TEXTURE

A friend recently asked me about my use of texture on my pots. The paddled and impressed texture in particular, but also the use of hakeme and thick kushime combed slip as well. At first I was unsure what they wanted me to say and wasn’t honestly sure how to respond.

After thinking about it for a moment, the answer was very obvious to me and in fact, right in the palm of my hand. I love texture, the tactile interaction between pot and person, I love the exceptionally tactile sense of a pot. This coupled with the historical antecedents where texture was some of pottery’s earliest “artistic” expression reinforced my use of texture

In the making, there is a variety of different textures you experience from wedging to throwing to handling a leatherhard pot. A bisque pot is unlike no other texture I can explain. The use of texture to decorate and articulate a form seems only natural since it is the pot in hand that interests me as much as the visual of the object.

The use of a variety of textures, as decoration, makes the tactile experience richer and the sensory input from various 3-dimensional surfaces allows for a nearly infinite interaction between each pot and it’s user.