Ginny Sims In 1982 I went to Burma. Through uncertain circumstances, I found myself in a boat with eight Burmese fisherman and their sons in a desperate search for the endangered Burmese toucan. Upon disembarking the vessel, I was led to a clearing and was handed a piece of paper upon which was scrawled in crude Pidgin English two words: GIVE UP. At that very moment, I turned around to find a stone giant looming over me. He spoke in a booming voice that flattened the local flora, pressing it down like reeds in a monsoon. The petrified abomination said to me from it's parched, wizened lips: “Function is divine. Go forth, young lady, and bring it to us in the form of clay.” That's when everything exploded. Then I was standing in Paddington Station, in London, England, with a ticket to Butleigh-Wootten, Somerset, in hand. When I arrived in Butleigh, I was drawn to a field of rapeseed flowers of brilliant yellow. A little weary from the sudden shift to Greenwich Mean Time, I walked along a path towards an old tithe barn I could see in the short distance, nodding to the many hares in the field one by one as I trudged. I approached the doorstep and was greeted by a potter who with no hesitation invited me into his home. We talked over tea and a long walk in the garden. We smiled a lot, and he most graciously accepted my proposal to work for him in the pottery for a while. Despite my long devotion to clay, I had abandoned it somewhat in the years prior. But there in Butleigh I decided to really commit myself to pottery. There I rediscovered what it means to be a potter—the community of it, the sport, the chemistry, the geology, the cooking, the seeing, the tradition, the devotion, the routine, the dance. And I remembered the emotions pottery inspires, feelings of frustration, patience, elation, wonder, and grief. Drinking or eating or pouring from a handmade pot is a delight, a reminder of where you come from. Obviously, we live in a time where it is no longer necessary to make pots like the village potter once did. You could say the same for your bread, clothes, furniture, etc. It becomes an issue of preservation of tradition and quality. Bread made by someone you know is the best. Handmade clothes fit better. They embrace you like the hands that carefully made them. Handmade pots transfer the same joy, thought, and care that went into making them as the food that is served and enjoyed from them. Break your Pier 1 and Target plates. They don't deserve your food. In fact, they're making your food miserable. To quote a favorite potter, we make pots to “enrich, rather than adorn life.” It's an honor to be a part of this tradition, this well-connected community. And all it took was a hurried and hazy trip to Yangon and beyond to figure it out.
Lately I've been silk-screening decals onto fired work, so I can incorporate text and image onto a three-dimensional functional surface. This satisfies the desire I had to include text, language, and design to a very usable thing. It's all very fulfilling.
