Hans Coper

I found a quote from Hans Coper that rings true with me, it reminds me how I sometimes feel as a potter working in the 21st century. The quote is from a letter he sent to the Victoria & Albert Museum in London about his work.
'Practicing a craft with ambiguous reference to function one has to occasionally face absurdity. More than anything, like a demented piano tuner, one is trying to approximate a phantom pitch. One is apt to take refuge in principles which crumble'
It is that grey area that I often find myself in when people look at my work and say 'well I suppose you could put one flower in the top'. There is ingrained in the collective psyche the link between ceramic and function. It is that age old craft/art thing that has been rattling on for years.
Some ceramics is clearly art. Some ceramics is clearly utility based, others like mine sits on the fence somewhere in-between, neither here nor there. My work is built on Coper's 'principles which crumble'. But I can't help making what I make, it is as much a part of me as I am it. I cannot contrive to make things that i do not connect with. The pots I make flow easily from my mind, onto my sketch book pages before being realised in physical form. That is how I work, and it would be a lie to do anything else.
'Man is a creation of desire, not a creation of need'
Gaston Bachelard