“The cup I keep for myself has a slightly crooked handle. For some reason it is the one I always reach for. Customers can be much less worried about these things than I am. A woman once brought back a bowl I had made years earlier. She wanted another one to go with it. I had forgotten the bowl completely. It was nice to see it again, with a few scratches on the bottom from being used.

I put it on the shelf beside the new pieces while we talked. The colour had changed a little. She told me she used it for breakfast, and sometimes her cat drank from it when she left it on the table. I liked knowing that. In the workshop I spend a lot of time looking at a rim or a handle. Once a piece goes home with someone, it becomes part of quite a different set of concerns.

The first thing I do in the morning is uncover the pieces I left the evening before. Something that looked ready yesterday may still need time. Something else has dried more quickly than I expected. I cannot arrange the whole day by the clock, however much I would like to. There is usually enough to do while I wait: clearing a shelf, preparing clay, answering a message from somebody who has measured a cupboard and now needs a different-sized bowl.

Learning the weight of things

I keep a few old pieces near the window. They are not examples I would put at the front of an exhibition. One is too heavy, another has a foot that I would make differently now. But I remember making them, and they remind me that my hands have learned things that were once difficult. It is easy to forget that when you are looking at a new problem and feeling as if you have never made anything properly in your life.

A friend who helps me carry boxes always picks up a cup before she looks at its colour. She turns it in her hand and tries the handle. At first I thought she was being terribly practical. Now I do it myself. You can admire a cup on a shelf, but somebody has to lift it every morning. The weight matters. So does the small space where a thumb comes to rest, something a photograph will never tell you.

People who visit the workshop sometimes ask to watch me working. I am happy to have them there, though they often arrive when I am doing something very uninteresting. They imagine a bowl appearing on the wheel; I am scraping the underside of yesterday’s bowls or wiping dust from a shelf. A great deal of the work is returning to something you thought was nearly finished. I usually offer tea, because it gives them something more comfortable to do than watch me repeat the same movement.

A place in somebody’s day

I have a notebook of requests, with little drawings that are clear only to me. There is a plate to replace, a jug for somebody’s sister, a set of small dishes that should fit inside one another. Beside some names I have written a colour, beside others a measurement. The nicest orders begin with a conversation about a meal or a room. Then I am making something for a particular place, even if I will never see it there.

At the end of a working day I line up what is ready and cover what must wait. The table briefly becomes a clear surface again. I like that moment, before the next morning begins undoing it. Sometimes I take a piece indoors to live with it for a while. I put fruit in a bowl or leave a cup beside the kettle. In the workshop I can keep finding faults. At home I find out whether I actually want to use it.

Packing an order is another small pleasure. I wrap each piece, find a box that fits and write the name on the outside. For a few days I have been thinking of these objects together. Soon they will be divided between cupboards and tables, and the empty space on my shelf will fill with something else.”