The audio file for this article was produced by the Ceramic Arts Network staff and not read by the author.
Centuries from now, the 30th, the 40th, perhaps the 50th, when people look back at our time, I don’t want the record to read “Everything they lived with was made by machines.” I want one more line beneath it, “And yet, there were people who tried to make culture by hand.” To leave that one line behind, I chose pottery as my profession.
In 2009, in South Korea, I asked myself a question. Is tradition merely a past to be preserved or a value that is still alive today? Seventeen years later, I am still working from that question.
My work sits on restaurant tables across the United Kingdom: Akoko in London, Sat Bains in Nottingham, Simon Martin in Manchester. Not displayed, but used. That difference is everything to me. I don’t choose galleries. I choose restaurants. Not to be admired behind glass, but to be held every day, washed, and used again. My work is not about expressing who I am. It has to enter the lives and food culture of the people who use it. Simple, practical, and natural in anyone’s hands.
Choosing a Direction
I think contemporary ceramics moves in two directions. One is the artist-potter, someone who expresses personal feeling and sensibility through clay, competing with other visual arts. The other is the artisan-potter, someone who makes vessels through clay and fire, objects that sit within the long history of food and daily life. I chose the latter. I don’t make artworks—I make pots.
This choice is not romantic. It is a decision to face a very specific market. The artisan-potter stands between two extremes: on one side, affordable and well-made mass-produced products; on the other, high-priced brands with centuries of story behind them. The question, then, is simple. Why should anyone choose what I make?
At first, I avoided this question. It was easier to refine technique, to improve form. But the market doesn’t wait. Eventually, I set my own standard, not “because this artist made it,” but “because it’s good to use.” This is not preference. It’s strategy.
So, I redesigned the way I work. Entirely made by hand, but with a precision as close to a machine as possible. Depending on the form, I can make up to 1000 identical pots a month within a 5% margin of error. Repeatable, consistent, and priced for everyday use. Meeting all three at once is the standard I set for myself. This is not romance. It’s a way of surviving.
Human Connection
In 2016, I collaborated with a restaurant and cafe in Newcastle to create a cultural arts space where people could see, with their own eyes, how the vessel holding their food began as earth. Every part of the making process was open. Anyone could walk in, touch, ask, and experience. Throughout that time, countless pieces were broken. Unfired work was damaged by curious hands, again and again. Each time, I remembered what my master once told me.
The first time I visited his studio in Korea, I accidentally broke a piece worth millions of won. He said nothing. I spent the whole day sick with guilt, and as I was leaving, he spoke: “Never be afraid of things breaking. Do not let it shake you.”
By any business logic, that space was inefficient—no molds, no shortcuts, dozens of strangers walking through the studio every day. But, the moment we chose handcraft, we already chose the most inefficient way of making in the world. So I thought, if it must be inefficient, let that inefficiency become a human connection.
For two years, I invited local people to free handbuilding classes every week. Around 100 came through, face to face, every week. Doctors, architects, and students, all sitting at the same table with clay in their hands. I believe the most powerful form of communication is not advertising. It is one person meeting another. And it was in those encounters that I found some of my most unexpected creative perspectives.
Sustainability and Standards
Direct relationships with restaurants have made my standards sharper and clearer. They don’t buy once—they return, and they demand consistency. What arrives must match exactly what is already on the table. That environment has made me more rigorous.
Social media is a tool for extending this work, but it is not the point. First, the object must exist as something actually used; only then can it expand. The studio operates by the same principle. Pottery is physical labor, and I have continuously adjusted my movements and redesigned how I work. To last, you need not endurance but sustainability.
There is no perfect balance. But when your standard is clear, your direction holds. To anyone who wants to make pottery their profession, I want to say one thing. Before asking what you will make, define who you are competing with. Among everything already out there faster, cheaper, and more consistent, why should yours be chosen? If you cannot answer that, you will not last. But if you can, every decision that follows becomes clear.
There is no right answer. But there must be a standard. I am still working from mine. And I continue to make, to leave that one line behind.
A DAY IN THE LIFE
MONDAY & TUESDAY
10:00am Begin at the wheel. These full days are dedicated to throwing, forming clay from scratch, and finding the rhythm of each shape.
Evening. Before leaving, cover each piece with newspaper, then lay a sheet of plastic over the top to dry evenly and slowly from all sides.
Finish around 8:00pm. The goal is 6:00pm, but the clay usually has other ideas.
WEDNESDAY & THURSDAY
10:00am Return to the previous two days’ work, now leather hard and ready to be refined. Turning sharpens the form, removes excess clay, and cuts the foot ring.
Evening. 1–2 hours filming turning videos. Turning is the process I promote most for social media, and of all the processes in the cycle, this is my favorite.
Around 8:00pm. Head home.
FRIDAY
10:00am Depending on where things are in the cycle, refining surfaces, attaching handles, decorating, or applying glaze. The week comes together here.
SATURDAY
Bisque or glaze firing. While the kiln takes over, the studio gets cleaned, videos get edited, and reclaim clay is prepared for the next cycle. One full cycle completes.
SUNDAY
A full day away from the studio. I exercise—not just for the body, but because movement is my primary source of inspiration.
Moving helps me understand structure and physics, which in turn informs how I design forms that remain stable through the extreme heat of firing, without warping or collapsing. The studio can wait. The body cannot.
Four Adjustments for Success
After seventeen years of daily repetitive work, I’ve learned that how you set up your body matters as much as how you throw. There are four things I wish someone had told me earlier.
First, raise the back legs of your stool. Even placing a piece of wood under them makes a difference. The goal is to shift your center of gravity slightly forward—not so much that you feel you’re tipping, but enough that your body weight naturally assists the work rather than your arms carrying it all. When the stool is too flat or tilted back, you compensate with your arms, and fatigue sets in faster.
Second, your hips must sit slightly higher than your knees. When the knees are higher than the hips, the leg bends sharply and compresses the blood vessels behind the knee. Over months and years of repetitive work, this can become a serious problem. Raising the back of the stool addresses this naturally.
Third, always throw on a hump. There are two reasons. The first is height—the higher the piece sits above the wheel head, the less you need to bend your neck and back to see what you’re doing. The second, and more important, is elbow position. When throwing directly on the wheel head, the elbows tend to rise above the hands. But when the arms are extended forward, the elbows should fall below the hands—that is the natural, low-tension position. When elbows rise above hands, the shoulders and neck absorb the strain, and long sessions become impossible. Make throwing on a hump a habit; if you can’t yet, practice until you can.
Fourth, check your lighting. For years, I worked with a single standing lamp positioned to my upper left. After six to eight hours at the wheel, I would finish with a headache. It wasn’t until a friend gave me a second lamp that I realized why—one eye was receiving concentrated light at close range for hours on end. Balancing the light on both sides solved it immediately. Avoiding long sessions is always the better option, but if you can’t avoid them, at least balance the light.
These four adjustments, practiced consistently over two to three months, will allow you to work more, work longer, and arrive at the end of a session with something left in reserve. Pottery is physical labor. Improving how you work and taking care of your body are, in the end, the same thing. If you want to keep making for a long time, you first have to build a body that can last.
CAREER SNAPSHOT
YEARS AS A PROFESSIONAL POTTER
17 years
NUMBER OF POTS MADE IN A YEAR
4000–6000
EDUCATION
BFA in Craft Design, University of Suwon, South Korea. Apprenticeship-based training under a Korean ceramic master.
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The audio file for this article was produced by the Ceramic Arts Network staff and not read by the author.
Centuries from now, the 30th, the 40th, perhaps the 50th, when people look back at our time, I don’t want the record to read “Everything they lived with was made by machines.” I want one more line beneath it, “And yet, there were people who tried to make culture by hand.” To leave that one line behind, I chose pottery as my profession.
In 2009, in South Korea, I asked myself a question. Is tradition merely a past to be preserved or a value that is still alive today? Seventeen years later, I am still working from that question.
My work sits on restaurant tables across the United Kingdom: Akoko in London, Sat Bains in Nottingham, Simon Martin in Manchester. Not displayed, but used. That difference is everything to me. I don’t choose galleries. I choose restaurants. Not to be admired behind glass, but to be held every day, washed, and used again. My work is not about expressing who I am. It has to enter the lives and food culture of the people who use it. Simple, practical, and natural in anyone’s hands.
Choosing a Direction
I think contemporary ceramics moves in two directions. One is the artist-potter, someone who expresses personal feeling and sensibility through clay, competing with other visual arts. The other is the artisan-potter, someone who makes vessels through clay and fire, objects that sit within the long history of food and daily life. I chose the latter. I don’t make artworks—I make pots.
This choice is not romantic. It is a decision to face a very specific market. The artisan-potter stands between two extremes: on one side, affordable and well-made mass-produced products; on the other, high-priced brands with centuries of story behind them. The question, then, is simple. Why should anyone choose what I make?
At first, I avoided this question. It was easier to refine technique, to improve form. But the market doesn’t wait. Eventually, I set my own standard, not “because this artist made it,” but “because it’s good to use.” This is not preference. It’s strategy.
So, I redesigned the way I work. Entirely made by hand, but with a precision as close to a machine as possible. Depending on the form, I can make up to 1000 identical pots a month within a 5% margin of error. Repeatable, consistent, and priced for everyday use. Meeting all three at once is the standard I set for myself. This is not romance. It’s a way of surviving.
Human Connection
In 2016, I collaborated with a restaurant and cafe in Newcastle to create a cultural arts space where people could see, with their own eyes, how the vessel holding their food began as earth. Every part of the making process was open. Anyone could walk in, touch, ask, and experience. Throughout that time, countless pieces were broken. Unfired work was damaged by curious hands, again and again. Each time, I remembered what my master once told me.
The first time I visited his studio in Korea, I accidentally broke a piece worth millions of won. He said nothing. I spent the whole day sick with guilt, and as I was leaving, he spoke: “Never be afraid of things breaking. Do not let it shake you.”
By any business logic, that space was inefficient—no molds, no shortcuts, dozens of strangers walking through the studio every day. But, the moment we chose handcraft, we already chose the most inefficient way of making in the world. So I thought, if it must be inefficient, let that inefficiency become a human connection.
For two years, I invited local people to free handbuilding classes every week. Around 100 came through, face to face, every week. Doctors, architects, and students, all sitting at the same table with clay in their hands. I believe the most powerful form of communication is not advertising. It is one person meeting another. And it was in those encounters that I found some of my most unexpected creative perspectives.
Sustainability and Standards
Direct relationships with restaurants have made my standards sharper and clearer. They don’t buy once—they return, and they demand consistency. What arrives must match exactly what is already on the table. That environment has made me more rigorous.
Social media is a tool for extending this work, but it is not the point. First, the object must exist as something actually used; only then can it expand. The studio operates by the same principle. Pottery is physical labor, and I have continuously adjusted my movements and redesigned how I work. To last, you need not endurance but sustainability.
There is no perfect balance. But when your standard is clear, your direction holds. To anyone who wants to make pottery their profession, I want to say one thing. Before asking what you will make, define who you are competing with. Among everything already out there faster, cheaper, and more consistent, why should yours be chosen? If you cannot answer that, you will not last. But if you can, every decision that follows becomes clear.
There is no right answer. But there must be a standard. I am still working from mine. And I continue to make, to leave that one line behind.
A DAY IN THE LIFE
MONDAY & TUESDAY
10:00am Begin at the wheel. These full days are dedicated to throwing, forming clay from scratch, and finding the rhythm of each shape.
Evening. Before leaving, cover each piece with newspaper, then lay a sheet of plastic over the top to dry evenly and slowly from all sides.
Finish around 8:00pm. The goal is 6:00pm, but the clay usually has other ideas.
WEDNESDAY & THURSDAY
10:00am Return to the previous two days’ work, now leather hard and ready to be refined. Turning sharpens the form, removes excess clay, and cuts the foot ring.
Evening. 1–2 hours filming turning videos. Turning is the process I promote most for social media, and of all the processes in the cycle, this is my favorite.
Around 8:00pm. Head home.
FRIDAY
10:00am Depending on where things are in the cycle, refining surfaces, attaching handles, decorating, or applying glaze. The week comes together here.
SATURDAY
Bisque or glaze firing. While the kiln takes over, the studio gets cleaned, videos get edited, and reclaim clay is prepared for the next cycle. One full cycle completes.
SUNDAY
A full day away from the studio. I exercise—not just for the body, but because movement is my primary source of inspiration.
Moving helps me understand structure and physics, which in turn informs how I design forms that remain stable through the extreme heat of firing, without warping or collapsing. The studio can wait. The body cannot.
Four Adjustments for Success
After seventeen years of daily repetitive work, I’ve learned that how you set up your body matters as much as how you throw. There are four things I wish someone had told me earlier.
First, raise the back legs of your stool. Even placing a piece of wood under them makes a difference. The goal is to shift your center of gravity slightly forward—not so much that you feel you’re tipping, but enough that your body weight naturally assists the work rather than your arms carrying it all. When the stool is too flat or tilted back, you compensate with your arms, and fatigue sets in faster.
Second, your hips must sit slightly higher than your knees. When the knees are higher than the hips, the leg bends sharply and compresses the blood vessels behind the knee. Over months and years of repetitive work, this can become a serious problem. Raising the back of the stool addresses this naturally.
Third, always throw on a hump. There are two reasons. The first is height—the higher the piece sits above the wheel head, the less you need to bend your neck and back to see what you’re doing. The second, and more important, is elbow position. When throwing directly on the wheel head, the elbows tend to rise above the hands. But when the arms are extended forward, the elbows should fall below the hands—that is the natural, low-tension position. When elbows rise above hands, the shoulders and neck absorb the strain, and long sessions become impossible. Make throwing on a hump a habit; if you can’t yet, practice until you can.
Fourth, check your lighting. For years, I worked with a single standing lamp positioned to my upper left. After six to eight hours at the wheel, I would finish with a headache. It wasn’t until a friend gave me a second lamp that I realized why—one eye was receiving concentrated light at close range for hours on end. Balancing the light on both sides solved it immediately. Avoiding long sessions is always the better option, but if you can’t avoid them, at least balance the light.
These four adjustments, practiced consistently over two to three months, will allow you to work more, work longer, and arrive at the end of a session with something left in reserve. Pottery is physical labor. Improving how you work and taking care of your body are, in the end, the same thing. If you want to keep making for a long time, you first have to build a body that can last.
CAREER SNAPSHOT
YEARS AS A PROFESSIONAL POTTER
17 years
NUMBER OF POTS MADE IN A YEAR
4000–6000
EDUCATION
BFA in Craft Design, University of Suwon, South Korea. Apprenticeship-based training under a Korean ceramic master.
THE TIME IT TAKES (PERCENTAGES)
Making work (including firing): 60%
Promotions/Selling: 30%
Office/Bookkeeping: 10%
FAVORITE TOOL
Turning tools I make myself
PROCESS
Wheel throwing—particularly turning
WHERE IT GOES
Studio/Home Sales: 80%
Other: 20%—direct-to-restaurant partnerships (B2B)
LEARN MORE
www.junrhee.com
Instagram: @jun_rhee
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