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post of the week 🩸

It’s crazy how ceramics can teach us so much about business.

I do ceramics for a year, both manual and on the wheel, and still have a long way ahead. I did sell $1,000 worth of ceramics in the last 2 months but don’t full yourself. I’m certainly no guru here. It's all about practice, practice, practice.

My biggest challenge is to replicate a piece with the same width, height, and thickness using the wheel. With so many variables, such as clay, temperature, humidity, drying time, position, glaze, etc, it all makes it very hard to get what you want. And that's actually the fun part of it.

Last night, I practiced for 2h using the wheel with 6 evenly weighted pieces to replicate the first one 5x. I got:

3 finished pieces with different widths, heights, and thicknesses.
1 unfinished piece (wall falling apart)
2 unused clay pieces.

The next steps would be to apply a layer of glaze to the bisque ware, leave it to dry, then load it in the kiln for its final step, and finally glaze firing. The whole process can take up to 3 weeks depending on your available infra.

There are no shortcuts. So you do have to take the time to learn ceramics.

📌 Like in business, there are no books or courses that will teach you how to do it. You have to try it yourself to effectively learn something.

📌 When you fail to do a piece, it probably means you sinned with excess on something. So, as in building a product, it's fine to fail as long as you used the minimum needed.

📌 You might have the right tools and ~great~ conditions to build something, but there is no such thing as ~perfect~ conditions. So you have to be prepared to work your way around it.

📌 The most interesting part of ceramics is that not all your pieces will come out as expected. Every time you open the kiln is a surprise. For the good and/or for the bad. So plan ahead your production and to the worst-case scenario.

Overall, it's been a great journey of self-knowledge, mindfulness, and consistency where I can plan, produce, fail, win, and learn.

I highly recommend anyone to find this sweet spot to navigate through something new and get alternative motivation.

Here are my inspirations: