Thursday, January 24, 2013

Production as Meditation

We have made a big shift since our last Fab.com sale. We have fully embraced production pottery as our primary way of working. This has made us streamline and analyze efficiency of movement, but it has also freed us to be more creative. Wait. What?! How's that so?


When we sit down to work on wholesale orders, we focus on one thing for hours. This time is largely spent relying on muscle memory. While our hands complete the work, our minds are free to wander. This process is so meditative and relaxing that we find our sketchbooks filling with new ideas. These ideas are given time to flesh out while we trust that our hands remember what they are supposed to be doing.


When we sit down to throw 50 - 100 cups at a time, we waste no time. Every moment of that throwing time is spent moving toward our goal. As we work, we tend to get faster and more efficient, so as our output increase, so does the time saved by working in large quantities.
 

Now, what do we do with that time earned by becoming production machines? We work on things that are just for us. No, not just for us to keep, but we work on things that we do not have to sell to be flush this month. Working in production frees us to create without regard for how something will be received. We can make because we love to make and not because we need to sell.

Then, there is the benefit of all that time spent in a meditative state. We are happy and content. We are doing what we love and making a living doing it. We are focusing on the things that fill us with joy and leaving behind the worries that drag us into angst. Life is good. We are at peace.

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