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Karina Bates on Pottery and the Eye of Horus
96 Plays1 year ago
Joe and Mark are joined by Karina Bates, a potter from Omemee, Ontario.
Karina takes the lads through a quick tour of what it’s like the throw pots and other ceramics on the wheel. Her work tends to be functional and purposeful.
“It’s a nice feeling to have people hold up a cup you’ve made and say they enjoy having their coffee in it,” says Karina.
On the bottom of every piece, Karina leaves her "maker's mark", which is the Eye of Horus. In ancient Egypt, Horus was represented as a falcon-headed man, and was the god of order. His right eye was the morning star, embodying power, and his left eye was the evening star, representing healing. Karina explains her personal connection to this maker's mark.
This is a thoroughly engaging conversation about the art of pottery, the purpose of guilds, and ancient Egyptian mythology.
Find out more about Karina's work in the show notes page for this episode.
Re-Creative is a co-production of Donovan Street Press Inc. in association with Mark A. Rayner.
Contact us at: joemahoney@donovanstreetpress.com
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Transcript
Humorous Instrument Substitution
00:00:08
Speaker
Hello, Mark. Hello, Joe. I have a question. I have a question for you. I'm going to start with the questions. Oh, okay. Do you think that thing would be better done by a kazoo? Well, maybe accompanied by a kazoo. And that's that slide whistle thing. That would be great. Just at the end. I don't even know with that. Yeah. You know, that slide whistle sound. Yeah. So accompanied by a kazoo in their very end, just sort of glissando.
00:00:39
Speaker
Something like that. I get a feeling your question was going to be better than my question. No, no. You ask your question. I always ask the questions. No, that was my
Mark's Childhood Memories
00:00:47
Speaker
question. Oh, well, my question is we've established that you were, that you grew up in PEI. I grew up in Prince Edward Island. Yeah. So my question is what's your favorite place on the island? My favorite place on the island. It can be from your past. It can be from currently. I don't care.
00:01:06
Speaker
Cause I hadn't, I've been, but I was a little boy. I was probably six. So I would just have to say the beach. Cause that's all I really remember. Cause I love the beach, but it's impossible to narrow it down, but I'll give you a handful of places. Okay.
00:01:22
Speaker
Yeah, because because it keeps it changes too, because I mean, obviously, I love Somerset having grown up there. I love Cavendish, even though it's, you know, kind of crazy commercial at the moment. Cabot Park was a favorite haunt as a kid. My sister camps in Twin Shores now, which is fabulous. And over the summer, I went to the Bison Park outside of Montague, which is
00:01:49
Speaker
Wait, wait, wait, what? Bison? Yeah. There used to be bison on the island? There are. There's a whole herd of them. Wow. Yeah. And don't make the mistake of calling them buffalo because people get upset. Are they, are they come from a ways as well or are they, are they islanders? They are. Well, I think some of them, you know, by now are native to the island, but a bunch of them, the original herd was transported here from, I think it was from Alberta, actually. Oh, wow.
00:02:18
Speaker
Yeah, so if you ever pop down like a lot of people spend way too much time between Somerset and Charlatan and they don't get out to the other ends and you got to make it a point to do that. Otherwise you won't see the bison. That's always the case. No matter where you go, you don't just go to the Capitol. You got to go see the hinterlands. Exactly. Yeah. And what about our guest?
Introduction to Kerry Bates
00:02:40
Speaker
Our guest, Kerry Bates. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you. Lovely to be here. Well, it's great to have you.
00:02:46
Speaker
Yeah. So what about me? Yeah, what about you? What's your favorite part of Prince Edward Island? I have only really been to Prince Edward Island once on a flying trip out East many, many years ago, but I was of driving age. So I guess I was older than you, Mark. And I remember seeing the tall ships in the harbor.
00:03:07
Speaker
And I remember eating some really awesome crepes. And I remember driving a lickety split around the island to get to the bridge, which was brand new at the time.
00:03:23
Speaker
fancy. But it was too short a visit. Yeah, got to spend the entire summer on the island. I wish I could spend the entire summer. Yeah, we spent some time there. But I like I said, I was six. And so I was this little guy. So you have not experienced a bridge? No, no, of course not. No, that's why I went. Ooh, that's fancy. I do remember the boat ride. I remember there was a boat ride to get there or ship. Yeah.
00:03:46
Speaker
I took the ferry at one end of PEI and I drove back the bridge on the other at the other end. So Carrie has the distinction of being the first potter on the show. Yes. That is awesome. We have not had physical art like that yet. That's right. I'm not referring to like a Harry Potter dancer. Have we not? I don't think so. Do we have a dancer? We had Melissa talking about dance, but she didn't say she was a dancer. Maybe she isn't. She just didn't reveal that. Yeah, but that's I don't think so.
00:04:15
Speaker
Yeah. Carrie, I think at this point we need you to tell us all about yourself.
Kerry's Pottery Journey
00:04:20
Speaker
Hi, I'm Karina Bates. I'm the owner of Horace I Pottery. I have been a potter for close to 20 years now. I am not professionally trained in an art school. My education was in business administration and I spent some time doing that before I found the
00:04:40
Speaker
greater love of making things. But I am also a musician and I have dabbled my hand at writing in the past and I am a knitter and a gardener and all of those things. So a very creative person. Absolutely, yeah. I've known Kerry for a long time and I think I sort of knew you first as a writer. Yes. Really. That would have been the monthly reading nights that we used to all get together at.
00:05:06
Speaker
Yes, exactly. And when did you take up pottery? I actually tried pottery in high school. We had a really, really amazing art teacher named Mrs. Warren.
00:05:16
Speaker
and she was a graduate of what is now OCAD and she gave us a sampling of many things including stained glass and pottery and mask making and printing and all kinds of things and so I tried my hands at pottery then didn't touch it again for many years and a friend of mine dragged me down to her studio in 2004 and that was the end of that, got hooked.
00:05:43
Speaker
Now, can you tell me what kind of pottery you do? Because I know that there's different approaches. Sure. So I mostly work on the wheel. I am not really a hand builder, although I will do some small hand built things. I tend to do also what's called functional work. So I don't tend to make things that are put on the wall. I do not tend to make things that do not have a purpose. I think maybe because that's kind of me, I don't like things that don't have purpose in my house. So I don't make things that don't have purpose.
00:06:13
Speaker
And it's a nice feeling to have somebody, you know, hold a cup that you've made and say that they like having their coffee in it or, you know, having their dinner off of a plate or things like that. So that's that's a nice feeling. I like I like that. Yeah. And it's a wonderful art that's functional. I mean, there is something really fabulous about art that you can use.
00:06:32
Speaker
Yeah. Well, and I can attest to that because we have several of Carrie's pieces here in the house. I use them at least one, sometimes two, sometimes three every single day. She made me a coffee mug, which is fabulous, and a honey jar. I've now switched completely to putting honey in my coffee instead of sugar because I use Carrie's honey jar. And I didn't even know, it should have come with instructions. I had to figure out how to use it because
00:07:01
Speaker
It came with this wooden stick thing that I just surmised that you dip in the honey and you twirl it around and then hold it over your coffee mug and then the honey drips.
00:07:14
Speaker
into the mug. And I remember my daughter, Erin, watching me do this, trying to make sense of it. And she's like, hmm, that's interesting. And that's how I do it. Yeah. And then we've got bowls that she's made and I highly recommend Carrie's stuff because it's all for sale too, isn't it? It is.
00:07:32
Speaker
I don't tend to hold very much back. It has to be pretty special for me to want to keep something of my own these days. So I tend to sell. I tend to try and sell an awful lot of it if I can. Yeah. And you sell it out of shops and you sell it out of your house. And how does it get? Because Mark and I are trying to figure out how to sell books. Can you give us any tips? Do you ship things?
00:07:54
Speaker
I do actually. I have learned how to ship pots so that they usually do not arrive smashed at the other end. You have to do some pretty good driving over it with a vehicle in order to actually do in the packaging that I tend to do for my customers.
Pottery Sales and Storytelling
00:08:13
Speaker
have done numerous different types of sales. And then I'm sure you fellows have done some similar stuff. So I have been in art sales and in specifically pottery sales affiliated with the guild that I am part of. I have done studio tours and we can circle around back to this later, but I'm also part of a reenactment group and I tend to sell an awful lot of reproduction pottery to reenactors. So I do sales there as well.
00:08:41
Speaker
Then on top of that, what I ended up finding fairly early on was my business Facebook page has say what you want about Facebook, but I have to say that it was probably one of the best ways to get
00:09:00
Speaker
uh my name out there it was one of the best ways to uh when friends shared the links and and sent things on on their own feeds it was a really great way to get people who would look at stuff because i tend to post a lot of photographs about things in process and it is not unusual for me to sell something before it even comes out of the kiln because somebody has really
00:09:23
Speaker
either enjoyed the story of the process that I was doing or liked what they were seeing as it was being formed and all that kind of stuff. So that has been actually quite successful for me. That's wonderful. Yeah, because I post stuff on Facebook, but it's usually just stupid cat gifs and stuff like that. It has very little to do with my writing. That's my personal thing. It's funny. I enjoy making people happy. So that's why I do it that way. But yeah, that's wonderful that you could actually
00:09:53
Speaker
But it's good storytelling too, right? If you're posting pictures about what you're doing and how it's going and I can see people getting really involved with that as they watch the process.
00:10:05
Speaker
It's not as static as a web page. And I do have a web page, but I apologize for it every time I say I have one because I had great goals for it and ideas for it. And it kind of languishes in mostly obscurity. And really, the Facebook page is the place where I'm able to post photographs and talk about the things that I'm doing and show the successes. And sometimes I show the failures to the things that don't work. Well, sometimes it takes finding the right social media to like I found that
00:10:35
Speaker
I have a fraction of the audience I had on Twitter, but on Mastodon, I find I can really connect with people very well. Yeah, I've definitely like, I will post something about a book and I'll notice a few sales afterwards. So I don't see that on Twitter typically. So yeah, it's, so it's interesting just what, what social media makes sense. And I, I, Facebook makes sense to me that that, that would work for.
00:10:57
Speaker
Sorry, always have the social media thinking cap on. Hopefully I can help with my students somehow. I don't know. These days it is necessary.
The Meditative Nature of Pottery
00:11:07
Speaker
I want to get back to that moment when you went to your friend's studio and became entranced with Pottery. What was it about it? Like what was the sudden spark? Was there
00:11:19
Speaker
I think maybe it was she gave me enough time to play as an adult. It was one thing being a high school age student doing stuff in high school because these were the things that you learned, right? And this is the stuff that your teacher was getting you to do. And while I enjoyed art and I enjoyed the classes that I had with our teacher, I don't know that, you know, I think like a typical teenager, I didn't appreciate it as much as
00:11:45
Speaker
I would now as an adult kind of thing so you know and I appreciated what I learned there and I still have actually quite a number of things that I made in that art class including a stained glass piece that is my maker's mark.
00:12:00
Speaker
So I have really great memories of that. But my friend gave me sort of unlimited time and some instruction and some unlimited time to work in her studio and get a feeling for it and put me in touch with the local guild. And I met my teacher who has been my mentor for the last 20 years. And she really helped.
00:12:29
Speaker
push me towards wanting to learn all the things and I think like many other arts pottery is very addictive in that first of all it's a very calming thing you cannot be thinking about the kid you forgot to pick up from school you cannot be thinking about the what groceries did I forget to grab for tonight or did I remember to
00:12:55
Speaker
You know take my pill in the morning or did I remember to do this thing or that thing? Because if you start thinking about all that other stuff Frankly, you make crap your piece will not will not and the heck with the kid The piece will not work out, right? Okay, um, especially on the wheel hand building is a is really a completely different thing if you remember back to the days where you might have played with with plaster scene or play-doh or something like that hand building is
00:13:22
Speaker
can still be very meditative but it's it's it is a different thing when you are working on the wheel you are working with the machine and you are working with centrifugal force and physics and as i say to my students an awful lot now there really aren't any rules in pottery just physics
00:13:38
Speaker
and physics will call you out every single time if your brain is not in the game and so it makes you be in the moment and it makes you focus on what's happening in the now and if you do not focus on what's happening in the now your clay is stuck to the wall because physics and centrifugal force but it is
00:14:02
Speaker
this wonderful process of okay I made this thing now I want to make this thing bigger now I want to make this thing better I want to make this thing lighter I want to make this thing look like this thing I saw in a book somewhere I want to have you know well now I'm not just satisfied with making a mug I want to make a bowl I want to make a plate I want to make a teapot I want to make
00:14:23
Speaker
honey dipper, I want to make all of these different things. And how big can I make them? And how much clay can I use? And, you know, what what challenge like pottery megalomani? Well, it is it's it's in and I think that, you know, anybody who has painted and wanted to get something maybe more realistic, or they wanted to try and master the brushwork better, you know,
00:14:46
Speaker
Somebody who's a singer and they want to to be able to expand their range They want to be able to write this perfect song. I think it's very much similar goals Wow, and you mentioned your makers mark and we'll we'll get to that because I know that's what we're we're gonna talk about but I'd like to hear more if I can about what is involved in
00:15:08
Speaker
in doing the pottery because you set up a studio at your home and is that like a difficult, expensive, elaborate process? It's not cheap. It's not a hobby. Like many other hobbies, it's not a hobby for someone who hasn't got some money to outlay first.
00:15:26
Speaker
There are unfortunate stories of people during the pandemic who decided that they wanted to learn how to play with clay and they went out and i guess they could afford it ran out and bought themselves brand new wheels and brand new kilns and set themselves up in their living rooms which is a bit weird but,
00:15:45
Speaker
If you have an interest in clay and you have either a public studio or a guild nearby, that is one of the best ways to get involved with it in a way that doesn't cost you anything more than the price of the class. And then you can get through some of the humps of the learning and the challenges of the learning. I had been doing pottery, I guess, again,
00:16:13
Speaker
probably close to five or six years when my friend who had got me back into it actually, chanced upon a for sale notice from a woman who had been part of the local potters guild and her health was getting out of doing wheel throwing and so she was selling her whole studio pretty well with the exception of some items for a song.
00:16:35
Speaker
and because she had to move and she wanted the stuff out of there and so I ended up with a second hand wheel and a second hand kiln and a bunch of ingredients and you know a bunch of stuff that has served me quite well so wow if you're just going to do hand building we tend to find that it's it's very easy to do that because all you really need is clay and a few tools and someplace flat and clean to work
00:17:00
Speaker
A wheel thrower needs the wheel and tools and space and water and a place to dispose of said things that does not affect your drainage. And then if you're doing what you're doing, which is producing lots of stuff, you then presumably need some space to store things and let them properly cure and so on.
00:17:24
Speaker
Oh, yeah. And and that was interesting during the pandemic because my kiln was not set up yet. And so I was still using the guild kiln and the guild was in lockdown so I couldn't take my pieces to be fired. So by the time the lockdown was done, I had a dining room table covered
00:17:41
Speaker
in where I had an extra table in the dining room that was covered in ware. Our library shelves, any library shelves that did not have any books on them had pottery on them. My husband's library shelves in his office had pottery
Setting Up a Pottery Studio
00:17:56
Speaker
on. There was pretty well no place in the house that did not have pottery in it somewhere.
00:18:00
Speaker
So yeah, I'm in the process currently of moving from my tiny little studio into a slightly bigger studio. So hopefully that will alleviate some of the space problem.
00:18:12
Speaker
So you have your own wheel, you have your ingredients, but you have to, the kiln is elsewhere. You have to fire the stuff elsewhere. I currently fire at the Guild because I'm still waiting. I have to have, I have to finish setting up the place that it's going to go and I have to have it on electrician and professionally install it for me. And anybody who's new to pottery,
00:18:32
Speaker
You know, if they're really interested in wheel throwing and stuff and they've been doing it for a while, sure. You know, if you can find yourself a secondhand wheel somewhere, there are lots of very good wheels on the market. They are made really, really well and they often do not degrade unless somebody's, you know, drop them off the back of a pickup truck or something. But a kiln is a whole other thing and it's a whole other level of science because you can really screw stuff up really badly by misfiring your kiln.
00:19:02
Speaker
And your kiln is, while it is a glorified oven, it is a glorified oven that goes up to well over 2100 degrees. And if you are not careful, yes, it could burn your place down. And so these are all safety issues that you want to be very cautious about. Chemistry kicks in as a science when you start talking about the kiln, right? It really does. It really does. Yeah. Yeah. You probably don't want to try doing your pizza.
00:19:28
Speaker
Probably it's bad for the pottery, Joe. It's not great for the kiln. It's not great for the kiln, but you could certainly do your pizza in there if you really wanted to. It is an option.
00:19:41
Speaker
But yeah, I don't encourage, like any of my students, I never encourage them to get a kiln anywhere close to at the beginning because it's a huge, huge outlay. They're generally these days, they are no less than five grand to buy new. And because a lot of them now have computers on them, they suffer the same issues that a lot of the computerized vehicles do now. You've got a significant weight because a lot of the components are backordered. And how much is a wheel? Usually a couple of grand.
00:20:12
Speaker
Again, new. You can find used items on Kijiji or through local guilds or whatever, but that's by luck of the draw. But that's not bad compared to some other artisans like woodworkers and steel smiths and stuff like her. A woodturning machine.
00:20:32
Speaker
Yeah, like those kinds of things are very expensive. So yeah, it's actually fairly low point of entry. Yeah, as I have often joked with folks at my guild, I could have chosen a lighter hobby. Well, by the way, I got to congratulate you on saying guild kiln so well, because that's really a tongue twister. Try to say that three times faster.
00:21:02
Speaker
That's a new feature we're going to have to add to the podcast. Ton of twisters. Ton of twisters. Okay, so let's get back to, you mentioned your maker's mark and that goes, I'm assuming that goes on the bottom of every piece you do or does it go someplace else? It usually goes on the bottom of every piece. Yeah, the bottom of the reverse.
00:21:25
Speaker
And that's the piece of art that you want to talk about, the thing that inspired you. What is a Maker's Mark? OK, so anybody who signs their pieces, whether it is a painting or a woodcrafted object or a metalwork object or a piece of pottery or leatherwork, for that matter, or even some object that is a fine piece of clothing that has the brand name on it somewhere.
00:21:52
Speaker
Those are all methods of identification, right? So they're the mark of the maker. And certainly when you talk about antiques, you will quite often find that there are what they will call maker's marks that either depict the factory or the artisan that made said piece. And there are actual registries, especially of glasswork, especially of European and Canadian glasswork.
00:22:21
Speaker
that will tell you who the maker was based on what you can find on the bottom of a piece, and when they were in production and where they were in production. I mean, that's effectively what a maker's mark is. It can be anything from, you know, Joe Mahoney signed this, or it can be a set of initials, or in my case, it is a pictorial representation, and it is a pictorial representation of the Horosai, which is the name of my business.
00:22:47
Speaker
The horror side. Yeah. And for people that are listening, just to be clear, but that, that is a H O R U S space. E Y E horse. All right. So tell us about that. So the horror side is a, um,
00:23:03
Speaker
In Egyptian mythology there was the god Horus who was the son of Isis and Osiris and he was many things and in the Egyptian religion their depiction of Horus
00:23:19
Speaker
went so far as to start to personify not only the god, the raven, he was depicted as a raven. And there's actually an excellent description that I read a little while ago of Horus, the wings being the firmament, the sky, his right eye and his left eye being the sun and the moon, and his speckled belly, because he's a falcon, his speckled belly are the stars in the heavens.
00:23:46
Speaker
Not only was he depicted as a falcon, but his wings became personified themselves, his eyes became personified. So in Egyptian art, you will find that the eye is actually giving a tribute of something to Osiris or doing whatever. The short story of the history of
00:24:07
Speaker
Horus is that Osiris's brother Set kills Osiris and Horus avenges him and in saving his father Osiris he gives his father one of his eyes to eat in order to heal his father and so there are lots of different
00:24:29
Speaker
Representations of of of Horace as a healer as a protector as a warrior all of these different kind of things and I came to know the eye because I was
00:24:46
Speaker
Or maybe a typically frightened young child who had nightmares and whatnot. And my mother would draw a horror sigh on my window every night as a, I guess, a way to calm me down when I was a kid. It was just a thing she did. It was, you know, a fire ritual and it was the protector for my sleep. So.
00:25:04
Speaker
And so that was my first introduction to what that was. And my mother was a big, big Egyptology nut. And she taught classes on Egyptology as part of some of the extra things that she did on top of being an antique dealer. And she passed that on to me. I don't know if you can explain the difference between the Eye of Horus and the Eye of Ra.
00:25:27
Speaker
Because I know one face is left and one face is right, but I don't remember what they were and what the differences are. And you have to think of it if you were looking in a mirror. It stays left, right? It stays left, yeah. Because it is the left eye that is Horus and it is the right eye that is raw. Technically, they're both Horus.
00:25:47
Speaker
But the left eye is the moon, which is more generally associated with Horus. And the right eye is the sun. And of course, because of Akhenaten, that ended up becoming raw. That's raw. OK. So in Stargate, it's the eye of raw that everyone sees, right? Not the eye of Horus. Yeah. And interestingly enough, when I did my stained glass when I was in high school, the right side of the stained glass is actually raw, not Horus.
00:26:17
Speaker
Yeah. Probably because I wasn't thinking through that clearly. No. Are you worried at all that future archaeologists are going to be very confused because of your maker's mark?
00:26:30
Speaker
I'm joking, obviously.
Future Archaeologists' Challenges
00:26:33
Speaker
I've come around with enough archaeologists actually that there are already enough jokes and funny internal stories about finding the ring of the toilet and wondering what kind of a worshipping thing this was.
00:26:50
Speaker
There are some very amusing archaeology stories based on stuff that is extant now, right? So I think actually I think what might be more amusing is the number of
00:27:05
Speaker
artisans that I know that do reproduction work for reenactors and for museums as a matter of fact and archaeologists in the future finding these and going okay so this is exactly the same as the thing from 1200 but there's 800 years difference here if we do a an actual analysis of the the with a microscope yeah they could at least yeah yeah okay yeah they can look at where the clay is from and hopefully that will help them figure it out but yeah
00:27:35
Speaker
Because of my interest in archaeology, I also put the date on the bottom of my pieces. Oh, I love that. That's fabulous. So if you look at any of the pieces you have, Joe, the date that they were made. Do you put the correct date? Yes, I do.
00:27:48
Speaker
I'm going to have to pick mine up and look at them, but, uh, I try not to handle them any more than necessary. Cause I don't want to accidentally break them. Ah, you see that that's, that goes back to a, a, an axiom. One of my teachers told me at one point was don't fall in love with anything until it comes out of the kiln, the final time. And then it's only rented. Right. Yeah. These things are meant to be used, right? And to be used.
00:28:13
Speaker
And while my daughter made me a mug, which I'll show you guys in a moment.
00:28:20
Speaker
He's going off camera right now. It's, uh, it has a de Klee on it, you know, which is a carrier book, one of my books and yeah. And I, I, you know, drank from this a few times and then something happened to it. I don't know what, but you can see that it's kind of broken. Yeah. So I can't use it to fortunately I have your mug to drink out of, and this has become a strictly decorative object, but yeah, they, they can be fragile. They can be. Yep.
00:28:49
Speaker
I want to get back to something that you were mentioning earlier that I can completely relate to. You were talking about the act of, of doing pottery, that you have to be completely in the moment and focusing and not thinking about the kid that you, you know, forgot about or whatever. And, uh, this is a phenomenon that I experienced at work, like doing, doing live radio, like when you're doing live radio, you're completely absorbed. You can't think about anything else. You're thinking about, you know, what's coming next, what's going on at the moment, any problems that are,
00:29:19
Speaker
And I would always emerge from doing live radio, like a live show, completely relaxed, unless it was, you know, went horribly wrong, but usually, you know, completely relaxed because whatever mood that I was in before I started it, I was in a completely different mood afterwards. And so I do imagine that that is a hugely beneficial byproduct of doing pottery.
00:29:43
Speaker
There have been some articles in psychological journals in the last eight years talking about the benefits of different types of art and especially things that you do with your hands. So stuff that forces you to focus on things that take you away and put you as they say in the moment. So being present in the moment which is
00:30:09
Speaker
very much a psychological methodology for combating things like depression and anxiety and many other ailments that we are most prone to in this day and age, it seems.
00:30:24
Speaker
I can only imagine that that centrifugal force you're talking about, that's spinning around, it's so easy to get into that flow feeling. That state of flow, yeah. That state of flow is so amazing. That's what most artists are just gunning for, right? You want to get into that state of flow because then whatever you're creating comes through you. You don't have to create it. It's coming through you.
00:30:49
Speaker
So I imagine that that that that motion is helpful. Yeah, is it? Yeah, it is. And it's having done, you know, having done writing sessions, having done having been a performer, those kind of things, there is a very similar feeling to, you know, having a really great night on stage or
00:31:10
Speaker
I'm having a really productive day writing and I'm getting all of these ideas down to, you know, I'm in the zone and every pot I'm making is really good. The big deal is the enjoying of the process. It's not just the, you know, the applause at the end of the song or the fact that I've finished a book and I can, you know, sell it. It's the enjoyment of the process of the getting there. And that is all it.
00:31:39
Speaker
And is pottery something that you can do throughout your entire life? Or does it require a certain strength or concentration? Does it have like an end date to it or?
00:31:50
Speaker
I'm going to say no with a caveat. I'd say a good portion of older potters and by older, I'm talking in their eighties often start to gravitate away from the wheel because not necessarily because of the weight of the clay. It has more to do with the fact that fingers, especially being prone to things, nasty things like arthritis, cold water,
00:32:16
Speaker
even if you've made your water hot, eventually it will cool down. Cold water and clay are not nice to the joints in your fingers if you have arthritis. And so I tend to find that a lot of older potters start to steer away from wheel throwing because they don't want to have to deal with all of the water. However, that being said, while I was administrator of our guild for a number of years, one of our teachers
00:32:43
Speaker
was 91, I think. She had, or in her late 80s, early 90s anyway, and she had bad arthritis. Her fingers were actually, a couple of them were quite bent and crooked up in what seemed like an almost useless way.
00:33:06
Speaker
And yet she was the hand-building teacher for two years. And she was a great advertisement to a number of people who had come in and said, oh, I can't do pottery. I'm too old. I'm too frail. I'm too whatever. And she'd just be like, come over here. Let me have a talk.
00:33:25
Speaker
You know, and she with her finger. Exactly. And she made these wonderful things and not tiny things either. She made these, you know, great big pitchers and teapots and large bowls and things like that. And she would just do it via hand building. So I'm not going to say that there is an end date because I think that anybody who's got that passion to create
00:33:53
Speaker
whatever physical barriers they might be starting to face.
00:34:01
Speaker
they're probably going to try and find a way around
Understanding Pottery Guilds
00:34:04
Speaker
them. I mean, I've certainly I've seen creative people who have lost limbs, who learn how to paint with their teeth or their feet or, you know, people who have learned to play instruments and they, you know, are minus a hand. And, you know, so I mean, there are all different kinds of physical barriers to many different arts. But I think if somebody has the passion for it, I don't think age is a barrier.
00:34:30
Speaker
Yeah. That's great. Can I ask you about the guild? How many people are in your guilds and maybe explain to us what a guild is? Because I know what it is, but I don't know that everybody knows what a guild is. Yeah. So in the medieval era, a guild was generally a grouping of people of like mind who did similar things. So it might've been a guild of weavers, it might've been a guild of potters, it might've been a guild of, I don't know.
00:34:57
Speaker
name your art. And back then it was able to control the prices of things and handle that. A modern-day guild... It was like a combination union corporation, right? Yeah, it really was. We controlled the labor and we controlled the method of making these things and we controlled this product.
00:35:17
Speaker
Yes, yes, or you look at frank herbert and and the guilds in dune and you get a similar idea of the spice guild Exactly. You get a similar idea of the medieval era, right? um, but Always comes back to science fiction always science fiction is life. It really is fiction is life really is um, but the modern guild now in In most of the world and i'm not going to say in all of the world because I suspect in some countries it may actually still
00:35:44
Speaker
There may be some that still are more along the medieval lines, but certainly in North America, most guilds, whether they're woodturners guilds or weavers or spinners or what have you, they are usually, if you read their manifestos, their primary goal is to teach. They want to keep the art alive.
00:36:06
Speaker
So our primary, our guild's primary goal is to teach, is to teach people how to work with clay. And so our guild in Peterborough, Ontario is the Corotha Potters Guild. We have been around for 30 years in 2025.
00:36:25
Speaker
We'll be celebrating our 30th anniversary. And it started as a bunch of people meeting in somebody's living room and deciding that, you know, how could we arrange to have a Christmas sale? And in 2012, we had the luck to find our very own space, permanent space where we could actually teach. Prior to that, we were renting rooms and doing all that kind of thing. Especially over COVID, our membership soared.
00:36:53
Speaker
from something that was closer to an 80 average per year to 140. That's a lot of people. Especially for the size of our space. Yes, it is a lot of people. I want to ask you about the significance of the word throw, and I have a reason for asking, what does throw or throwing mean in the context of pottery?
00:37:16
Speaker
To throw, I suspect it literally comes from the act of throwing the clay like a ball down onto the head of the wheel before you start it to spin. You don't generally
00:37:33
Speaker
place your ball of clay tentatively down onto the wheel because you want it to stick. And so gravity is a great assistance to that. And I joke with my students that it is your one opportunity at anger management therapy because you can just wail on it and you can throw that clay down and get it stuck and get it centered and all of that kind of stuff. So I am not entirely sure
00:38:02
Speaker
But I suspect that that is has a lot to do with the the concept of throwing. Now, having explained that, can you do me the favor of reading to us your shirt? This is this is my fairy. Well, it's it's it's one of my very favorite shirts. It is from the Canadian Clay and and Glass Gallery, which is in London, Ontario. And it says throws like a girl.
00:38:31
Speaker
And I love. That's great. It is a fantastic. Yeah. Yeah. And I expect that throwing like a girl is perfectly satisfactory. It very much is.
00:38:44
Speaker
gets the job done. It really does.
Bernard Leach's Influence
00:38:46
Speaker
Now, in the context of many fields, there's something that I refer to as niche fame, like in writing in science fiction, there's people that we consider famous are very well known, but people outside science fiction wouldn't necessarily know them. Does it work the same in pottery? Yeah, it sure does. Do you guys have famous? Oh no, it sure does. So who would those people be?
00:39:12
Speaker
Okay, so probably one of the major names for the modern pottery era would be Bernard Leach. He was an Englishman who went to China and Japan to learn what they were doing in the East. And I cannot remember the name of his business partner,
00:39:38
Speaker
But that gentleman came back with him from Japan and they started up the leech clay works in England. And they changed the face of pottery for the modern era. And so anybody who studies, especially if they study at a place like OCAD or Sheridan or something like that, if they're studying pottery, that's a name they're going to know.
00:40:08
Speaker
And he had very specific ideas about what a modern British pottery studio should look like and how it should operate and what kind of things it should be making and how it should be teaching the art and all of those kinds of things. So in terms of sort of the grander scale, that's definitely a name that probably any potter would know. Bernard Leach. Yeah, we got that name out there.
00:40:49
Speaker
Wow. What about Canadian potters? Oh, Canadian potters. Wayne Cardinelli. We definitely have a lot of really talented potters all across the country. It is a privilege actually to get to meet and see some of them and see some of their work and what they're doing and how they've pushed the art along in Canada and across the world. Now, if somebody wants to purchase your pottery, your work, what is the best way for them to do that?
00:41:02
Speaker
Any relation to Cary Grant? Wasn't his real last name Leech?
00:41:18
Speaker
They can contact me via my Facebook page, which is at Horacei Pottery. They can email me info at Horaceipottery.ca.
00:41:30
Speaker
They can go to our guild and buy some of my work there. And that's the Corathobotters Guild. And that does have a website, corathobottersguild.com. But certainly contacting me directly is a way to find pieces. And I also, I tend to do a lot of commissions. So I do a lot of, as I said, I do a lot of historical reproduction work for reenactors, as well as modern work that is really heavily, medively influenced.
00:41:57
Speaker
We'll make sure we put those links in the show notes. Thanks, Mark. Yeah, I feel like we need to commission Carrie to do some re-creative swag, pottery swag. Yeah, I think that's a good idea. I'm excited about this. That could be an option, gents. We could talk about that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. As soon as this podcast starts making huge sums of money, we will get right on that. Because Mark Marin has done very well with his cat mugs. I'll just point that out.
00:42:22
Speaker
I can't remember the name of the pottery he has working on those mugs, but they are gone like that. They're up for like a fraction of an hour. And then they're gone. Okay. Yeah. Carrie, anything further you'd like to tell us about pottery and your makers? Oh, how long do you have? Another 47 seconds.
00:42:42
Speaker
Yeah, pottery is a lifelong pursuit like rent many things and so I would only encourage those who are interested in getting their hands dirty to find someone that can teach them. Now there is your maker's mark and then we have our re-creative mark. Mark, any further comments? Well, I guess so that they should be looking for the local guild is what they should be doing if people want to start to make their own pottery. That's the starting point.
00:43:08
Speaker
Yeah, I'd say look for a local studio. There aren't guilds everywhere, but there quite often are cooperative studios, and quite often all of these places will offer teaching of some sorts. Okay, great. Yeah. That's great advice. Carrie, thank you very much, Carrie Bates. Thank you for being on our podcast We Creative. Thank you for inviting me. I am most honored to have been here.
00:43:29
Speaker
Lovely to meet you again. Nice to meet you again, Mark. Take care.
00:44:00
Speaker
You've been listening to Recreative, a podcast about creativity. Talking to creative people from every walk of life about the art that inspires them. And you're probably wondering, how can I support this podcast? I am wondering, Joe, how can I support this podcast? I mean, apart from being on it.
00:44:16
Speaker
There's no advertisements in this podcast. There's no tip jars. There's nothing about, like, buying us a coffee or anything like that. But there is a way that you can support us. And what is that? They could buy our books. And how do they find us? Recreative.ca. Don't forget the hyphen. There's a hyphen in there. Re-creative. I took your line, sorry. Well, because I stole your line.
00:44:37
Speaker
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