@floriangadsby: Breakage like this is rare, despite putting out a handful of videos out there like this a year. The bucket you see me filling up happens very gradually and thankfully so far, all of these shards have been collected over the years by people who intend to use them for other purposes. They don’t go into landfill. So far, they’ve been used as shards combined with poured concrete, like terrazzo, for mosaics and even ground up to a fine powder and incorporated back into clay that’s then moulded into new work. I’m looking into a way of pulverising the fired pieces too, in studio, so that I can add it back to my own clays as grog. In reality, I make very few pots, perhaps 1500 a year, sometimes more, sometimes less. I’m not a factory churning out work but a single person and perhaps about 30-40 pots actually get destroyed like this a year. I wish it wasn’t the case, or that there was less, but I do keep a majority of my functional seconds aside, to sell one day from my studio, but if there’s no chance they’ll survive the glaze firing, or cannot be used, this is what happens. It’s quality control and as a craftsperson I need to be quite vigilant about what goes out into the world, after all, these objects represent me and I’d hate knowing that I sent someone a defective vessel. Or, like I’ve seen before, potters' seconds and thirds are then sold as firsts, which certainly wasn’t the makers intention. As for those who might say to donate them, which is a comment that often comes up, I think the focus should be on donating objects that those in need actually want, rather than broken pots that won’t last long. Breakage is part of being a potter, I try to waste as little as possible but the truth is something things are out of our control when working with this medium. #smash #asmr #fail #pottery #qualitycontrol #oddlysatisfying

Florian Gadsby

Open In TikTok:

Region: GB

Saturday 25 May 2024 14:27:15 GMT