I am Mara Lindqvist, a potter and writer in a mill town in West Yorkshire. I have worked with clay for eighteen years, most of them in a shared studio with a stubborn kiln and very good neighbours. I teach two beginners' evenings a week and throw the rest.
The Slow Wheel is a record of that work: wheel throwing, hand-building, glazes, kiln days and the long, unglamorous middle of a creative practice. Nothing here is a shortcut. Most of it is the sort of thing you learn by making the same mistake three times and writing it down on the fourth.
I throw stoneware for the table and build larger pieces by hand, and I write about both without pretending either is easy. The studio is shared with two other potters, a radio that is always on the wrong station and a kettle that takes an age. I write in the early mornings, before the clay.