In the Beginning, There Was Clay….

Before wheels, before kilns, before words — people shaped the earth. This is where our story starts.

In the beginning, there was clay.

Wet earth gathered by hand. It yielded, soft and slow, to pressure and play. Pressed into bark, coiled with river reeds, left to dry under sun or fire.

This was before the potter’s wheel. Before the kiln. Before even the bowl.

These first vessels — pinched and imperfect — weren’t decoration. They were survival. A way to carry water, to hold grain, to mark time. Clay stored food, but also meaning. It bore fingerprints. It held ritual. It cracked and was reborn.

From the Jōmon flame pots in Japan to the hearth-side urns of Neolithic Europe, people worked the earth and burned it hard, making memory into material.

Every studio today — even here, above the river in Abbotsford — is an echo of those first firings.

And so we begin: with clay, and with a story.