After completing a degree in Fine Art as a mature student, I studied the two year Ceramics Diploma at City Lit where I was taught by skilled practitioners and masters in their craft. My own approach to ceramics is creative and experimental rather than craft-based; I am still learning and developing my skills - as many works fail as succeed.
Kintsugi ("golden joinery") is the Japanese art of repairing cracks and broken pottery with lacquer mixed with gold dust. The philosophy holds that a repair is part of the object's history rather than something to be hidden. Similarly wabi-sabi is a view centered on the acceptance of imperfection. The aesthetic is sometimes described as one of beauty that is "imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete". This is a philosophy I have come to embrace: I have many 'happy accidents' and find almost everything can be recycled or used in some creative way at a later date.