Her only response, after I confronted her for breaking my work, was a short bark of laughter and a sneering whisper to “learn to throw.”
It was a calculated attack on my skill, an insult meant to shatter what was left of my confidence.
But the silence from the rest of the studio was somehow worse. Every potter suddenly found a deep fascination with their own splash pan, refusing to meet my eyes.
She thought this was a fight about pottery, but the Kiln Commander was about to discover what happens when a petty tyrant goes up against an architect’s mind for meticulous, documented, and life-ruining process improvement.
The First Crack: Dust and Dreams
The air in the community studio smelled of damp earth and potential. It was a scent I hadn’t realized I’d missed so desperately until it hit me, a wave of nostalgia that almost buckled my knees. For twenty years, my hands had known the precise language of architectural drafting, the cold companionship of a mouse and keyboard, the clean, sterile lines of a blueprint. Now, at fifty-two, with our son Leo off finding himself in Colorado, my hands craved the mess again. The glorious, unpredictable chaos of clay.
My husband, Mark, had gifted me the membership for my birthday. “Go get your hands dirty again,” he’d said, kissing the top of my head. “The house can handle a little dust.”
The studio was a sprawling warehouse space, partitioned by shelves laden with greenware—the fragile, unfired pottery in its pale, chalky state. Wheels hummed in a meditative chorus, and a few members, mostly younger than me, were hunched over their work, lost in concentration. It felt like coming home. I found an empty wheel in the corner, slapped a fresh cone of stoneware onto the bat, and took a deep breath. The familiar spin, the cool slip of the clay rising between my fingers—it was a language my body hadn’t forgotten.
That’s when I first saw her. She wasn’t throwing, but surveying. A woman my age, maybe a little older, with a severe grey bob and the kind of posture that suggested she owned the very ground she stood on. She moved from the kiln area to the drying racks, her eyes scanning everything with a critical, proprietary air. On a set of shelves reserved for large projects, a collection of enormous, almost brutalist-style planters sat drying. They were technically impressive but consumed an absurd amount of real estate.
Later, I heard someone refer to her as Brenda, the Kiln Commander. It wasn’t a compliment. The kiln schedule, I soon discovered, was a single, dog-eared sheet of paper tacked to a corkboard, governed by a vague, first-come, first-served policy that seemed to serve Brenda first and foremost. Her name, in a bold, aggressive script, dominated the next three firing slots. A knot of unease tightened in my stomach. This wasn’t the collaborative, earthy utopia I remembered. Something felt… sharp.
A Spiderweb in the Glaze
Two weeks later, my first batch was ready. A set of six simple, clean-lined mugs. I’d spent hours trimming the feet, pulling the handles until they felt like a natural extension of the form. They were my re-entry into this world, a quiet declaration that I was back. I’d managed to snag a spot on a bisque firing, sandwiched between Brenda’s monolithic planters and someone’s collection of tiny, intricate sculptures.
Opening the kiln after a glaze firing is a specific kind of Christmas morning for a potter. The heat still radiates in shimmering waves, and you hold your breath, praying the kiln gods were kind. I carefully lifted my mugs from the shelf, their new, glossy coats of midnight blue gleaming under the fluorescent lights. One, two, three, four, five… perfect. They were smooth, solid, and held the promise of a thousand morning coffees.
Then I picked up the sixth. A hairline fracture, fine as a spider’s thread, ran from the lip down the side, bisecting the handle I’d so carefully attached. It was a clean, brutal crack. My heart sank. A flaw in the clay? An air bubble I’d missed? It was possible. I was rusty, after all. I ran my thumb over the fracture, the sharp edge a tiny betrayal.
I set it on my worktable, separate from the others. Mark would tell me it was just one, that the other five were beautiful. And they were. But my eye kept being drawn to the broken one. It felt less like a mistake and more like a warning. A small, dark omen in an otherwise bright studio. I wrapped it in newspaper and threw it in the reclaim bucket, trying to shake the feeling that its demise hadn’t been entirely my fault. The sound it made hitting the slurry of discarded clay was a dull, final thud.
Whispers by the Slop Sink
The studio’s social hub wasn’t the coffee machine; it was the series of deep, clay-caked slop sinks where we washed our tools and hands. It was the place for gossip, for commiseration, for the quiet airing of grievances. I was rinsing my throwing bucket when two younger women, Chloe and Maya, started talking in low voices a few feet away.
“Did you see the new kiln list?” Chloe whispered, scrubbing furiously at a trimming tool. “Brenda’s got the next two glaze firings. Her ‘sculptural vessels’ are taking up three full shelves.”
“Of course,” Maya sighed, her voice heavy with resignation. “My order for the craft fair is never going to get fired in time. I swear, my stuff gets moved on the greenware shelf, too. I found a chip on one of my bowls yesterday. Right on the rim.”
“Mine, too!” Chloe’s head snapped up. “A whole set of plates. I had them stacked perfectly. Came in the next morning and they were shoved to the back, and one had a pressure crack right down the middle. Gary just shrugged when I told him.”
My hands stilled in the murky water. A pressure crack. Not a flaw from throwing, but from being handled improperly before it was fired. From being moved without care. My cracked mug flashed in my mind. The clean, straight line of the fracture. It hadn’t looked like a bubble burst. It had looked like a stress fracture.
I kept my back to them, pretending to be absorbed in cleaning a sponge that was already clean. The women’s voices dropped even lower. They talked about oversized pieces jumping the queue, about the unwritten rules that seemed to bend and warp around one person. Every word was a quiet confirmation of the uneasy feeling I’d been trying to ignore. It wasn’t just me. It wasn’t my rustiness. There was a system here, and I was beginning to understand I was at the bottom of it. The Kiln Commander’s reign, it seemed, had casualties.
The Unwritten Rules
Armed with the whispers from the slop sink, I approached the kiln schedule with a new sense of purpose. I had a dozen pieces ready for a bisque fire—a collection of small bowls I was rather proud of. The current firing was cooling, and the next sheet was a blank slate. I picked up the pen, my moment had arrived.
“Looking for a spot?”
Brenda’s voice cut through the low hum of the studio. It wasn’t a question so much as a challenge. She was wiping her hands on a towel, a smudge of white porcelain on her cheek like war paint.
“Yes,” I said, trying to keep my tone light. “Just need a shelf for these bowls.”
She peered over my shoulder at my cart. Her eyes, a pale, washed-out blue, flickered over my carefully crafted bowls with a dismissive glance. “Those are small. You can probably fit on a shared shelf later in the week.” She plucked the pen from my fingers, uncapped it, and in her heavy, dark script, wrote BRENDA – Planters (3 shelves) across the next two days.
I stared at her, then at the board. “I was here first,” I said, the words feeling small and flimsy in the air.
Brenda gave a thin, patronizing smile. “The unwritten rule, dear, is that large-scale work gets priority. It takes longer to dry, and it’s a waste of energy to fire a half-empty kiln. Gary agrees.” She gestured vaguely towards the manager’s office. “We have to think of the studio’s efficiency.”
We? I hadn’t realized she was on the management team. The sheer audacity of it left me speechless. She spoke as if her personal projects were a community service. My bowls, my mugs, my re-found joy—they were an inefficiency. An annoyance to be slotted in whenever it was convenient for her.
I looked around. A few people were pointedly staring at their wheels, refusing to make eye contact. They’d all heard. They all knew. And no one said a word. The silence was its own kind of violence. I pushed my cart of delicate, unfired bowls back to my workspace, the wheels squeaking in protest. The problem wasn’t just Brenda; it was the silence that let her thrive.
The Weight of Clay and Contempt: The Second Casualty
I finally got my bowls bisqued a week later, tucked onto a half-shelf at the very bottom of the kiln. I spent the next few days glazing them, experimenting with layered combinations, feeling the hope bubble up again. I was particularly excited about one—a wide, shallow bowl I’d glazed in a deep cerulean blue with a touch of sandy brown at the rim. I could already picture it on our dining table, filled with fruit. A piece of my new life, integrated into the old. A gift for Mark.
This time, when I placed them on the “To Be Glaze Fired” shelf, I was meticulous. I found a corner, arranged them with plenty of space around each piece, and made a mental map of their position. They were at the back, on the left, behind a row of stout, unremarkable vases made by another member. Safe.
The call that my pieces were ready came on a Friday afternoon. I left work early, a nervous energy buzzing under my skin. I tried to temper my expectations, but the image of that blue bowl, shimmering and perfect, was burned into my mind. I walked to the unloading area, my heart thumping a little faster.
The other bowls were fine, beautiful even. But the one for Mark was ruined. It wasn’t just a hairline fracture this time. A huge, crescent-shaped chunk had broken off the rim and fallen into the center of the bowl, where it had been fused into a glassy, ugly scar by the molten glaze. It looked like something heavy had been dropped on it, or it had been slammed against the shelf post. It was a violent, undeniable wound.
I picked it up, the weight of it all wrong. It was garbage. Unsalvageable. My breath hitched. This wasn’t an accident. This wasn’t a flaw in my making. This was negligence. This was malice. I stood there for a long moment, holding the shattered remains of my work, the heat from the kiln feeling like a fever on my skin. The joy I’d felt, the sense of returning to a part of myself, was curdling into something hot and acidic in my chest. It was anger. Pure, undiluted, and very, very real.
A Hypothesis Forms
I didn’t throw the bowl away. I took it home. I set it on the kitchen counter like a piece of evidence. When Mark came home, he saw it immediately. He looked at my face, then at the broken pottery. “Oh, Tam,” he said, wrapping his arms around me. “I’m so sorry.”
“It wasn’t an accident,” I said, my voice flat. “Someone broke it. Someone careless.”
That night, I couldn’t sleep. I lay in bed, my mind replaying every interaction, every overheard whisper, every glance in the studio. My brain, the part that organized architectural plans and saw systems in everything, kicked into high gear. I wasn’t just a potter anymore; I was an investigator.
Hypothesis: Brenda, in her rush to prioritize her own voluminous work, was moving other members’ greenware with a reckless disregard for its fragility. Smaller, lighter pieces—like mugs and bowls—were the easiest to shove aside to make room for her heavy, cumbersome planters. The damage was a byproduct of her entitlement.
The next day, I went to the studio not to work, but to watch. I sat with a sketchbook, pretending to draw, and just observed the flow of the workspace, particularly around the kiln shelves. It didn’t take long. Brenda came in, hauling another gargantuan planter that looked like it belonged in a hotel lobby. She went to the greenware shelf, which was crowded. I watched as she, with a huff of impatience, slid an entire board of someone else’s delicate-looking pots backwards with one hand to make space for her piece at the front. The board scraped against the wall. She didn’t even check to see if anything was damaged.
It was all there. The casual contempt. The complete lack of respect for anyone else’s time, effort, and art. She saw our work not as the product of someone’s passion, but as clutter. Obstacles in her way. My anger solidified from a hot, emotional rage into something cold and hard. It was a structural problem, and I was starting to think about a structural solution.
A Conversation with Indifference
Before escalating, I knew I had to try the official channels. It was the right thing to do. I found Gary, the studio manager, in his small, dusty office, hunched over a pile of invoices. He was a man in his late thirties with a perpetually tired expression, a man who clearly preferred dealing with clay orders over human conflict.
I knocked on the doorframe. “Gary? Do you have a minute?”
He looked up, a flicker of apprehension in his eyes. “Sure, Tamsin. What’s up?”
I had the broken bowl with me, wrapped in a towel. I unwrapped it and set it on his desk. “This came out of the glaze firing yesterday,” I said, keeping my voice even and calm. “And I saw another member’s work get damaged last week. I’m concerned about how pieces are being handled on the greenware shelves. Things are getting moved around carelessly.” I didn’t use Brenda’s name. I was giving him a chance to address the issue, not the person.
Gary picked up the bowl, turned it over in his hands, and sighed. It was the sigh of a man who’d had this conversation before. “That’s a shame,” he said, his voice lacking any real sympathy. “But you know how it is. Greenware is incredibly fragile. Bumps happen. It’s the nature of a shared space.”
“This wasn’t a bump,” I pressed, pointing to the scar. “This was significant force. I watched people moving whole boards of other members’ work to make space for their own large pieces. Maybe we need a better system? A rule about not touching other people’s work?”
He set the bowl down and leaned back, rubbing his eyes. “Tamsin, I can’t police every person in the studio. People have to be responsible for themselves. Brenda… she brings in a lot of revenue with her firing fees.” He didn’t say it as a justification, just as a fact. A financial reality. “I’m sorry about your bowl, but clay breaks. It’s just what it does.”
The dismissal was so complete, so utterly indifferent, it stole the air from my lungs. He wasn’t going to do anything. He had weighed my broken bowl against Brenda’s firing fees and my concern meant nothing. I was on my own. I wrapped the bowl back in its towel, the rough fabric scratching against my knuckles. “Okay,” I said, the word tasting like ash. “Thanks for your time.” He had already turned back to his invoices before I was out the door.
The Ghost on the Shelf
The conversation with Gary changed everything. The system wasn’t just broken; it was actively protecting the person breaking it. My anger was now laced with a steely resolve. If no one else was going to fix the problem, I would. But I needed proof. Incontrovertible, undeniable proof.
I threw a new set of six mugs. This time, I made them with an almost defiant perfection. The walls were thin and even, the handles felt balanced and light. They were the best work I’d done yet. When they were bone-dry and ready for the bisque shelf, I began my experiment.
Late one evening, when the studio was nearly empty, I carefully placed my mugs on a middle shelf. I arranged them in two perfect rows of three. Then, I took out my phone. I took a photo, making sure the clock on the wall was visible in the background. 10:17 PM. I took another from the side, capturing their precise distance from the edge of the shelf. I even placed a tiny, insignificant lump of clay—a little ghost—just to the right of the back row, a marker that only I would recognize.
The next morning, I came in before work, my stomach churning with a mixture of dread and vindication. I walked over to the shelf. At first glance, everything looked fine. The six mugs were there. But my eyes went straight to the back. They had been pushed back, almost to the wall. And my little ghost, my tiny clay marker, had been squashed flat.
I took out my phone again. A new picture. 8:22 AM. I zoomed in on the flattened ghost. Someone had moved my work. They hadn’t broken anything this time, but they had been there. They had put their hands on my things, disrespecting the unspoken, sacred rule of every artist’s studio: you do not touch another person’s work. A hot, prickling fury washed over me. This was it. The ghost on the shelf had told me everything I needed to know. The days of quiet frustration were over.
The Confrontation: The Smoking Gun
I spent the next week throwing with a singular, ferocious focus. I made a set of twelve delicate, porcelain teacups with paper-thin rims. They were a technical challenge, a way to channel my rage into creation. Porcelain is notoriously unforgiving; it remembers every slight, every moment of indecision. So did I. These teacups were my declaration of war.
When they were bone-dry, at the peak of their fragility, I knew it was time. I carried the board holding all twelve cups to the greenware shelves. The area was, as usual, dominated by Brenda’s latest project: a series of planters so large they could have housed small trees. There was barely an inch of free space. I found a small, precarious spot on the edge of a shelf and carefully set my board down. Then, I walked over to the wedging table, positioned myself with a clear line of sight, and began to recycle some clay. I didn’t look up, but my every sense was trained on that shelf. I was baiting the trap.
It took less than ten minutes.
Brenda marched in from the parking lot, her handbag swinging. Her eyes immediately went to the shelves, a frown creasing her brow. She saw my teacups in the spot where, presumably, she had intended to place her own work. I watched from the corner of my eye as she put her bag down with a thud. She walked over to the shelf, her movements sharp and annoyed.
And then she did it. She put her hands—her actual, physical hands—on my board. She started to slide it, scraping it along the rough wooden shelf, trying to shove my twelve fragile porcelain teacups toward the back to make room. The high-pitched, gritty sound of clay-dusted wood scraping wood was like a starting pistol.
I dropped the lump of clay I was holding. It hit the floor with a wet smack. I wiped my hands on my jeans and walked toward her, my footsteps unnaturally loud in the suddenly quiet studio.
The Laugh
My heart was hammering against my ribs, a frantic drumbeat of adrenaline and fury. Every cell in my body was screaming. I stopped about three feet from her. Her hands were still on the board, her fingers inches from my teacups.
“Get your hands off my work,” I said. My voice didn’t shake. It was low, and colder than I knew I was capable of.
Brenda startled, snatching her hands back as if the board were hot. She turned to face me, her expression a mask of indignation, as if I were the one who had crossed a line. “Excuse me? Your things were in the way.”
“My things were on the shelf,” I countered, taking another step forward. “The same shelf everyone else uses. You don’t get to touch them. You don’t get to move them. And you sure as hell don’t get to break them anymore.” The last three words hung in the air, a direct accusation.
A flush crept up her neck. A few of the other potters had stopped their wheels, the rhythmic hum dying down to an expectant silence. We had an audience.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she scoffed, crossing her arms.
“My mugs. My blue bowl. Don’t play dumb,” I said, my voice rising slightly. “I’m done with it. Touch my pieces again, and we’re going to the board. The studio board.”
For a moment, I thought I saw a flicker of panic in her eyes. But it was gone in an instant, replaced by an expression of supreme, dismissive contempt. And then she laughed. It wasn’t a real laugh; it was a short, sharp bark of ridicule designed to belittle and humiliate.
“The board?” she sneered, looking me up and down as if I were a speck of dirt on her shoe. “Honey, you’ve been back here for what, a month? If your work can’t handle being moved on a shelf, then you have bigger problems.” She leaned in, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial, poisonous whisper. “Then learn to throw.”
The Aftermath of Silence
The words hit me with a physical force. Learn to throw. After all of it—the cracked mugs, the shattered bowl, the blatant disrespect—her response was to attack my skill. To imply that I was the problem. That my art, my effort, my very presence here was amateurish and unworthy.
My rage went supernova. It was so pure, so white-hot, that it burned away any clever retort I might have had. I was left speechless, just staring at her, my hands clenched into fists at my sides.
She gave a final, triumphant smirk, turned on her heel, and picked up one of her planters. She placed it squarely in the spot she had been clearing, my teacups now shoved precariously close to the back edge of the shelf. Then she walked away, leaving me standing there, shaking in the wake of her contempt.
I looked around the studio. Chloe was staring resolutely into her splash pan. An older gentleman who always worked on Tuesdays was suddenly fascinated by a crack in the concrete floor. Maya wouldn’t meet my eyes. They all saw it. They all heard it. The blatant bullying, the condescension, the injustice. And they all chose silence.
Their silence was worse than her laugh. It was a confirmation of my isolation. In their eyes, I was a troublemaker, a boat-rocker. Brenda was the known quantity, the established power. I was the disruption. The shame of it washed over me, cold and sickening. I felt utterly, completely alone. I carefully picked up my board of teacups, my hands trembling so hard I was terrified I would drop them. I carried them back to my station, packed up my tools without cleaning them, and walked out of the studio, the silence of my fellow potters chasing me all the way to my car.
A Plan Takes Root
I drove home on autopilot, my mind a storm of humiliation and fury. I burst through the front door and found Mark in the living room, reading. The sight of his calm, unsuspecting face made my carefully constructed composure crumble. I started talking, the words tumbling out in a torrent of anger and frustration—the teacups, the confrontation, her laugh, the final, cutting insult. “She told me to ‘learn to throw’,” I finished, my voice cracking.
Mark put his book down and listened, his expression hardening with every word. When I was done, he didn’t offer platitudes. He didn’t tell me to let it go. He said, “Okay. So what are you going to do?”
It was the perfect question. It wasn’t “What are we going to do?” It was a recognition that this was my fight. It snapped me out of my self-pity. I paced the living room, the nervous energy too much to contain. “Going to the board is pointless,” I said, thinking of Gary’s dismissive sigh. “It’s my word against hers. She’s the veteran, the ‘Kiln Commander.’ I’m just the new woman who can’t handle a little studio jostling.”
“So you need more than your word,” Mark said, his mind working. He was an engineer. He solved problems for a living.
“I need proof,” I said, the idea beginning to spark. “Undeniable proof. She operates in the gray areas, in the ‘unwritten rules.’ So I have to create black and white.”
I stopped pacing and looked at him. The rage was still there, but it was changing. It was no longer a wild, out-of-control fire. It was being channeled, focused, cooled into something sharp and precise. My architectural drafter brain, the part of me that lived for process and documentation and order, took the controls. Brenda’s power came from an ambiguous, easily manipulated system. The way to beat her wasn’t to get her in trouble for breaking a bowl. The way to beat her was to destroy the system she exploited.
“I’m going to burn her kingdom down,” I said, a slow, cold smile spreading across my face. “Not with fire, but with paperwork.”
The Firing Solution: The Evidence Log
My campaign began the next day. I returned to the studio not as a potter, but as an auditor. My new project wasn’t made of clay; it was a meticulous collection of data. I started carrying my phone with me everywhere, my hand hovering over the camera icon.
I came in at 7 AM. I took a photo of the “To Be Fired” shelves, timestamped. Brenda’s massive planters were at the front, marked for the next bisque. Maya’s small cups and Chloe’s plates were behind them. I came back at noon. Another photo. Brenda’s pieces were still there. But Chloe’s plates had been shifted to a lower shelf to make room for another one of Brenda’s behemoths. The shift was subtle, but undeniable when compared with the morning photo.
I did it for two weeks. I documented everything. I took a picture of the kiln schedule on Monday, a chaotic scrawl of names and hopeful arrows. I took another on Wednesday, showing Brenda’s name had been squeezed in, bumping a man named Paul to the following week. I photographed my own board of porcelain teacups, nestled safely on a high shelf, and then photographed it again a day later when it had been moved to a less stable, lower rack. Each photo was a data point. Each timestamp was a nail.
I created a folder on my laptop titled “Studio Workflow Analysis.” It sounded professional. Impersonal. Inside, I created a document, a log of discrepancies. Date: 10/12. Time: 9:15 AM. Observation: Board of 12 plates (member: Chloe) moved from Shelf 2 to Shelf 4. See Photo A & Photo B. Note: Move coincided with arrival of oversized vessel (member: Brenda). See Photo C.
It was the most satisfying, petty, and detail-oriented work I had ever done. Every photo felt like a small victory. I was no longer a victim. I was building a case. I was transforming my rage into a weapon of pure, unassailable logic. Brenda thought the battle was about her status and my skill. She was wrong. The battle was about process, and she was about to find herself on the losing side of a very well-documented flowchart.
The Proposal
After two weeks, I had a mountain of evidence. I sat at my drafting table at home, the one I hadn’t used in months, and I laid out my plan. This wasn’t going to be an emotional email complaining about a bully. That would be too easy for the board to dismiss. This was going to be a formal proposal for process improvement.
I titled it: “Proposal for a Transparent and Equitable Kiln Firing System.”
In calm, measured language, I outlined the challenges of the current “first come, first served” model, citing “inconsistent queue management,” “potential for damage to greenware during reorganization,” and “lack of transparency leading to member frustration.” I never once used Brenda’s name. I didn’t have to. The data would speak for itself.
About the Author
