“My interest has remained inconveniently multi-faceted in most things ceramic – from its misty prehistory, when only clay and gods mattered, to the subsequent historical offerings from many lands. Food and tea presentation, clay and glaze research, the art of throwing, the art of handbuilding, kilns, riverside shards, emissivity, the smell of old clay, on and on. The straight path to the studio from the house is necessarily most serpentine some days. Some months of the year, though, make it much simpler. When the days grow warmer I work much more outside, where pots dry more quickly. I become a potter and become familiar again with muscle and ache. From November on, when things are freezing solid outside, body activity slows down and more cerebral struggle takes its place. A farmer might go curling during this time. I suppose I go handbuilding. This sequence has been part of my making for well over 30 years. The only thing I can see that has changed is more honing, more reflection, more revisiting old and new places in my mind, and less guilt about the now petty.”
– John Chalke
