‘By My Hands: A Potter’s Apprenticeship’ isn’t a ‘how-to’ book, rather, it’s an introspective tale of a teenager finding a calling in clay. I write about my early education at…

‘By My Hands: A Potter’s Apprenticeship’ isn’t a ‘how-to’ book, rather, it’s an introspective tale of a teenager finding a calling in clay. I write about my early education at a Waldorf Steiner school where craft was abundant and the following arduous apprenticeships where each pottery tutor taught in a different manner, be it their technique, the glazes they use or the kilns they fire. There’s no one way of making pots. This book speaks about these paths, the relationships between master and prentice and the pots I honed my skills on by throwing thousands of them. A memoir leads this story, but it’s interspersed by more specific and technical sections that detail types of glazes, tools, clays and pots: like flowing bowls, challenging teapots or lowly mugs that we all use, a form most of us will have a favourite of, even if it’s a subconscious decision. Scattered throughout the pages are more than 150 colour images from ten years of learning a craft. From the earliest, rather cumbersome and ill-formed pots I ever made, to those were my own individual style just started to emerge, to pieces I’ll be able to make forever, with my eyes closed, as I made countless numbers of them during my apprenticeships both in the UK and abroad. Beyond pictures of pots there are photographs of places and people, sketches of pots and plans, smashed ceramics and kilns fuelled by fire.