Washing Dishes

On Friday, a 4-year-old boy visiting the Hecht Museum in Haifa tried to peer inside a 3,500-year-old jar to see what it contained. The ceramic object, from the Middle Bronze Age and predating King David, toppled from its metal stand at the museum’s entrance and shattered — New York Times August 28, 2024

An imperfect bowl that has found its way to the kitchen where it gets used (and washed) daily

It’s the end of August. A tiring time of year. I’m taking a break from firing the kiln, midday, as the high-ceilinged studio heats up & the propane burners get louder, drowning out the favorite old record I’m trying to listen to on Spotify. I’ll head to the kitchen.

I know – I should be listening to new music in the studio, not old records, especially not old classic rock. Impossible to make something new & personal, right, reflecting the present moment, if I'm listening to the same old song I've heard since high school. Like thinking the same old thought over and over.

Spotify knows this, and wants me to change – or it is maybe doing the opposite, repackaging what it knows I like, telling me there is a 'newly remastered' version of Swordfishtrombones. That the version of Luxury Liner I have in my library is now 'expanded & remastered.'

Remember the supermoon? Last Monday, August 19

One of the great satisfactions of working in clay is that once it's done it's done. You don't get this with writing — every time you re-read you want to change what you said a little. With clay, the moment of making passes, and then the object exists, on its own, one could say. You have to let it just be as it is, and go its own way, live its own life. This is partly why there is such a tradition of potters destroying their own work. Supposedly that's the discipline, with clay, better to create scarcity & since the pots are reflecting you personally, representing you, better just let the very best go out into the world. Nothing imperfect.

By the way though, what was imperfect about Swordfishtrombones when it first came out in 1983? What about that record needs fixing now? A lot of those old rock albums were very imperfect, people in a room somewhere just playing with the tape rolling, famously you can hear someone doing the dishes in the background on parts of Exile on Main Street, is that bad – should that get taken out? In the August heat I think about this. Lunchtime over. Wash the dishes, then check the kiln.

Braving the heat in our 'A3' studio. At one end of the room the air conditioner - at the other, the electric kiln

Another bad habit of mine is using my own pots. In the kitchen. I'm supposed to purchase and use the work of other potters, which I actually do love doing. For now, this salad bowl is one I made, five or so years ago, glazed in tenmoku. The bowl is heavy & the weight is at the bottom, the inside curve funneling down to a point, narrow & claustrophobic as you peer in or load it up with salad, a lot less salad than you think should fit in a bowl that heavy. The rim is warped as you can see. The foot is shallow, cut with hesitation, not letting the tool move deeply into the leather-hard clay, not cutting enough material free, not really articulating the outside shape. Then there's the firing – clearly the bowl didn't quite get to temperature. Tenmoku wants to be brown-black and glassy-smooth like the surface of a pond. That takes high heat, a fully flattened cone 10, settling the glaze, tightening it against the form. The surface of this underfired bowl is instead a little bumpy, mossy, foggy, greenish.

I hold the bowl under the tap, swirling water in its narrow funnel, thinking the same thought I always do: just knock this bowl against the side of the sink & break it. Move on. It's no good. What would Lucie Rie say if she saw me using a bowl like this? And then I think: hmm that's true, only I have to make salad in something, and at the moment this is the bowl, it has found its way here somehow. How about I make another one first, and then break this one.

For some reason I never get around to this. The permanence of stoneware is one of its satisfactions, and another satisfaction, more significant, is its ultimate imperfection – there's always a little background noise. I’m used to this bowl. We have an agreement. Like housemates, we both use the kitchen. Plus when I do finally make a new salad bowl I'll be washing that one & I’ll think that same thought again — bump it against the sink. There'll be something I don't like. As a potter it’s important for me to admit that making pots is not about improvement. That’s not a good reason to do it. Making pots is actually just like doing the dishes or playing music, simply a task, there to be done. Not fun all the time, and never completed. I set the heavy warped bowl in the dish drainer, and steel myself for the hot studio & the sound of the propane burners again, and feel the peaceful late-summer detachment from the life of the clunky salad bowl – of anything I make – never totally up to me to decide what happens to it. Each of the pieces emerging from my kiln is on its own, in a way. One ends up here in the kitchen for a while, and another piece could make it 3,500 years into the future, who knows. Theoretically. Ouch. Just think of that. If so, I’ll be very happy when whatever piece that is finally does get pulled down to the floor & breaks.

— Theo Helmstadter
August 2024