With these hands

I have been reading a lot and thinking a lot about making and what it means to make in the post industrial age when everything is mass produced at a fraction of the cost. Ashamed as I am to admit it my every day plates and bowls are from Tescos and Ikea. I can't afford nice hand made ceramics, just like every body else.

I find it hard to define what I do, I make non-functional ceramics that falls in a grey area between design art and studio pottery. A no mans land. The desire to make is integral to who I am, my brother is a carpenter, my mum knits, crochets and paints, my dad was a mechanic, my grandad another carpenter. Its in my blood. Its an urge, and I don't feel right if I don't have an outlet, if I don't make.

Check out this article by Edmund De Waal http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/8f50d924-4b63-11e0-89d8-00144feab49a.html#axzz1kJtcqp7Z. Here De Waal articulates in words far better than I could ever muster the innate need to make. This is a question I am becoming increasingly obsessed with. Why did I think it would be a good idea to give up a full time job and go part time so that I can dedicate 2 days a week to making pots which at the moment are stacking up in the garage while I wait to get the kiln wired in. I don't have buyers, or a show coming up, I just feel as though I have to make.

What about the 'Power of Making' exhibition currently on at the V&A http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/p/powerofmaking/ Clearly I am not alone. There are hundreds and thousands of makers out there. But what is our future? Are we evolving out, are we now a niche exclusive market only for the people who really feel the need to make and handle objects that are made.

Emmanuel Cooper Died on the weekend. The other week I was in the CPA shop opposite the British Museum http://www.cpaceramics.com/ holding a pot by Cooper. His hands held the pot and formed it and now he is gone. His pots will live on, with his finger marks and the traces of every decision he made while making each piece preserved. You can't get that from a Ikea mug. Across the road in the BM a Cycladic nipple pot, which has to be my favourite thing in the whole museum 1800-1550 BC. With every little mark left by that maker intact thousands of years later.

I guess I am trying to justify what I do, find a valid reason. Is just wanting to make enough?