Pottery Then and Now

Among the ancient treasures showcased in the Getty Villa exhibition Picture Worlds: Greek, Maya, and Moche Pottery is a cylindrical terracotta vessel made more than 1,000 years ago, probably for Maya nobility.

The surface is elaborately painted with a scene depicting the birth of the sacred cacao tree, the source of what premodern Maya culture considered food of the gods.

But the uniqueness of the vessel went beyond what the eyes could see. When in motion, it made a rattling sound, thanks to the ceramic pellets the potter placed in its three hollow feet.

“When you lifted the vessel, not only were you looking at it and smelling whatever it might have contained, but you were hearing it as well,” says David Saunders, associate curator of antiquities, who organized the exhibition.

The Maya pot, a product of the Mesoamerican civilization that once spanned Central America, is just one example of the inspiration humans across millennia have found in a humble ball of clay. Molded, coiled, thrown on wheels, and fired into pots, clay played a crucial role in human progress, enabling prehistoric peoples to store, transport, and cook food. Today its allure is stronger than ever.

More artists are exploring the medium of clay, helping to elevate what had long been considered craft into fine art. The ranks of hobby potters are booming too, leading to a proliferation of pottery studios and classes locally and across the country. “People are desperate to find communities where they belong—not at home and not at work,” says Gwen Robertson, executive director of Sierra Madre’s Creative Arts Group, a nonprofit arts space with a bustling ceramics program. “That’s what we really seek to develop in our program. People come here to be a part of a community, and clay is what brings them together.”

The surge in popularity of pottery making has been especially notable in the past four years. After COVID-19 forced life online, people young and old began to hunger for the tactile and meditative satisfaction of hands on clay.

“The demand for wheels, kilns, and clay materials exploded during the pandemic,” says ceramic artist and educator Wayne Perry, who has led popular workshops around Los Angeles, including at the Getty Center and Getty Villa. “You had to be on a waiting list to buy a kiln, and the clay I was using went from 45 cents to 98 cents a pound. Pottery has really taken off.”

Ceramicists like London-based Florian Gadsby and Tampa, Florida–based Kelsey Floyd have become social media sensations, their seductive videos of wheel throwing offering a welcome alternative to doom scrolling and endless Zoom meetings. Also fueling the trend are celebrities like Brad Pitt and Seth Rogen. Rogen, who sells his own line of ceramics, described pottery making as “like yoga, if you got a thing at the end.”

Everything Ancient Is New Again

What remains largely unchanged from ancient times are the methods for making pottery. “The techniques we use today of coil building, pinch pots, or even wheel throwing are the same techniques the ancients used,” says Nathan Murrell, ceramics director at the Community Center of La Cañada Flintridge, which recently doubled its ceramics space to accommodate the burgeoning demand. “They link us directly to the past.”

In Picture Worlds, visitors have an opportunity to learn about the “multifold and multifarious” practices used in making pottery, according to Saunders. “The Greeks used the wheel for potting,” he noted, “whereas the Moche material that we’re displaying is typically mold-made. The Maya vessels are often coil-formed. So there were different technologies and skill sets in play in different parts of the world.”

The show focuses on Greek, Moche, and Maya cultures because of their preeminence in producing ceramics with complex narrative scenes. A striking Greek cup loaned by the British Museum, for example, illustrates the deeds of the Greek hero Theseus in seven tableaux that unfold “almost like a graphic novel,” Saunders says. Supernatural scenes spiral around a vessel produced by the Moche, who flourished between the first and eighth centuries CE in what is now northern Peru.

“Pottery production has been virtually universal around the globe, but this confluence of utilitarian vessels adorned with depictions of gods, heroes, and ritual activities is quite peculiar,” Saunders notes. “The chance to explore these three cultures is a really enriching way to think about them from a fresh perspective and to consider how these practices of storytelling, image making, and working with clay continue to thrive right up until the present day.”

The current pottery-making craze has cross-generational appeal.

“I was really drawn to the fact that time flies when you’re working in the studio,” says Sarah Waldorf, 33, who manages Getty’s social media team. “Your hands are dirty, so you can’t check your phone. And I’m always on the Internet.” Pamela Mims, 70, an efficiency consultant from Pasadena, says she was drawn to ceramics in 2021 out of an urge to exercise a different part of her brain. “When I got to be a senior, I said, I have to learn something that is out of my comfort zone,” she says as she shapes a set of plates by hand at the La Cañada community center. Some novices are drawn specifically to ancient pottery methods. Tucson pottery educator Andy Ward, who founded the website AncientPottery.how in 2019, gives online classes on hand building Mesoamerican pottery replicas. His YouTube channel has 145,000 subscribers.

Ancient forms also inspire many contemporary artists.

Painter Brad Eberhard took a pottery class at the La Cañada center a few years ago with his then five-year-old son and liked it so much that he signed up for adult classes. Now he is immersed in clay five days a week at Pasadena’s Green & Bisque Clayhouse, which has doubled its number of classes since 2021 and has up to a two-year wait for membership. He says his deep curiosity about the “universalism of human creations through the centuries” informs his contemporary interpretations of Egyptian canopic jars, which he began exhibiting last year along with other ceramic sculptures.

Others who have turned to pottery making in recent years say they are driven by a desire to learn about their cultural traditions.

“I’m half Mexican, but it wasn’t something I grew up feeling very connected to,” says Alyson Brandes, a 2020 graduate of Chapman University and former Getty Marrow Undergraduate Intern placed at the American Museum of Ceramic Art in Pomona. “In college I started taking a lot of classes on Mesoamerican art, Brazilian art, Chicano art, and I really liked the shapes. I also did ceramics all four years in elective art courses.”

At Creative Arts Group, where she works as the ceramics lab technician, Brandes displays her witty, round jugs inspired by Moche vessels. She gives her creations a contemporary spin by painting product labels on them. One of her pieces is labeled “Inca Kola,” while another touts a popular Mexican beer. “With the shape, I’m trying to connect to some type of heritage—but the imagery relates to my suburban upbringing,” says Brandes, who grew up in the San Gabriel Valley.

“Every culture has a history of pottery, but I was finding a lot of kids who were disconnected from their cultural roots,” says Perry, whose mother is Mexican and father is Black. To raise awareness and create career pathways, he began giving free and low-cost pottery workshops in historically marginalized communities about 10 years ago. The pottery scene is growing more inclusive and diverse: Perry recently participated in the first national convening of Black potters, organized by the Hambidge Center in Atlanta.

He also points to the emergence of ceramics studios like POT, which describes itself as a creative space for and by people of color. Founded in 2017 by Mandy Kolahi, POT offers classes in English, Spanish, and Farsi at its studios in Echo Park and Mid City Los Angeles. It strives to keep classes affordable and draws a diverse, millennial-age crowd. “We have a lot of people who come to us because of our focus on cultural preservation and celebration,” says Kolahi, who teaches Iranian pottery making.

At UCLA, part of what draws students to the ceramics studio is its emphasis on the collaborative nature of working with clay and how clay can be used to advance social justice.

“Ceramics are made in a group setting,” says artist Anna Sew Hoy, who heads the UCLA program. “People help each other to load and fire the kilns and then to unload them. They’re taking shifts because firing takes hours. They help each other lift their work and give each other advice about technical details, like how to make a particular glaze.”

Sew Hoy and colleague Candice Lin spread that communal spirit through the Yummy Bowl Benefit, a fundraiser launched three years ago to help address food insecurity on campus. At this year’s event, about 70 potters with varying degrees of experience spent a day on campus making bowls, which will be filled with food donated by the Hammer Museum’s Lulu restaurant and sold for $20 each. Last year the event raised $10,000 for the campus food pantry. “Our students really benefit from this idea of working together, and ceramics is a great excuse for that,” Sew Hoy says.

Simpler desires have led other potters to throw clay. “It helps me zone out and takes my mind off day-to-day work,” says Alex Capasso, a cancer genetic counselor who was shaping a teacup at a pottery wheel on a recent Monday evening at the La Cañada community center. Nearby, Sandy Erickson, a software project manager at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, was laboring over a ramen bowl. “It’s something I can create, like a computer program. Plus,” she says, “I really want a ramen bowl.”