The pleasure of creation

Last year I discovered pottery and I fell in love with it. Sadly, for the last 6 months, competing priorities have meant I haven’t been able to attend my weekly class and recently I’ve started to really notice its absence and am feeling a real pull to get back to it. This isn’t because I’m in need of any more slightly misshapen bowls, plates or pots, far from it, I think I might simply be missing ‘the pleasure of creation’.

I have spent countless hours of late immersed in research papers and today I allowed myself to veer off topic for a minute to see if there was any research which could explain why I’m missing my particular choice of creative outlet quite so much……

Here’s some ideas I found interesting:

Pottery is a multifaceted process involving multiple stages: throwing, trimming, bisque firing, glazing (and then firing again!) and, throughout, there are opportunities to experiment with form, texture, colour, and technique. Whilst this opens up a world of creative possibility and expression, it also means there are a world of ways in which things can go wrong and many stages during which a piece can be ruined and, somewhat counterintuitively, this may be exactly where the meaning and joy lies!

When you understand all the ways in which things can go ‘wrong’, often through natural as opposed to human forces, it allows you focus more on the process and expression of creativity and less on the final product:

“the pleasure of creation rather than the product of creation” (Blanche, 2007)

If everything goes to pot (pardon the pun) on the wheel, you are safe in the knowledge that you can just ‘kill the piece and start over. ?There is comfort to be taken from the possibility of a piece going wrong at any stage, even in the final firing. It frees you up to simply be present in the process, getting messy and garnering meaning and enjoyment from the inter-related internal rewards of self-expression, skill development, and social interaction.

Now I’m sure if you make a living from your pottery, maybe this knowledge isn’t quite so freeing and, as a skilled craftsman, you are likely highly attuned to all the micro-actions which will certainly reduce the risk of collapses, cracks or ugly glazing but, for the hobbyist engaged in simple creative leisure, this liberation around ‘failure’ holds a novelty that doesn’t always exist in other aspects of life. Yes, there are undeniably lessons that can be learnt from failure in numerous life domains, but this doesn’t always come with the same degree of liberty; normally, we are striving towards an outcome and so, in most cases, it is to our advantage to try and avoid failing if we can.

When it comes to working with clay, perhaps there is also something in the nature of the material itself - its naturalness and state of being, that allows us to form an emotional connection to it and draw inspiration from it in the same way we do other elements of the natural world. Some artists speak as if it is somehow imbued with a degree of consciousness or life force. Ken Mihara, for example, speaks of the distinct memory of colours trapped within the clay beneath our feet, and the way in which the firing process can “unlock the memories”. Phoebe Collings-James also speaks of working with clay as a reciprocal, relational process: “With clay, there is this constant potential for movement” – once sculpted and shaped, “the clay then decides how it feels about its new form, potentially shifting, cracking or remembering the other configurations that it had before”.

There is certainly a fusion of man and elemental nature in the process of pottery, what is imagined and meticulously crafted by the hands is then met with the inevitability of nature finding its own way through the ‘elemental coalescence between earth and fire’ such that the outcome of a piece becomes a reflective synthesis of the artist’s vision, the unique elemental make-up of his materials and the forces of nature involved. Japanese culture speaks of wabi-sabi, an aesthetic concept based on the acceptance of transience and imperfection and which, with reference to ceramics, is encapsulated perfectly in Miwa Kazuhiko’s sentiment:

‘The piece ends up exactly as it is meant to be…a balance of nature and imperfection, melded to create something so perfectly pleasing’.

A final consideration may be the pleasure that is to be gained in sharing your work with others. In gifting something hand-made, even if it is embarrassingly far from the initial vision, meaning is conveyed and shared between the gift giver and receiver. Many of us will have had the experience of a child giving us something hand-made and, even if said gift is completely indiscernible until explained, it brings with it a warmth experienced by both parties because it was ‘made with love’. In a complete throwback to childhood, this same warmth was present when I gifted my mum a mug I had made especially for her for Christmas last year - it was made, given and received with abundant love and the meaningfulness of the exchange was clearly present for both of us.

The positive ‘hand-made effect’ definitely impacts on the attractiveness of a gift and this effect seems to be largely explained by love. Consumer research identifies a special appreciation for the human factor in the production of a gift; handmade products are perceived to be made with love by the craftsperson and even to somehow to ‘contain’ love.

Pottery, as a creative leisure pursuit, certainly brings with it numerous opportunities to ‘gift’ your creations (lest you have a desire to surround yourself with perfectly imperfect ceramic oddities) and perhaps even simply spending time thinking about the potential recipient of each piece in the process of creation, allows the love to permeate.

So there we have it, a wealth of varied perspectives and explanations as to why I’m missing my clay time so much. Even when the final product does not always turn out as hoped, the creative expression, the freedom to fail, the physical connection to natural forces and the emotional connection to the potential recipients of your wares, each serve to give the experience rich meaning and value.

For more on the themes discussed in this piece:

Genoe, M. R., & Liechty, T. (2017). Meanings of participation in a leisure arts pottery programme.?World Leisure Journal,?59(2), 91-104.

Fuchs, C., Schreier, M., & Van Osselaer, S. M. (2015). The handmade effect: What's love got to do with it?.?Journal of marketing,?79(2), 98-110.

https://www.frieze.com/article/how-clay-connected-our-bodies

https://clay-works.com/the-earth-in-their-hands/