Allegany Meadows and A Case for Handmade, articles on ceramics

I appreciated Home Cooking by Shannon Garson for suggesting that the homemade item for practical kitchen use serves us much more symbolically than functionally.  Taking an object from the "mundane into the transcendental" experience as from a coffee mug exemplifying commercial banality and artifice to  homemade crockery or porcelain ware with earthen textures and/or smooth luminosity of glaze and surface is necessary for human attachment to human made.  Machine made items give us functionality and as perfection being a non-human attribute, serves us up a cold detachment in our goals of daily nourishment.  Indeed, to connect to the humane, and enrich our experience daily we must consider using homemade vessels and plates for the unique beauty of a such a functional art piece gives the "spice of life that puts all things in balance." (p.5)