8. HEADS AND HANDS

The first customer to come and sit at one of the potters wheels at the St Civran workshop in June 2002 was Stephanie from Paris. She was a young woman engineer, a graduate of 'Polytechnique', and a young mother living in the French capital. Her job in a big administration involved a high degree of responsibility and a sustained use of her intellectual capacities.

But, albeit the accepted opinion that an intellectual person cannot be manual as well, she possessed a definite talent for ceramics. For this reason she was following night classes whenever she could.

In full rebellion against this wrong idea giving her withered hands because she was clever, she came to spend a whole week full time throwing on the wheel very nice looking pots.

Here's what she wrote about how I managed to: "...share a know-how without giving the impression of revealing a secret. What I also appreciated is the fact that you placed the pleasure of making before the need to acquire a technique to reach eventually the pleasure to master".