The Centre of the Known Universe

For The Centre of the Known Universe I spent 10-months learning to use a potter’s wheel to throw pots, with the initial aim of making a teapot three times. The project grew out of experiments with clay as a material in response to an MS relapse which affected my hands. The project culminated in two teapots, a full tea set, a companion book and an event exploring the relationship between tea and trauma recovery.     

In 2019 I decided to start experimenting with ceramics and learn to wheel throw pots. My motivation was two-fold. For a few years I’d been experiencing spasms in my hands, at worst every 30 seconds, but at this point had reduced to what is known in the trade as an ‘intermittent fine tremor’. I was doing research for another project into ways of rebuilding my confidence in my fine motor skills, I wanted to see how, if at all, the tremor would show up in a sensitive material like clay. 

I found myself struggling with my artistic practice. I was just coming back from a period of absence and I felt like I had to make something so good nobody would notice the gap in my CV. I was putting so much pressure on myself it was stopping me working. This is when I remembered a blog post by author and illustrator Ursula Vernon arguing that all creative people should learn to wheel throw pots at some point in their career, as it cures you of the kind of perfectionism I was struggling with.

I had this idea to start learning to throw and make a tea set three times and see what it taught me. I spent ten months studying with ceramicist Sonje Hibbert at her studio gallery in Haworth. 

When I look across all my projects a common thread is a sort of informal study of emotional fortitude. How do people find the things that keep them going through the hard times in their life? So, I suppose it was almost inevitable that my project that started out as learning to throw, would evolve into something about trauma and recovery.

I did make three teapots, and ultimately an entire tea set, which is wonky and imperfect, but the point is it exists. I found once I had mastered the basics of throwing, the time I was spending making the work gave me a lot of space to think. The thing I thought about was tea, and its place as the calm at the centre of every emotional storm I’ve ever experienced.

I was also thinking about teapots, from my Mum’s industrial sized brown one you need two hands to lift, to the delicate porcelain one bought in India by Grandad Billy. Mostly I was thinking of the way we (or at least I) use tea as a sort of emotional decoy. The tea itself gives us permission to share an intimate moment of connection with another human.

Reading a lot of poetry and prose about the significance of tea making, I came across Lessons in Tea Making by Kenny Knight. The title of the project borrows a line from this poem. I wrote an essay for the companion book to the project which reflects on these themes.

Once the tea set was completed, I decided to hold an intimate event at Sonje’s gallery. Over the course of an afternoon ten people came in shifts and shared tea with me, poured from my dribbling teapot, drinking from my too small cups. They generously shared their own stories of trauma and recovery. It felt like I was truly achieving a moment of quiet intimacy, in a world built for spectacle and distraction.”