Canadian Clay Symposium
Diversity in Clay

The following is the complete text of Clary Ulian’s talk

The text for my talk is a quotation found at
the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto
from the writings of Gao Lian, a sixteenth
century collector. He said,"“Whenever |
look at a specimen of stoneware, my heart
beats faster and my imagination soars. I
am transported and nownshmem becomes
useless. It is scarcely credible that such a
simple pleasure as a pot can be the reason.”
The first part of my remarks will be limited
to stoneware and porcelain utiliturian pots
thrown on the wheel.

1 argue that at the junction of clay, wheel,
and hand there is a revealed order that can
be perceived and taught. I cume to this
belief through a pair of experiences that
are really two sides of the same coin. The
first experience was touched on by the Gao
Lian quote; we feel deeply stirred by cer-
tain pottery forms. Obversely, we wince,
or perhaps, I'd better speak for myself
only, | wince when [ see pots that violate
that sense of order.

Am I stirred or do I wince because of my
training (some might say indoctrination)
as an apprentice at the Leach Pottery? In
recent years as Leach has been
deconstructed, he has been criticized for
ignoring some areas of ceramic history
and the work of certain of his peers, thereby
placing a chokehold on the modern studio
clay movement. For this act of violence it
takes a choker and a chokes, but pots and
words were his only weapons. Oddly, for
deconsiructive analysis, thiscriticism uses
the” great man” theory of history, glossing
over the cultural comtext of the twentieth
century which contnbuted to the reception
of his concepts and images while empha-
sizing the nineteenth century culture thit
formed him. During the admittedly short
time that knew Leach, | neverunderstood

him te be proselytizing for any cause other
than that of making good wtilitarian pots,

Leach did suggest that people could agree
upon the most successful pot in a limited
group ef similar shapes. The why of such
an agreement is the stuff of aesthetics: that
is, the study of beauty and our psychologi-
cal responses toit. Beauty isa work, which
has lost currency in ant parlance, so for the
moment, bers substiqte the term “qual-
ity”, defined as “degree of excellence.”

Language tends to become both diffuse
and effusive when quality is the subject. A
pot is said to sing, to have life, harmony,
energy, or spirit. Metaphors ebound, Un-
demeath these misty attributions, is the
fact that the curve of a pot wall tightens at
# particular point along its trapectory, or a
foot of particular height, width, and angle
compliments a bowl,

Lam convinced that an underlying geom-
etry governs the silhouettes, masses and
volumes, of thrown form. It is a geometry
that does not need to be memorized, thea-
rem by theorem. but to which we all have
intuitive access. Our intuitive responses
are probably a combination of the nature
of our brain and the nature of the stuff out
there in the world that our brains feed
upon, | cite as evidence for my belief in
this governing order writings on such di-
werse matters as music, the pattems of
growth in animals and plants, and the
mathematical underpinnings of both natu-
ral and manmade objects.

My metaphors for explaining the geom-
etry of thrown form are borrowed from
these readings and are only slightly more
complex than the vague descriptions of
life and spint referred to earlier, The un-
derlying order that produces a degree of
excellence is not a collection of templates
against which individual pots can be
judged, but rather, a kind of process slide
ruler. It works something like this: The
potter chooses a type or class of shape;
let's say, this classic storage jar, He or she
becomes interested in tweaking or featur-
ing certain aspects of that shape amd finds
that altering a shoulder’s pitch, for exam-
ple, seems to require a responsive change
in the height or width of the nim, or a

differemt angle at the base of the pot, as it
moves into the fullness of the belly. Once
this dance of improvisation begins, it is
clear that there is.no ideal form, but rather
an opportunity to relate the parts of the
shapes to each other in varying ways,

Recently | heard an interview with pianist
Murray Parriah on National Public Radio,
He revealed that when he is playing he
thinks about the “line” of music. He said,
to my potterly delight, that in music you
have to fight gravity and it is line that
keeps a piece up. Line might be created by
rhythm, dynamic inflection, or arc.

I began by saying that the governing order
of ceramic shape can be taught. A teacher
can set up assignments for the student
which are designed to develop perceptions
about the interacting relationships of the
parts of a pot, but this teaching window is
fairly narrow, and should be located so as
to overiook the beginning of the student's
education. Also of primary importance in
the early education of a potter, is the intro-
duction of pottery vocabulary —plenty of
images of food pots from past and present.

Curiously, once a student can distribute
the clay’s weight throughout the walls of a
pot, has acquired some flexibility of re-
sponse to the variables of clay in motion,
and can see relationships, the whole issue
of comect form seems to melt away. The
task of individuation begins and a less
prescnptive order of teaching is called for.

My specialty as a teacher has been within
this teaching window of the geometry of
shape, but shape is only one of 2 pot's
formal elements, Materials, textures, col-
our, and surface design must be added to
the mix, How can one begin te address the
topic of “Form and Aesthetics” in this
larger sense? How is it possible to bring
the tremendous variety of contemporary
clay practices underone umbrella of stand-
ards? It feels like being asked to formulate
a unifying theory of the universe.

A return to the concept of relationships
might help. Walter Ostrem talks about the
layers of information a pot can carry, and
by inference, the layers of relationships to
one another, | recently came acrass James

canned an neal pare