Sold the lopsided one. The one I almost smashed.
A woman came to the market on Sunday, picked up the tall vessel with the crooked neck, the one that slumped in the second firing and I spent a whole week deciding whether to break it or pretend it was on purpose. She held it up to the light and said "this one looks like it's listening."
I sold it. Full price. I didn't even have to do my speech about how the leaning is intentional.
Here's the thing though, I've been making for two years now and I still can't predict which piece people will go for. The ones I sand for an hour and finish in three glazes sit there all day. The one I pulled out of the kiln and said "joder, no" goes home with someone who sees something I didn't.
So my win is small and confusing: the piece I nearly destroyed is now in somebody's living room in Godella. I keep thinking about that woman's face. She wasn't being polite, she actually looked at it.
Anyway I'm not going to start making everything crooked on purpose. Or maybe I am. Kiln doesn't care either way.
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"This one looks like it's listening" is a better reading of that vessel than anything you could have written in a statement. She found the thing you were too close to see, and that is usually how it goes. The crooked neck wasn't a mistake you got away with, it was the only part of the piece doing any work.
I paint, and the ones I fight with for weeks and nearly scrape off the stretcher are almost always the ones that sell. The ones that come easily stay in the studio for years. I stopped trying to predict it around year ten and started paying attention instead to which pieces I was still thinking about a month later. That has been a better guide than my own judgment on the day.
Naja, and the speech about the leaning being intentional is the real danger. The moment you explain it, you take the listening away from her.
"the only part doing any work" jaja, that stings a little but you're right. I spent a week calling it a defect and the crooked neck was the whole piece.
And the fighting thing, yes. The ones I baby are boring. Ten years though, that gives me hope, because right now I'm at the stage of guessing and being wrong most of the time. Paying attention instead of predicting, I'll take that.