Pottery Lines: Carving, Trimming & Tracing Clay in the Studio

Pottery is a practice of lines — carving, trimming, and tracing. In our Abbotsford ceramics studio, clay teaches progress by mark-making.

The first time you centre clay, it wobbles. The second time, you brace. The third time — a line appears, somewhere in the curve.

A throwing line. Not perfect. But present.

I see this all the time in the studio. A student will lift their hands and say, “Is that a mistake?” and I have to pause.

Sometimes it is. Sometimes it’s the most honest thing the pot has to say.

In our Abbotsford ceramics studio, we spend a lot of time with lines: trimming, carving, ribbing, refining. Lines show us where we’ve been — not just in the clay, but in ourselves.

The new shelving holds a row of bowls with trimming spirals like little signatures. I remember who made each one, not because of perfection — but because of the mark.

Last week, a woman in her first class made a plate with a tiny ridge around the edge. “I didn’t mean to,” she said. “But I kind of like it.” I told her to leave it. Now it’s glazed in sea-green, and that ridge makes it hers.

Ancient pots bear tool marks too — carved ridges, thumb prints, brushstrokes left in haste or reverence. These marks aren’t decoration. They’re memory.

A pot records its making. So do we.

The line in the clay tells us where we are, and sometimes, where we’re going.