Just sold a piece I secretly hated and I don't know how to feel
Sold a little vase at the market on Saturday that I thought was one of my worst pieces. The glaze came out cloudy and the lip slumped to one side when I was being lazy with the wire. I almost didn't even put it out. Some woman picked it up, turned it around for like five minutes, and said it was her favorite thing on the table. Paid full price without asking for a discount, which never happens here.
And look. I took the money. I smiled and wrapped it up. But I've been thinking about it all week. Either my taste is completely broken or people genuinely see something in the wonk that I write off as failure. Maybe both. Because the pieces I actually love, the ones I photograph and post and get excited about, those sit. It's the accidents that sell.
My grandma always said the kiln knows better than the maker. Maybe she's right and I'm just too close to see it. Anyway, tonight I pulled the one I was convince was ruined and I'm leaving it out on the shelf. Not hiding it in the back. We'll see who's wrong.
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I think both things can be true, honestly. Your taste isn't broken and people do see something in the wonk. With pottery especially, the imperfection is often what reads as human, as made by hand. We obsess over the things going wrong because we're too close to it, we watched every mistake happen. The buyer just saw a pot that had character.
I paint old Bangalore houses and I always fight with the wonky ones, the ones where the proportions are off or the paint got away from me. Those are the ones people ask about most. They don't want the perfect one. They want the one that looks like someone was actually there trying to catch a moment.
Also, the lip slumping to one side? In ceramics that just reads as a decision. Most people can't tell the difference between intentional and lazy, they can only tell that it feels alive. You profited from the accident, that's not a bad thing. 🙂
"we watched every mistake happen", that's exactly it, damn. I sat there and saw every single thing go wrong with that vase, so it's all I can see. The buyer just walked up and saw a pot. No history attached.
The Bangalore houses thing hits too. There's something about the one where the paint got away from you that ends up being the most alive one. Maybe we should start trusting the accident a little more instead of fighting it. I'm gonna try to keep that in my head next time I'm about to scrap a piece that came out weird. Thanks for this, genuinely.
It's the same in printmaking, honestly. I spent a whole month on a plate once, editioning it perfectly, and the print people commented on was the one where I'd wiped the ink wrong and left a ghost on the shoulder. I nearly pulled it from the edition.
But I think about it differently now. The failed impression is the one that shows its hand. The perfect one hides everything. You can't see the pressure, the pull, the moment of decision. The wonk is where the work becomes evidence of someone being there.
The part that stays uncomfortable though is that they paid full price for something you'd have discounted in your own head. That's not about the pot. That's about realising your judgment is not the only one, and maybe not even the main one, that matters. Which is a hard thing to sit with, because we're told the artist's eye is the final one. Maybe it's just the first one.