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From time to time, I’ll be devoting All’s Well to conversations with creative women who inspire me. This week, ceramicist Deba Khan. Subscribe to get upcoming interviews—and scroll to the very bottom for a brief roundup of recommendations for the week.
I’m constantly fascinated and inspired by the myriad ways there are to be a mother and a creative person. Speaking with ceramicist Deba Khan showed me how it can take time to find balance (if one can call it that), but that it begins with curiosity and obsession.
After high school, Deba spent some time in Dubai and California and found herself struggling to focus on school. At 26 years old, she decided to go back and attended classes at her local community college. Shortly after enrolling, she got pregnant. “I had the worst nausea for nine months,” she says. “Morning til night, 24 hours a day. Nothing in the world was helping.” She dropped out and began devouring parenting books instead. “I became obsessed with the idea of being a mom and doing things right. Obviously, there’s no one right way, but I was like, ‘Nobody can take care of my daughter but me.’” Deba stumbled into ceramics when her daughter was just over a year old, three years ago. While motherhood continues to be a huge part of her identity, pottery became a space just for her.
I found Deba’s ceramics where I find most exciting new art these days, on Instagram. Dubbed the Mud Fairy, she creates one-of-a-kind pieces (think painted mugs and vases) that, until recently, she sold monthly through her online shop. Below, Deba answers some of my questions about how she does it.
What inspired you to take up pottery?
Ever since I was young, I was always interested in crafty things. My older sister was the artist in the family, so I never put myself in that category, but I loved to make everything myself. When I was little, I watched the movie It Takes Two a million times, and it got me interested in pottery. [In one scene, Kirstie Alley’s character helps one of the Olsen twins on the pottery wheel.] I wanted to try it, but I never did.
Almost three years ago, my husband asked me what I wanted for my 30th birthday. I was like, “Let’s take a pottery class.” Because of Covid, everything was still closed at the time, so he ended up buying me a little practice wheel off of Amazon. I was like, “What am I supposed to do with this?” I did a little bit of research, found a local pottery place, and purchased a bag of clay. If you bought the clay and don’t have your own kiln, they charged extra for the bag and you could fire everything with them.
The first day that I tried at home, I didn’t watch a single video. Nothing. I was like, “Let me just see what this is about.” I instantly fell in love with it, even though I had no idea what the hell I was doing. I loved the feeling of the clay and playing with it. I loved the whole process. Ever since then, every single day, during my daughter’s naps, and late at night after she would go to bed, I would practice—til 2 a.m., every single night. Within the first two weeks, I knew how to throw on the wheel. And I never stopped.
In the beginning, I was making things that I felt I needed in the house or just wanted, like platters. I wanted to make bigger things. Mugs came a little later when I started to teach myself how to hand build, which is totally different. And painting is something I also taught myself through this process.
How did you develop your own unique aesthetic?
I was using a lot of other artists as inspiration in the beginning because I wasn’t trying to go anywhere with this. It was a way to teach myself. I would study other people’s work and then try to recreate something like it. Something else I learned through the process is that there are so many different types of clay bodies and clay types and colors and textures. In the end, I caught myself constantly wanting to use porcelain. I liked the end result of it the most.
I did some research about how to find your artistry, and I read something like: It’s important to use the daily stuff that you love as inspiration for your art. One thing I always loved were gallery walls. I wondered if I could make little frames on a mug, so I made one mug with one frame on it, and it turned out exactly like I envisioned—actually, better. Now, looking back at that first one, I’m like, “Oh God, I can’t believe I thought that was cute.” All my other ideas grew from that one. I would get inspiration from vintage antique paintings that you find at Salvation Army or Goodwill.
The first person who ordered a custom gallery mug—where you get to choose what goes in the frames—was Blake Lively. She found me through Pierce & Ward; they were selling my work in their first shop in LA. She ordered one for her husband for Christmas two years ago, and she was so in love with it. And he loved it. The whole process made me open to the idea of making them more personal. Now, people send me photos of the things they love in their everyday life; the people they love, their kids, their relationships, their animals. I love doing them as custom orders. But at the same time, I hate it. I’m just so hard on myself when it comes to the custom ones. For one order, I think I remade the girl’s mug maybe six times. That’s weeks and weeks and weeks.
What do your days look like now?
Now that my daughter is four, things are different. She gets bored more easily. She’s an only child and she still needs somebody to do things with. My husband works from home full-time, so if I need to do something, he’ll be with her. Fridays, he’s off, so he’s with her the whole day, and that’s my first full work day. Sunday through Thursday, she’s my priority because when I start working, it’s not something I can run in and do in five minutes. I’ll start working at 7 p.m. at night and I’ll stay up until 4 a.m. some nights, or midnight other nights. It’s never less than four hours.
I’m trying really hard to take it slower. I stopped doing shop updates. My last one was the last week of March. I do want to get back into that eventually, but right now, with the way my life is, it’s not possible. I cannot make enough work for a shop update. I also stopped taking commission work because that was taking up most of my time. I want to focus more on making what I love.
Pottery very much seems like a practice just for you. How did you decide to carve out that space?
Everybody’s parenting experience is different. My parents had eight kids, so it was more hands-off. When people would see me, like my friends, my siblings, or my parents, they thought I was a little nuts for how involved I was with my daughter. And it made me feel like, “Okay, I need something else.” But now, I see on social media that so many parents are this way. People want to be more involved with their kids and invest more time and energy into them. So I think it’s totally normal.
Now, when I do work, a lot of what I see and do with my daughter inspires me. I also value her opinion. We garden together, and a lot of the flowers and colors in my work are inspired by her choices. The shapes and sizes of my mugs are also inspired by her. With a lot of things that I make, I keep her in mind.
But I’ve never sat there and planned anything out. Aside from commissions, things get made without trying to think about what I should make. It’s whatever comes naturally. After having my daughter, my time is so important. I will never use that time to force myself to do something I don’t want to do. There’s a lot of stuff that I gave up: getting my nails done, getting my hair done, things like that. This is my me time. This is my pampering. I really love every moment that I spend in here. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t do it.
Well said, Deba!
This and that: Weekly recs
Here are a few things from around the web that have piqued my interest lately: Baker Joy Wilson has entered the tomato sandwich chat. Here’s a chic summer tote, newly on sale. Chrissy Teigen and John Legend’s home is beautiful—check out that kitchen island and home theater seating. A fun read about one writer’s quest to drink Hailey Beiber’s $20 “Skin Glaze” smoothie every day for a week. I wrote about the interplay between ceramics and heat for Blackberry Magazine. Are you watching the Real Housewives of New York reboot, or is it just me?
More soon!
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