Clay and the Wheel

Hélène Morin's studio is in a converted stable outside Limoges. She works alone. There is no music while she throws — she says she needs to listen to the clay, which sounds mystical until you watch her, and then it doesn't.

"Perfection in ceramics is a machine problem. My job is to do something a machine cannot."

She trained at the Limoges ceramics school for four years, then worked in a production studio for three more before concluding that she did not want to make the same thing a thousand times. Now she makes each piece once.

On leaving the fingerprints

"There is a pressure in contemporary craft to remove the evidence of the hand," she tells us. "To sand things smooth, to make sure the joins are invisible, to produce something that looks — from a distance — like it could have been made by a machine. I find this a strange goal. Why make something by hand and then try to hide it?"

Her Amphora Vessel, made for Stargater, has deliberate asymmetry at the lip. The wall thickness varies. There is a fingerprint pressed into the base — not a stamp, an actual print, left during the throwing process. "That is me," she says. "That print will exist in that piece for longer than I will exist. I find that comforting."

The Stargater Amphora Vessel is available in one edition of 40 pieces per year. Each is signed and numbered by Hélène.