Self-sustainability and doing what you love could be making a comeback

This clay is being gathered by a potter. He and others suggest self-sustainability and technical know-how could be making a comeback. Skyrocketing prices and the desire to be greener are among the drivers. Consider some things people have told us in the past few years:

-I have been consulting the old times in a desperate attempt to achieve self-sustainability in the face of rampant globalization.
-If I could re-start my life I would have attended the Ceramic School at Alfred University which was my first love, instead of getting a quickie-for-a-paycheck degree in medical lab technology.
-I care about the planet … but the way ceramics is done nowadays it’s just not for me anymore.
-I’m no scientist or chemist but but I’ve seen “the dragon” and been uninspired by so much of what I find online. I want to learn my craft, find a reliable base glaze to modify and develop, understand the mechanisms, make my own. Wow. They will be “my” glazes.

Beliefs that making your own glazes and bodies is too complicated, expensive, labour intensive or old fashioned are something to be debunked.

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Michael Cardew might be turning over in his grave!

This post got a lot of negative reaction on social media. To be clear, I work both sides of the fence, making my living on selling prepared glazes and clay bodies but I get my satisfaction being closer to the materials and processes. That is what enables me to give customer support. I am not an artist, ceramic art is outside the scope of this page. For part of my life in the craft of pottery I am also guilty of what I lament below. In all my years dealing with customer traffic at our store I have never once had a customer that was offended by seeing new clay and glaze recipes we are discovering in the studio and lab, that are better and cheaper than prepared ones. But online some are somehow offended by what follows. 80 manufacturers are selling convenience and encouraging disconnection - although I work for one of them I am a voice of caution about this.

This book was once a “Bible” of hobby and professional potters. They were independent and resourceful. They made their own clays and glazes, knew the materials, built their own kilns. Now we scan social media sites for ideas on layering expensive prepared goopy brushing glazes and hope they melt together into something presentable. Many have even forgotten how to wedge clay properly. We describe processes using mystical art language and exchange likes and poor advice on social media. Those who still know how to retotal a recipe and venture into mixing their own often end up in the online trafficking of an endless parade of recipes that don’t work. Now we even outsource design to AI. Even Nigeria, the very country about whom Cardew wrote, has lost its pottery tradition.

I never appreciated the book back there. Even though he came to visit us in 1973. I have always just taken whatever clay I needed out of our warehouse, but now that I very often make my own clay it really resonates. I got this copy on eBay, I value it as an inspiration to be more closely connected with the planet and the minerals it gifts us (of course I would not do everything as he does). He was no dinosaur, he understood and taught glaze chemistry and material mineralogy, his work was the basis for many prepared glazes we buy today. "Progress" is defined by some as convenience products that make modern ceramics easy. But I believe that, for many, progress is arming yourself with a little more understanding - it enables making better quality ware, in less time, for less expense and time than with prepared products.

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