The Warmth of Things Handmade

My friend’s handmade ceramics

A friend invited me over for dinner.

She had recently moved into the neighborhood and found a place that felt just like her. Warm, with a bit of quirkiness.

Dinner was served in bowls she had made herself. They weren’t perfect. But they were. I couldn’t say why, but I fell in love with them the minute I held them in my hands.

Not long after, I signed up for a trial pottery class. I sat down at the wheel and gently pressed the pedal with my foot. The clay started spinning. The teacher told me, “The wheel should spin faster. Your hands should move slower.” The faster the wheel turned, the calmer I had to become. It sounded simple enough.

It wasn’t.

The moment my attention drifted, even for a second, the clay started wobbling. I couldn’t think about work or replay conversations in my head. The clay demanded my full attention.

My first bowl (the one on the right.)

I’d been going through one of those periods at work where people take up more space in your head than they should. For an hour that day, there was only the clay. My foot adjusted the speed. My hands shaped the bowl. Everything else faded into the background.

When class ended and I washed the clay from my hands, I felt lighter than when I’d arrived. The stress I’d been carrying seemed to have been washed away with it. In its place was a sense of warmth.

We often think of warmth as temperature. But I realized there’s another kind of warmth that comes from knowing something was made by someone’s hands. You notice the weight. The texture. The slight unevenness. It isn’t perfect. Then again, maybe this IS perfection.

And maybe that’s what I fell in love with at my friend’s dinner table. The warmth of something made by hand.