little place for clay in my life. The wheel stayed stored away for a couple of years while we built our house. I did set up a table in the “storage room” (now my studio) and started hand building. I couldn’t not be making, I couldn’t not be touching clay. What I made then was not very good. The mugs were all wonky and misshaped — I was used to the symmetry you get when you use the wheel, my hands were clumsy dealing with slabs and coils. Still, looking back, this was a time when I tried a lot of new things, new techniques, like mono-printing, sgraffito and paper resist.

some of the wonky pots I made back then - I’m still using them in my kitchen

In 2016, the work in the house finished and I had a studio for the first time. I was still working as a translator full-time and still only playing with clay in my (rare) spare time. I was taking whatever I made to a studio in Szczecin to fire and the trips back and forth with pots at different stages of fragile were becoming tiresome. Thinking back, I should have not been firing anything. I should have taken this time to practice and get better at making pots without actually producing any finished pieces. Because now I have a lot of crappy pots. Some I still use and are ok, but really, the world does not need more crappy ugly-looking pots.

In 2017, we bought a kiln. Yes, I know, what I wrote above… Still, at this point I knew I wanted pottery to become more than just a hobby, I just didn’t know how to make it happen, yet. But I wanted to be prepared. So, we found an old, used kiln (a 1950s Naber front loading kiln, to be precise) and 4 strong men (piano movers) carried it to the basement.

Amazingly, it was another year before we fired it for the first time. That’s how slow I was making pots.

In 2021, my daughter started school. I had already been reducing my workload to be able to focus more on her, but she surprised everyone by not taking well the transition from pre-school and it became necessary that I take time off work. My manager was very supportive and we agreed that it would be a temporary thing. She gave me a year.

Fast forward three years. A lot has changed. I never went back to working as a translator. Somewhere in the middle of that off-year, it became clear to me that this was my chance to turn pottery into something more. I was (and still am!) lucky to have my husband’s support and the financial stability his job provides. It wasn’t an easy decision and I am still visited by doubts occasionally, but it was a good decision. It was the right decision.

I am now making pots regularly and the kiln is on a lot more often. I still haven’t gone back to the wheel fully and am not sure I will; most of my work is now hand-built, from slabs and from coils. I have started to sell my work (functional pieces at a local café and on Etsy, and larger decorative pieces at ArtGalle, in Szczecin). I now offer workshops (in my studio and here) and am going to the local school to play with clay with the kids (more on that in the next letter…).

Am I a potter? I don’t know. I’m not a Potter like Hamada or Bernard Leach were potters, no question about that.

But clay is very much a part of my life, of who I am, even. When I am in my studio making my pots I feel a lightness that I cannot explain and I am at peace. But, it’s not an easy path. Making pottery feels a lot like life as described by Forrest Gump, You never know what you’re gonna get. And it is hard on your body and it can take over your life and make you forget to make dinner on time.

But then, there is that feeling that

Diana Strinati Baur

describes so well in this post:

Down the road, when I’m no longer here,

I hope my pieces grace someone’s table,

holding food that is healthy and enjoyable,

and maybe someone will look under a plate,

see my name and think,

she made a nice plate.

That thought, in essence, makes it all worth it.

And then, one day, when I grow up, I want to build my own kiln, mix my own glazes and throw on a kick wheel… ok, maybe that last one is too much. For now, I am making slow progress, I am foraging for clays around me and making slips to decorate my pots (more on this soon); I am learning more about glaze chemistry and about firing curves; I am diving deeper into sgraffito. Above all, I am enjoying meeting new people and introducing them to clay, and I can only hope that at least one of them will one day look back and think of me as “their Trudi”.

In truth, I’m only just at the beginning of this journey, really, although it started almost 11 years ago. Maybe in another 11 years I’ll feel comfortable calling myself a Potter. Maybe.

---