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Michelle Grimm | Episode 1241
Michelle Grimm approaches clay with curiosity, experimentation, and patience. Shaping by hand, Michelle explores diverse glazing and firing techniques, often incorporating organic materials and research. Embracing unpredictability, Michelle’s work balances control and surrender. The resulting vessels—both functional and sculptural—are original forms that reflect a connection to nature, history, and the elemental forces of making.
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How many pieces would you feel you could actually do without being overwhelmed within a two-month period?
That’s a great question. I think it depends on what those pieces are. On the wheel, in a two-month period, I would say a hundred. It really depends on the piece. Yeah, it depends on what I’m making.
How important was that batching in the making process?
Very important. Having a schedule, I think, is what kept me on track. Knowing Knowing each step of the way and how long that would take and you have to factor in the drying time too So, you know, you can you could make all let’s say a hundred pieces at once But then you’ve got to make sure that they’re right for trimming for any other finishing work that you might need to apply So that that batching is is very important
How important is it to keep the simple the form simple but yet the decorations elegant enough to be able to meet the demands of being production, but also high aesthetic?
I think that depends on the… to the expectations of the project that you’re meant to deliver. For example, the plates that I the little catchalls that I made, those vessels, they were incredibly simple. The only thing that I think was decorative about them was the glaze that I made for the client. So with something of that scale, I think if you can streamline and make things as simple as possible and if that works for the client, that’s that’s the other thing. these pieces were incredibly simple to make. So that really cut down on a lot of the guesswork and a lot, I was able to know how long I needed for each piece.
Was there any part of the process that you could do that could seed up the process such as like candling your work or whatever the shortcut would be?
100% you could candle, candle. I didn’t have a kiln for the first part of it, so I did have to transport all 500 pieces to another potter to fire in their kiln. So that was just, I did add a couple days for that in my process. But that’s another reason why I chose to make everything with, you know, using a template as opposed to on the wheel, because that was my way of kind of What’s the word? Just making more of a production line so that I could also ask for help.
How much did you allow the “collaborative” input from the request from the customer?
For this project, the client already knew my way of working and I had, when I made the dinnerware, the four-piece dinnerware set for that long table dinner, they were aware of what I was working on and they came back to me and said, we want that. So that actually made it quite easy that they already kind of… were okay. They already knew what they wanted and they knew that I could give them what they wanted. They weren’t asking me to do anything out of my kind of wheelhouse or something that wasn’t authentic to me. So that really helped, I think, yeah.
As a handmade potter, how okay was it to have variations between pieces?
For my philosophy and the way that I work, where I strive to make every piece one of a kind, I was very okay with each piece being subtly different. And I wanted that because I wanted people to really know that they could see the mark of the maker, so to speak. I wanted them to understand that these are made by a real person, not in a factory. And that’s also something I value in the work that I make. And the client understood that and accepted that. And they knew that every piece was going to have a little variation of the glaze, there might be a fingerprint here or there that really gives it that kind of one-of-a-kind bespoke quality. So I’m okay with that.
Book
Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers by Leonard Koren
Contact
Instagram: @the_mgrimm