Every Portal Begins Twice

FIELD NOTES · FROM THE FOUNDRY

On unexpected outcomes, changing purpose, and becoming something other than what was planned.

Things don't always become what we intended.

Sometimes that's the interesting part.

A glaze goes into a kiln expected to emerge smooth and green. Instead, something happens in the heat. Tiny speckles appear across the surface, changing not only the way the piece looks, but what it can be used for.

By one measure, it didn't work.

By mine, it was perfect.

The little green pot had character. The speckles moved across the glaze in a way no one had deliberately put there. Whatever happened inside the kiln made it less useful as a bowl—and much more interesting as an object.

I loved it immediately.

It had been made by Mollie at a pottery studio in Moab, Utah, one of many small vessels shaped at the wheel as she worked toward larger and larger forms.

Her teacher calls them nut bowls.

There are a lot of nut bowls.

That's the thing about working with clay.

Practice leaves evidence.

Each little vessel begins at the wheel, where soft clay is centered and pulled into form beneath the hands of the maker. It is trimmed, dried, fired, glazed, and returned to the kiln, where heat gets a say in what comes back.

Some pieces emerge almost exactly as imagined.

Others come back changed.

A curve leans a little farther than intended. A form stays smaller than planned. A glaze reacts differently in the heat.

Pottery leaves room for uncertainty all the way to the end.

Maybe that's part of its charm.

You can guide what happens.

You can't completely control what becomes.

Mollie gave my mom one of those little vessels too—a purple one—and we loved them enough that our response to receiving handmade gifts was apparently to immediately start giving the artist more ideas.

Could you make this?

What about one like that?

Have you ever tried…?

Creativity has a tendency to spread that way.

Later that week, while we were in the North Cascades, there was a lot of it spreading around.

My mom and I were brainstorming things we wanted to make. Echoes Foundry was beginning to take shape in my head. Mollie was talking about pottery and the studio she hoped to build someday.

And somewhere in the conversation, all those little pots came up.

There was nothing wrong with them.

They weren't damaged or rejected.

There were simply a lot of them—the natural result of returning to the wheel and making piece after piece.

More little handmade vessels than one person could use.

More than she could give away.

Someone—my mom or my brother, none of us can remember which—looked at all that pottery and asked:

What if we turned them into candles?

Castaway Candles.

Suddenly, I could picture it.

A little flame tucked inside each vessel.

Glaze catching the light.

All those tiny differences between one pot and the next becoming the reason to choose one over another.

The idea felt natural because I already knew how easily an unexpected outcome could become the thing I loved most.

My green pot had proven that.

Maybe these little vessels didn't need to become anything other than what they already were.

They just needed another purpose.

So we made a plan.

Mollie would keep making.

I would buy the vessels from her and bring them into Echoes Foundry.

Her hands would finish their part.

Then they would pass to mine.

There was something wonderfully circular about it: the pieces she made could help support whatever she made next, while becoming the beginning of something new in the Foundry.

One object.

Two makers.

And another possibility.

The first time I poured wax into one of the vessels, it changed again.

A little pot became a candle.

Then I lit it.

The flame caught against the glaze, settling into all the little curves and irregularities that made the vessel its own.

And it was beautiful.

I watched the first candles carefully—how the wick burned, how the wax melted, how the ceramic held the warmth—making sure the vessel, wick, and wax worked together the way they should.

But somewhere in all that watching, I found myself paying attention to something else.

I liked them.

A lot.

The flame made the differences between the vessels more visible rather than less. Glaze caught the light differently from one pot to another. Little variations in shape created different shadows.

I kept imagining one glowing on a shelf or table in someone else's home.

We kept the wax unscented.

Scent would have made the candle louder.

These didn't need to be louder.

Each vessel already had something to say.

Its shape.

Its glaze.

Its unexpected speckles.

The evidence of hands and fire that existed long before the wick was ever lit.

The pottery was enough.

For a while, we called them Castaway Candles.

It was cute.

It made sense.

And it wasn't their name.

Without really thinking about it, I had started calling them Portal Candles instead.

Portal had been one of Mollie's early ideas for the name of her future pottery studio. She liked the transformation of ceramics—the way clay passes through hands, then through fire, and comes out the other side changed.

Portal was only supposed to be my placeholder name for the candles.

But the more I used it, the more I realized these little vessels hadn't stopped transforming when they left the kiln.

They began as clay.

Hands gave them form.

Fire turned them into pottery.

They passed from one maker to another.

Wax and wick turned them into candles.

Fire changed them again.

And eventually, the flame will burn down and the wax will be gone.

The vessel will remain.

Pottery again.

A little object waiting to hold something else.

A plant.

Jewelry.

Paintbrushes.

Tiny treasures.

Possibly, finally, nuts.

They keep going through the portal.

When I light one now, it makes me feel warm inside.

Part of that is simply because candles are awesome.

But I also know what came before the flame.

Somewhere in Moab, a lump of clay was centered on a wheel.

Hands pulled it into shape.

It dried.

It was trimmed.

Fired.

Glazed.

Fired again.

Maybe the glaze behaved.

Maybe it didn't.

Eventually, it traveled from Mollie's hands to mine.

Wax was poured.

A wick was lit.

And an object that already had a story took on another one.

That's what feels special to me.

Not because the castaways were rescued.

They didn't need rescuing.

They were already beautiful.

They simply had more possibilities than the one they were originally made for.

Maybe we all do.

Sometimes the thing that doesn't turn out the way we planned is disappointing.

Sometimes it's covered in little green speckles.

And sometimes those speckles become the thing someone loves most.

Becoming something different doesn't mean becoming something less.

Sometimes it just means the story isn't finished yet.

Hand-thrown.
Hand-poured.
Made of Wonder.

Made in Moab.
Changed by fire.
Passed from one set of hands to another.