I’ve been thinking about how many bad photos I had to take before I ever made a picture I liked. Thousands of frames where nothing quite lined up, and then, every so often, one that felt like a direction instead of an accident.

Clay is the same, except the failures are heavy and live on my shelves. The photo above is a process shot from my table this week: test tiles, almost-cups, little experiments in timing and glaze, with the studio cat supervising. The rims are a bit off, the glaze breaks in odd places, the walls aren’t quite where I wanted them to be. They’re not ‘perfect’, but they’re honest, and they’re teaching my hands what they actually know and what they still don’t.

Clay is brutal like that. It warps, it slumps, it remembers every tiny miscalculation. I’ve been working on these cups for months now and I have a cupboard full of different versions to prove it. I have a deep appreciation for this art and for the potters who’ve quietly put in the years to make it look easy.

Just like photography took me thirty three years to become fluent (and I’m still practicing), clay is its own long apprenticeship. 

 If you want to see where this table is slowly heading, a few of the pieces I love are gathered over on my site and below.