Partners and Pottery
Have you ever thrown a piece of pottery on a wheel?
Have you ever wondered at the beauty of a lump of clay transforming into one of the most basic functional tools humankind has developed? I find it fascinating.
So much so that for a time, every wedding present I bought was a piece of pottery. I only hope the recipients love pottery as much as I do.
Beyond my visceral connection with pottery, I have good reason to consider it a perfect wedding gift.
The processes clay undergoes in order to become a ceramic vessel are much the same as those undergone by two individuals melding together into a united entity with a new and joint purpose.
As August rolled around, heralding our anniversary as well as the approaching wedding of our younger daughter, I’ve been considering the parallels once again.
Building pottery is a labor of love, just like building a relationship. Creating something out of a lump of clay, or a life with another person is not always easy, and challenges will be faced and overcome with solutions or compromise. More often than not, things don't go exactly as planned, but that's the beauty of a handmade piece of pottery or a perfectly unique relationship with another human being.
Let’s talk about how it works.
First of all, it’s important to know that clay consists of flat platelets, rather than the rounded particles of other eroded rock such as silt. The creation of pottery, process after process, aligns those platelets and creates bonds between them.
Alignment:
The very first thing a potter does when creating pottery is called wedging. It’s a form of kneading and smashing the clay that mixes it, removes air pockets and starts the alignment of the platelets. Air pockets cause weak spots in vessel walls and explosions in firing, so those old empty spots have to be squeezed out.
When platelets are aligned, flat side to flat side with a minimal amount of water between, the bond between the platelets is strong, like two microscope slides that have a film of water between them. Once aligned, without the weakening empty spots, the interlocked stack of platelets are strong yet shapeable.
Balance:
Placing the clay as close as possible to the center of the wheel, now, the potter presses downward and inward to create a stable bond between wheel and clay, and center the clay on the wheel.
Centering enables the form to be balanced on all sides from its central point. It also creates a balance between the friction that holds the clay to the wheel and the centrifugal force of the spinning wheel. Unless the clay is centered, it cannot withstand the pressures used to shape it—centrifugal force pushing it outward, and the compression and lifting done by the potter’s hands. Uncentered, it is unbalanced and will start to wobble. If this is not corrected, the walls can collapse.
Purpose:
Once the clay is centered, and spinning in balance, the next step is opening the clay. Through a steady, slow pressure dipping into the center of the clay, and then outward, the potter changes the disk of centered clay into a vessel.
It has a new purpose, and infinitely more capabilities.
Beauty:
To raise the sides of the vessel, a potter puts pressure on the inside and outside of the clay at the same time. The differences in pressure are what give form and shape to the pottery.
Strength:
Once shaped, it is left to dry, allowing moisture to wick from between the clay particles to the surface where it evaporates. The first firing fuses the platelets together, and the pottery emerges from this process harder and stronger than it was before. It’s now ready for the glaze that will allow it to carry out its function.
Partners:
I see marriage partners as the platelets in the clay, the attraction between us not unlike the attraction between clay particles aligning themselves as a result of the tension between the outward forces and the attraction within. But if they are not centered—if there is not that common direction and balance, giving both strength and flexibility to the relationship, it can be thrown off-balance.
That central point—that bond—must anchor us, because the world throws a whole lot of divisive pressures at us from the outside, and all those imperfections we carry within us will wick to the surface just when we thought everything was set.
The ways we respond to those inside and outside pressures shape us as couples, resulting in the beauty and structure of our lives together.
Then the firings start. Those hellish times are also part of the process, and hopefully, we emerge on the other side stronger, more beautiful, shaped into something that makes the world a better place and brings joy to people like me.
…And hopefully to all those people I gifted with pottery for their wedding.
Are you in the midst of that process? Are you past it? Or do you find that it’s a continual growth process of reshaping, re-centering, and realigning to keep the bond between you strong? If you’re feeling like the divisive pressures have knocked you off center, or the glaze that colored your marriage doesn’t really fit anymore, catch some videos of pottery being formed. It can be made and remade, even re-fired with a new glaze.
I guess that really goes for all of us, whether we’re married or not.
In the comment section below, tell us where you are in the process, or what you’ve discovered.
(My thanks to Danelle Hancock of Prism Pots pottery studio of Evergreen, CO, who helped me with this article.)
