Say you want to make pots for your plants, for your garden or home. You get a bag of clay. You scoop out a handful. Now what?
Have you noticed that whenever you go to buy a pot at the store, they are all round? (Stupid question, I know ...) But why round?
There are many good reasons. First, from a mathematical perspective, a sphere holds the highest possible volume for any given surface area. Or, to put it another way, you need less clay to hold a gallon of water with a round pot, than you would with any other form. Round is efficient. Round is fast and easy. It can be done mechanically using a wheel.
Potters have traditionally mass produced pots (or "ware") for other people. It was an industrial process. Using a potter's wheel, a potter can crank out a lot of pots in the day. Round pots are functional, cheap, easy to make, efficient and ... boring.
So potters rely on glazes to liven up their boring forms. Or they distort the forms while the clay is still wet, or they add cute things to the surface to draw the viewer's attention. Still, the fundamental form is round and ... boring.
The ancient Americans did not use wheels. They built their pots using slow and techniques like coils and slab construction . When they hand built anything round, it was because that is the most efficient form for every day practical use.
But we are a technological species. Making pots using wheels has become a luxury activity. Potters in developed countries can bask in the therapeutic calm of hands on clay, while spinning calmly beneath them, moving to the caress of the fingers. Throwing clay on the wheel soothes the soul, but it can't compete with the mold-casting high production factories that spit out clay pots for the masses. Throwing clay on the wheel is anachronistic. it's fine for fun, but has a very limited scope of possibilities.
Hand building is slow. It can be awkward. Failure rates are high at first, until the potter figures out what they can get away with. The thing has to stand up!
But hand building allows for the expression of life, movement, tension, drama. None of which is possible using a round wheel.
Consider the geometry of life. Life forms (excepting plants ... an interesting idea for later) tend to be bilateral A living body has a right and a left side. When both sides appear identical, you have symmetry. Symmetry can be pleasing to behold, but when one side gets out of whack with the other you see tension, movement, drama. Those qualities can arouse emotions in a viewer. And art is all about emotions.
Round is fine for the planets and for daisy flowers, but the bilateral form is the stuff of life and of art.
That is why I build my pots by hand and not with the wheel. If I were in a hurry, or had to sell a lot of pots, I would use a wheel. But you and I are making pots for our plants. We have time. No one cares how our pots look. That's a recipe for freedom.
Next time - a drainage hole? Or not?
Post a new thread about this blog entry:
