10,000 Hours to Learn a Craft

Video Description

The topic in this video is something I touch on in greater detail in my latest YouTube video, I discuss how making many hundreds of something, forcing oneself to dedicate time to practicing the same shapes over and over again, can be so beneficial in terms of learning and becoming fluent with a craft. Fluency was a term used a lot during my pottery training on the then named DCCoI Ceramics Skills & Design training course, which I believe is still closed but I so hope it reopens eventually. The idea being that the first year was spent making you fluent, relatively, pushing all twelve of us students to a point where we could pretty throw anything, mug, bowls, teapots, vases, plates, lidded forms, eggcups, goblets, (yuck), to name a few of the objects we practiced making relentlessly in stoneware, porcelain and earthenware. As each week progressed, the skills gained learning one particular shape would be transferable to other forms, and as the months went by our skills all rocketed up. Then, in the second year, once we could all actually make the vessels we envisioned, we were encouraged to pursue the route and aesthetic we wanted, which is something that often isn’t possible when you’re first learning a craft as each attempt rarely matches what it is you can see in your mind’s eye. I had a rather traditional journey into this craft I suppose, first by going to a college dedicated to teaching practical skills, following which were two apprenticeships, one in the UK and one in Japan. For me, this was the perfect way into ceramics as all I ever wanted since I was a teenager was to be a good thrower, I wanted to be fast, efficient, I dreamed of throwing boards of vessels that were all identical and ultimately, I’m glad I did. Of course this isn’t the only way to get into pottery, or to even become a good thrower, I know more self-taught potters these days than ‘traditionally’ trained ones. If you enjoy topics like this my book, ‘By My Hands: A Potter’s Apprenticeship’, might be of interest to you, as all the above is just a smidge of what’s written about in the 400 pages of that tome. #mugs #handmade #satisfyingvideo #process #pottery #ceramics #clay