A fascinating discussion about the art and business of pottery, such as:
I used to make bowls of many colors, then one day I realized that my stock of colors of bowls on the shelves was increasing, but I had no blue bowls. It dawned on me that I was selling off everything blue, and bringing home all the other colors. So I now make only blue stuff. And mostly bowls. Why? 95% of my customers are ladies, and every lady needs a good bowl. And it shows in my sales. Now, I confess to playing a bit now and then and making the occasional ornamental bean pot, or platter, or bread baker. But those are not my mainstay. That is bowls. Bowls and pots with a commercial attitude …. I stay away from art and craft shows – too expensive for what they do. I try and sell in a fifty mile radius of where I live and that seems to work. And I try to simply make good pots.
Veblen’s Instinct of Workmanship.
That sounds like the story they tell in statistics about how they chose to armor planes in England during WWII by looking where the bullet holes were in the planes that made it back.
After a while, it dawned on them that the places where they didn’t see bullet holes indicated that the place hadn’t survived.
yes, I agree.
“Blue pots” are sometimes used a shorthand among the potters I know to talk about pots that are ugly (to them) but commercially successful. Perhaps “crafty”. Some feel that it’s because browns and oranges are the colors good potters are most drawn too, and that a less educated eye goes for something like a blue. My personal opinion is that blue is just generally popular, and that making blue pots you can be a successful potter even if you aren’t very good at it, and a lot of the business you do is based on the initial impression (where blue does well), not necessarily the richness of the lifetime of experience a person might have with their purchase.
As a result of all this, I’ve seen potters start to associate poor craftmanship with the color blue, perhaps unfairly hating blue as a result — the color is more of a crutch than a flaw in itself. Though there are other things too — thick, opaque glazes tend to obscure the form, for instance, so it helps the poor potter and obscures the work of the good potter.
Anyway, touches on some interesting details of the craft I suppose.
When I was about 8 years old I decided my favorite color was blue. As a high school student I wore lots of blue shirts. But as I got older, this seemed a less and less interesting choice.
Seems silly to hate blue. Might as well hate pots.