Clay Doesn’t Bend to the Algorithm: Pottery, Slowness, and Art in 2025

The other day, while wedging clay at my workbench, my phone buzzed to remind me I hadn’t posted a reel in three days. A reel. Twenty-nine seconds of sped-up studio footage with music laid over the top.

Meanwhile, the lump of clay in front of me would demand 29 days of care before it would emerge as a finished mug: kneaded, formed, dried, bisque fired, glazed, re-fired, cooled, sanded, washed. A reel wants speed; clay insists on seasons.

This is the tension of being an artist in 2025. We are told — by platforms, by algorithms, by endless marketing advice — that visibility equals survival. That if we don’t shout constantly into the void, we will disappear. But here’s the truth clay whispers back: you can’t rush what matters. Clay cracks when pushed. Glaze runs when fired too hot. Soil erodes when harvested without rest. And maybe, so do we.

The Digital Hunger vs. the Slow Table

The creative economy has become entangled in numbers: likes, shares, impressions, saves. These are not measures of worth, but they creep in like smoke. Even governments tally the “economic contribution” of creative industries in billions, as though art’s value could be reduced to line items on a spreadsheet.

Pottery refuses those metrics. A handmade mug is not “scalable.” It won’t go viral. It doesn’t multiply with a click. Its worth is measured in the pause it creates when you wrap your hands around it — in warmth, in presence, in the grounding reminder that something real and enduring can still exist in a world of flickering pixels.

Holding a mug carries weight — literally. Mass-produced cups are designed to be feather-light, efficient, stackable. But stoneware mugs carry heft. They remind us of gravity, of earth, of the hands that shaped them. In times when the world feels unbearably heavy — climate crises, rising costs, digital overwhelm — I find it strange and comforting that pottery meets that heaviness with a steady weight of its own.

Cracks as Credentials

If the algorithm loves anything, it is perfection. Smooth skin filters, polished feeds, crisp branding. But pottery carries the opposite gospel. My mugs wobble. The glaze sometimes pools unevenly. The rim of a bowl dips where my thumb pressed too firmly. These are not flaws; they are records of touch. They prove the piece is real, not generated.

The Japanese tradition of kintsugi — repairing broken vessels with gold — is often cited as a metaphor for finding beauty in imperfection. But even before the crack, pottery teaches us that imperfection is not the enemy. In Japanese tea ceremony, a humble, asymmetrical raku bowl is valued more than flawless porcelain. In Bangladeshi villages, clay chula stoves, built rough by hand, still hold the fire that cooks for generations. Pottery across cultures has always carried fingerprints, smudges, smoke marks.

In a time when AI can spit out flawless images of bowls that don’t exist, perhaps cracks and wobbles are our new credentials. They are the proof that a life was lived, that clay was touched, that time was invested in something slower than a scroll.

Clay as Resistance

I sometimes wonder if every mug I make is an act of resistance. Against disposability. Against speed. Against the pressure to be endlessly visible. Pottery is slow because it has to be. You cannot algorithm clay into being. You cannot schedule its firing to line up neatly with a posting calendar.

And maybe that’s the point. Clay forces me to live in a rhythm that is older and wiser than Instagram. When I open the kiln, I am not greeted by notifications or follower counts. I am met with earth transformed by fire — unpredictable, fragile, enduring.

A Personal Reckoning

Running a creative business in 2025 means living in two worlds. In one, I’m a potter: hands in mud, dogs curled at my feet, the farmhouse windows framing the shifting light of the seasons. In the other, I am a content machine: editing videos, checking insights, strategising hashtags. The two often feel irreconcilable.

And yet, the mugs survive. They make their way into kitchens and hands, into moments of morning quiet or late-night conversation. They don’t care how many likes they got on the way there. They don’t ask for virality. They simply exist, holding space for warmth and water and wine.

Maybe that’s the most radical thing an artist can do in 2025: to make something that resists speed, that honours imperfection, that anchors people in their everyday lives. To keep shaping earth into vessels, even while the algorithm scrolls on without us.

Because clay doesn’t bend to the algorithm. And maybe — just maybe — neither should we.

Until next time,
Nawsheen, your friendly homebody artist from Murrumbateman.