About 14 years ago, I had a visitor, around age 20, looking around my studio. He had no specific interest in pottery, but happened to be there because he worked at the camp where I ran the pottery room, and the day that camp ended for the season, I gave him a lift from camp as far as my house. While he waited for his ride for the rest of the way home, I had invited him to see my pots, which were different from the ceramic things I made with the kids at camp.
I showed him one I had recently made and which I liked. I'd formed it as a cylindrical vase, then I had manipulated the sides and added dabs of clay so that it was off-round and (-I thought-) interesting.
"But it's dented," he said, wrinkling his nose.
I could see that he knew it through his very pores. This thing was badly made. It is not an uncommon notion: The more perfectly, symmetrically molded the thing, clearly, the better it is.
I doubt he'd ever seen someone strive to alter a thing from perfect (perfectly boring) to something other (more interesting). Perfection is an acculturated thing, especially in societies where most of the items with which people come into contact are machine made.
I have a different notion. "Perfect" has little to do with the work I make. I like my work to function well, to look good, be interesting, beautiful, even thought-provoking. But most of all I like my work to have something soulful in it. Like human beings, the pots I like most are perfectly... imperfect.
Thrown and altered vase, "Rabbit Portal", in a private collection. By Mimi Stadler.
Serving plate and bowl, made from rolled-out slabs of clay hand-manipulated into shape. In private collection. By Mimi Stadler.
Detail of relief tile made from a rolled-out slab of clay and carved by hand. One of a kind. By Mimi Stadler.
Thrown, hand-fluted and carved vase. Currently in private collection. By Mimi Stadler.
People are employed in ceramics factories that are equipped with ram presses and banks of casting molds. With these they rapidly make identical pots. Factory ceramics is a good commercial occupation. It employs people and produces repeatable, affordable wares. A place like that can turn out perfectly decent and even beautiful pottery. If you break one cast fine china plate or ram-pressed stoneware mug with cast handle, there will be another exactly like it available to replace it. Even I can see the excellent value in this.
On another end of mass production, using the same factory techniques but without finishing the surface, bisqued ware is trendy for recreational purposes. You can go to a "paint-your-own" shop, where you will be provided with the pottery bisque blanks you select, and you can buy and decorate it yourself right there. Your piece, exactly shaped like your friend's, will look different because you will "paint" it your own way.
But because customers never touch fresh clay, there is a certain sense of "Presto, change-o!" After customers brush glazes onto the pre-made pieces, they leave the kiln-firing part to the paint-your-own shop employees, and return to pick up the magically finished piece in a few days. This is a fun thing to do, and has its own validity. I have only one thing against it. The instant gratification found there fosters a lack of understanding of what it is like to take a bit of clay and turn it gradually, through experience and acquired expertise, into an unique work that begins well before the cosmetic skin of glaze is applied. The necessary, equal and opposite reaction on the part of a clay artist, is the necessity to educate people about what it is potters do, and why it has effortful complexity, as compared to the one-two-three-done that is experienced at "Paint-It-Yours".
The experience of the studio potter is a sequence of learning and innovation that is like gathering seed, planting it, helping it grow and getting the end result born. Studio pottery in 2014 continues to be a cottage industry, a gentle backlash to assembly line automation, a challenge to individual creativity, and it is an educated endeavor significantly distinguished from hobby activities. The sequence of making pots professionally by hand reflects the human condition, which is flawed, laborious, and very interesting. Interesting pots are individuals, as I've said before and will again; perfectly imperfect.