“It is a wondrous thing that long after it has ceased to be necessary, people still want to make pots on the potter’s wheel.” — Clary Illian
A Potter’s Workbook by Clary Illian is one of the best resources on making pots. Published in 1999, the book is full of images, drawings, and texts that illuminate and illustrate the how and why of making pots. It’s one of my favorite pottery resources, and I regularly share photocopied sections of the book with my students.
With just over 100 pages and 12 chapters, the book is full of information but not overwhelming. It starts with a a few short essays on the ideas of pots and then proceeds to cover practical aspects of each part of a pot, such as the foot and neck (the “Beginnings and Endings” chapter), cylinders, pitchers, bowls, lids, and then a few chapters on training your eye and finding your own style and voice. There is much practical information, along with more theoretical questions, such as:
“What is the heart of the matter in pottery making? To call into being an object and to ask the object to have qualities that evoke in the viewer a sense of rightness, beauty, or vitality is to tinker with the divine. Making pots offers a constant challenge to search for the mysterious underpinnings of the physical world itself.”
This style of pottery making and thinking about pottery shows Illian’s roots as a functional potter in the studio potter or Mingei tradition espoused by Bernard Leach and others. Illian apprenticed with Leach in 1964-65 after her undergraduate studies at the University of Iowa. After her time in Britain with Leach, she returned to Iowa where she set up her own pottery. While many of her pot evoke Mingei forms, Illian often turns to playful illustration and decorations that put her own spin on handmade, functional pottery.
The book is illustrated throughout with simple line drawings and black and white images of greenware pots, shot by photographer and potter Charles Metzger. As opposed to other books that mainly show fired pots, or pots as they are being made on the wheel, the studio shots of greenware really illustrate the ideas that Illian presents in the text and help bring forth the attention that is needed to make a successful pot.
The book ends with a short chapter-length essay called “Place” that focuses on aesthetics and the role of the potter in contemporary society. Illian writes:
“Potters occupy a special position as communicators because they straddle the visual arts and arts of living; they have one foot in the spiritual realm of artistic value judgements and one foot in the material world of utilitarian objects. A useful object that has been crafted with artistic standards in mind is doubly special and celebrates both how and where it will be used…The sensuous appeal of a unique mug is linked to a nurturing moment, a moment of repose before the demands of the day begin. Food, drink, and plants are so central to our daily lives, so charged with emotions of self-gratification, nurturance, and relationship to other human beings that the containers associated with them will always be objects of symbolic power.
Delving into the spiritual along with the practical is to my mind, a great way to explore the mystery and power of pottery making. This makes A Potter’s Workbook a wonderful addition to any ceramics library and highly recommended for any potter.
For more on Clary Illian, check out this post from Craft in America. In 2014, the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art published a monograph surveying Illian’s 50-year career.
Any thoughts on Clary Illian or A Potter’s Workbook? Let us know in the comments.
A Potter’s Workbook by Clary Illian
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A Few Images from the A Potter’s Workbook:
