You Can't Dance in a Cupboard: a case against safety

Dear Laurie,

Would you rather someone broke one of your pots using it or kept it untouched in a cupboard forever?

Cheers, Michael

Dear Mike,

You already know the answer, but thanks for asking.

Like each of us my pots were born to die. My job is to make them and yours is to use them. If that ends in death, so be it. A good pot wants to be used. To deny a pot its opportunity to work robs its life of meaning. Cupboards are prisons. Their dark windowless cells offer a convenient screen for the progeny of our excessive consumption. To put a pot in a cupboard is to stifle its lifeforce. To break eye contact and end the conversation. A cupboard is a low security jail for the innocent. 

No pot is too good to be used. Unless it's a wanker. The least successful pots in the world are the ones we never use. Museums are filled with the ceramics nobody wanted. That's why they're still intact. The best pots have long since returned to dust, ground down by hard work and good humour. Exhausted by their own success the best pots are used to death. The tragedy is for those pots who never had a chance to shine. Release the fucking captives! Give your unused pots a little rinse and place them on a table in the sun.

Pots, like people, have personalities. The pots I make like to wear jeans at pool parties. They’re rock'n'roll pots and would never appear on America’s Got Talent or write a Christmas album. They’d rather jump off the bench and smash their own brains out on the linoleum floor than be incarcerated. They’d rather die trying than sit on the sidelines. My pots aren't cut out for containment. They want to live full, rich and risky lives. If they break it will be without regret.

A life without risk is boring and cruel. A break is the fair cost of adventure. Don’t buy my pots if you don’t plan on using them. Don’t ruin their lives for the fleeting thrill of acquisition. Don’t invite me to the pub and order water. I want a beer and so does my pottery. A beer and chips. I like to imagine my pots out there in the world, chipped but favoured, tea stained and tumbling foolishly in a dishwasher. If you have one of my pots, use it. The best pots are the ones you miss when they break. That's the ultimate test. To die in service is an honourable death, even for a mug. 

XL

Image* Lenin in coffin by Petrov-Vodkin (1924)