My Experience with a Potter’s Wheel

By Ron Harton

The closest I have come to actually turning pottery myself was about ten years ago in Bandon, Oregon. It was just after Christmas and the town was almost deserted. Storm after storm had been rolling down from the arctic and driving the tourists on down the coast. The wind, channeled into the harbor by the sea stacks and cliffs, swept icily along the main street.

I had driven up the coast to watch the storms and was staying at a little Bed and Breakfast, the Gray Whale Inn, right off the main street and across the harbor from the Bandon lighthouse. The lighthouse is famous and much photographed. I felt very fortunate to have a room which looked right out at the light. It’s light swept through my room all night.

Two other couples were staying at the inn. They were very romantic and absorbed with each other, flirting and touching in ways that marked them surely as either newlyweds or unmarried lovers. They barely noticed me, but I’m used to that. Traveling alone, dining alone, I often am the object of stares and whispers. I don’t mind. I travel alone by choice. It heightens my senses and opens the world to me in ways others miss.

About noon, after a leisurely morning watching the storm waves through the windows, I walked out along the shops. Many of the stores were closed. Notes taped to the doors explained that owners had gone south for the winter and would be back in February or March. At the end of the street, near the cliff, there was a little pottery shop with beautiful blue pitchers in the window. The store was dark, but I needed a wedding gift for a friend and one of the blue pitchers seemed like just the thing, so I tried the door. It opened.

No one was inside. The shelves seemed dusty and sparsely stocked. Most of the pottery was typical tourist tradeware. The pitchers and bowls in blue glowed among the earthen tones of the others. I looked around the shop for a while. No one came out to help me. I called hello but there was no answer. I heard a noise farther in the back of the shop through a hallway, so I walked back.

There in the back room a woman was working at a potter’s wheel. She didn’t see me. I watched her, fascinated. She had long brown hair that was pulled back very tightly into a pony tail tied with a brown ribbon. She wore a rust colored turtle neck sweater and blue jeans. Her jeans were very dirty. The tops of her thighs were streaked with clay dust as if she ran her clay-covered hands down her thighs.

Suddenly she became aware of my presence and looked up at me in surprise.

"What are you doing here?" she asked, as if she wasn’t quite sure I wasn’t supposed to be there.

I said, "The door is unlocked. I thought you might just be open."

She said the door was supposed to be locked. The store wasn’t open. She was just staying there a couple of days waiting for the owner, a friend of hers, to return from Portland. Then they were leaving for San Francisco. I explained to her my interest in the blue pitcher, and she told me that the blue pottery had been made by another friend, not the owner, who had moved away some months ago.

We chatted for a few minutes about the storms. Then she asked me if I had ever used a wheel. I assured her I had not, but that I loved to watch artists at work. She said she wasn’t making anything, just practicing, learning.

I asked her if she would permit me to watch. She laughed. "Just for a moment," she said. "It makes me nervous."

She turned back to the wheel, wiped her hands across her thighs, and started the motor. The clay whirled around. She moistened it and placed her hands around the spinning mass. Under pressure from her fingers it magically changed shape and form.

I thought how beautiful it was--the storm outside, the soft winter light filtering into the room, the artist alone in an abandoned town practicing her craft by the edge of the sea.

The women worked silently for awhile. Then she said, "Put your hands on top of mine." I was taken aback by the invitation, but I felt flattered. It was an opportunity to enter into an artist’s world. I couldn’t resist.

I stepped to her side and placed my left hand over the top of hers.

"The other hand, too," she said.

I stepped behind her carefully, leaned over her and placed my right hand on top of her right hand. My face was next to her hair and my arms circled around her shoulders. I could feel the warmth and power of her hands under mine. They were thin but strong. Her skin was tight over the backs of her hands. The clay was just a lump of clay spinning. It wasn’t a pot or anything. She had said she wasn’t making anything, but I could feel the clay beneath her fingers, and the clay felt like it could become anything.

When I first touched her hands, it seemed the clay was in command. I could feel her hands sense and receive the clay’s textures. I could feel the clay moving under her hands, growing slightly upward, then shrinking and changing.

Suddenly, the woman was in control of the clay. I felt her muscles move as she applied pressure in different ways to the clay. Her hands slid to the top of the form and I stretched to stay with her. Swiftly she slipped her hands to the top and opened the clay. I watched amazed at how the hole expanded and grew. The clay leapt and surged to her touch.

At that moment, I became very aware of the woman’s physical presence. My face was almost touching her hair. My arms grazed hers. I felt the heat of her body next to mine. The presence of the woman and the spinning of the clay began to merge with the sound of the wind outside and I suddenly felt very light-headed. I pulled my hands away and stepped back.

I, I stammered a bit trying to gain my composure, and before I knew it I was sitting in a chair just staring at the woman not saying anything.

"Are you all right?" she asked.

I muttered something. I think I told her I felt faint or ill and she said she’d bring me some coffee.

When she returned, I was feeling rather embarrassed and made an excuse for my behavior, "Perhaps I haven’t had enough to eat today."

"Well I can fix that," she said and left to return with a sandwich and another cup. "We’ll split my lunch."

"Oh, no," I said.

"Don’t be silly. You look far too pale to go out in that storm right now," she insisted.

And so I shared her lunch, sitting right there in the artist’s studio, right next to the wheel and the pots and the clay.

She chatted while I ate. She said she was from Seattle and had met her friend, the owner, on one of her trips to Portland. I ate silently, watching her talk, her face lit by the cool blue-gray glow from the windows. Her face glowed, it seemed, with a light of its own. She was beautiful and close, so beautiful and close that I began to feel awkward again.

"Will you sell me one of those pitchers," I said abruptly.

She paused, and for a moment, I was afraid I had offended her. I hastened to explain. "I just remembered something I need to see about," I lied. "But I really would like to purchase that large blue pitcher." I felt I certainly had to go through with the purchase even though I wanted to bolt out of the shop and run straight back to the inn. She had done so much for me that I felt I owed her repayment.

Her pause grew longer and just when it was almost unbearable, she smiled and said, "Sure, I’ll take care of that for you. Would you like me to gift wrap it and mail it also?"

"That would be wonderful," I said. I followed her to the front of the shop where she took care of everything most efficiently.

"Thank you," she said smiling, and then she stuck out her hand for me to shake, just like a child would.

I hesitated, but she didn’t move. Slowly I reached out my hand and clasped hers. Her hand was warm and strong and alive. I could feel it was the hand of an artist. I could feel it had the power to shape that clay and make it something, anything she wanted it to be. I pulled my hand away and said, "Thank you. I hope your holidays and travel are very pleasant." She tilted her head back and smiled again, but said nothing.

I left the shop and went straight back through the storm to the inn. I felt better after a hot shower. I spent the evening on the sofa in the inn reading Robinson Davies. That night, the wind buffeted my room. In my mind, the sound of the wind mixed with the sound of the wheel. All night I tossed and turned with images of the woman and her hands, the clay and the wheel spinning and spinning. I slept very little. In the morning, I had such a strong feeling that I should purchase one of the smaller blue pitchers for myself. I thought I would stop by the shop as I was leaving town.

About noon I departed the inn to drive farther north along the coast. I drove slowly past the little pottery shop. It was dark and there was a closed sign in the window. "Be back at the end of January." I stopped the car and tried the door. It was locked. I peered back into the shop. It looked empty. I though that perhaps the woman was working back in the back at her wheel. I knocked on the glass. No answer. Perhaps her friend had returned early and they had already left for San Francisco. I knocked again, a little louder. No answer. I had missed her.

I really didn’t need a souvenir of my one experience with a potter’s wheel, so I got back in my car and continued driving into the wind, farther north.