Grace Builds Without a Wheel
Photo: Monika Bienert / Unsplash
This is an illustrative story. Names and some details have been changed to protect the privacy of the people we work with.
Not all pottery is thrown. Hand-building — pinching, coiling and joining slabs of clay — is one of the oldest making methods on earth, and it produces forms a wheel never could. It is Grace’s speciality.
She was drawn to it because it asks for time rather than speed, and time was something she was willing to give. Building a large planter by coiling can take days; each ring of clay must be added, blended and allowed to firm before the next. Grace finds the rhythm of it calming.
“On the wheel everything happens in minutes,” she says. “When I hand-build, I get to live with a piece while I make it. By the time it’s finished, it feels like a friend.”
