Celebrating imperfection
The water cup sitting on the desk before me is now one of a set of four such cups. At one time it was one of a set of six. The cups were made for me over 30 years ago — a birthday gift that my wife commissioned to be made by a dear friend of ours. I love the way it looks and the way it feels. I love the thought that it was thrown and glazed by a woman who is still a dear friend, even though we’ve lived in different cities for almost all of those 30 years.
We still get together occasionally — most recently when she and her husband came to our son’s wedding. She was one of the first people to hold our young son in her arms. I’m not sure, but she could well have been the third person to hold him. It was a joy to have her with us at the marriage ceremony. On another visit, probably at least two decades ago, she noticed me drinking out of one of the cups she had made. I can’t remember what she said, but I do remember that she was somehow embarrassed by the cup. In a brief exchange, I learned that as her pottery skills grew she came to dislike sets like the cups she made for me. “They aren’t uniform in size and shape,” she said. “Perhaps,” I said. “But every time I drink from one of them I think of you and the gift of yourself that they represent. Often I go on to think about your laughter and your commitment to social justice.” If I weren’t embarrassed by cliché, I might have said “These cups are a gift that keeps on giving.”
I thought of this just now as I read something about creativity from Janna Malamud Smith:
The cultural emphasis on individual expression creates the artist’s opportunity to explore creative impulses often uncoupled from the more functional ends of craft. And this division is both a boon and a burden. Less is at stake if necessity rules, if the bowls [or cups] you design are the ones you need for daily use. They must hold soup [or water]. And as long as they accomplish that task, any other attribute is value added. The maker can dismiss, the users forgive their aesthetic limitations in the name of their utility. But creative expression that is primarily aesthetic or abstract does not accept the same apology. There’s nowhere to hide (An Absorbing Errand, p. 98).
I’m struck by Smith’s choice of verbs here — the maker is said to dismiss aesthetic limitations that the user is said to forgive. I distinctly remember noticing when I opened the box of cups years ago that they weren’t quite the same size; I also remember celebrating that rather than forgiving that. I understand our friend’s wish, from her perspective as a more practiced potter, that she had come closer to making a matched set. For me, though, there’s a sense that the imperfection enhances the aesthetic value of the cups. Each time I see them together in the cupboard I remember that they were made for me by a very special friend. And that’s worth celebrating.
