The Clay Remembers Everything

A pot records the hand that made it, whether or not the hand intended to be recorded. Pressure, hesitation, the small correction halfway up the wall — all of it fires in.

This is why beginners' work is often more moving than it is good. It is unedited. The wobble is a diary entry.

Mastery, when it comes, is not the removal of the hand but its quieting. The best potters I know leave one deliberate trace, a thumbprint at the foot, so nobody mistakes the thing for a machine's idea of a pot.