Potting as pain or pleasure
Listening to the Today programme this morning while potter/ author Edmund De Waal was being interviewed, we were delighted to hear him describe potting as “A tremendous art which we should all take seriously.” It is always amazing and indeed rather off putting to be told by a customer looking at a one-off hand painted pot or tile ” Ooh that is very expensive” while telling you of the lovely “art print” they have just bought for a much larger sum of money! We have always felt that not only is a pot just as beautiful as a painting, it often has the additional advantage that you can use it as well as look at it.
Here at Rye Pottery we produce a considerable number of one offs at, what we think, are remarkably low prices, especially when you have just opened the kiln to find that 3 or 4 pieces have decided to shatter during the firing cycle. The flip side of the coin is the joy and excitement that opening a good kiln brings to all of us. Better than Christmas – is how Wally Cole used to describe handling a newly fired perfect pot which had come through its ordeal of fire with the final result excelling anything you could have possibly imagined. De Waal perhaps should have added this morning, that Potting is also a disease for which there seems to be no known immunisation!
 
