“What makes one pot have a measure of life while another seems dull and dead is as difficult to account for as any other evidence of the workings of human personality and expression. Most potters have had the experience of making a number of pieces, all perhaps more or less similar, and of having one or two stand out as if they belonged in another class of objects altogether. This distinction of liveliness or vitality may defy analysis. But it has something to do with the flow of intention from the potter into the pot, with nothing intervening between. Although concentrated effort is required to establish and sustain such a flow, a quality of relaxation, even of thoughtlessness, must also enter in , rather than a feeling of struggle, doubt, or uncertainty. Good work is probably always the indirect result of a long effort to learn the craft, to get the operation of potting under control and to know where the real values reside. But, as in the case of a good shot with the bow, the actual accomplishment of something meaningful, the hitting of the target, seems to have an ease almost as if done by someone else.

      Like other activities which are done for their own sake, potting seems to derive its central value from the degree to which the potter is able to put himself into the work. But if the potter is to extend himself through his work, to pour a little of himself into the pots, he must have a firm grip on the methods of pottery making. In many ways pottery is an exacting craft. The ease with which a lump of clay can be made to assume different shapes by the untutored hand is deceptive. Until one gains control of the manual processes involved, and learns to understand the temperament of clay as it dries and changes, and until one is able to foresee and to use the transformations of the fire, one is really at the mercy of the medium rather than in control of it, and the results, although they may be expressive of process to a degree, will not be something capable of being ripened and developed. All the processes of pottery, when carried out with skill and understanding, have an expressive potential; this potential is fulfilled only when the process becomes second nature, when the work can proceed with élan.”

- Daniel Rhodes