About the Potter

Ever since I could hold a pencil, I wanted to be a “drawing artist”, and I never doubted the path ahead of me. Creating has always been obvious to me—something essential, almost vital.

Since childhood, I’ve explored many forms of art, including bonsai. Naturally, I studied applied arts and earned a degree in Visual Communication and Expression.

After school I became a graphic designer and illustrator, first in an agency and later as a freelancer. It was inevitable that one day someone would find me with a block of clay in my hands.

I had done a bit of sculpting in art school, but I never trained as a potter. I’m entirely self-taught—I fell into clay by accident. In 2011, my daughter received a small toy pottery wheel, along with a bit of clay she made the mistake of leaving within my reach. Two weeks later, I had bought my own block of clay and was making my very first pots.

In the beginning, like all beginners, I found pottery fairly easy and accessible. You make small pieces, do only what you know, and let the clay guide you. Then you try larger pots, original shapes, or pieces you’ve seen elsewhere—and that’s when the trouble starts!

Clay and mistakes taught me everything. Those early months were rough: warped pots, cracks, collapsed forms, clay drying too fast—or not fast enough… the list goes on. I was discovering the material, the gestures, the firings, and the reality of a craft far more technical than it appears.

I made every mistake possible, but each one helped me move forward. Today, when I make a gesture or apply a technique, I don’t do it because someone told me to—I do it because I’ve lived the consequences of doing it another way.

Drawing shaped my eye—my sense of proportion, lines, and balance. All my life I built images, and for twenty years it was my profession. Today I build volumes, but the desire to create is exactly the same.

My first pots naturally inherited my graphic past. At the time, most bonsai containers were more practical than artistic. These basic pots felt to me like a surface waiting to be explored—a blank page.

In 2012, I began showing my first pieces. I expected polite smiles; I received genuine enthusiasm. Friends began asking for pots, then bonsai enthusiasts, and finally complete strangers. I thought I had two or three quiet years ahead to learn ceramics, but reality caught up with me—and in May 2012, Greg-Ceramics was born.

I juggled graphic design and pottery for three years. By 2015, clay had taken up so much space that doing both became impossible. After two decades, I put down the pencil to fully devote myself to pottery.

I never tried to “have a style”. The word feels static, definitive—as if the goal were fixed. Mine is simple: to create what I want to see, touch, and understand.

My work is a blend of influences: Japanese bonsai tradition, a contemporary European eye, my illustration background, and whatever sparks my interest at the moment. I don’t follow a straight line—just a path. And that path is always shifting.

I test shapes, textures, and colors. I allow myself to step off the path—sometimes falling flat. But that’s what keeps me growing and makes the work exciting. Once I understand a pot, a form, I could repeat it for years and become “the master of the 18 cm celadon-flared rectangle”. But repetition doesn’t interest me. Understanding, learning, discovering—that’s what keeps me moving.

I launched my YouTube channel in 2012. At first, it was simply a way to show my work. I wanted to show how difficult ceramics really is—but the opposite happened. My videos motivated people. I can’t count the number of times someone has told me: “Your videos made me start pottery!” (Poor souls. I was trying to discourage you!)

For ten years, my channel had few videos, and people often asked when the next one would come. In 2023—4,000 pots later—I decided to return to YouTube with the goal of sharing what I had learned.

My videos show many gestures and techniques, but my goal isn’t to provide ready-made solutions. I want viewers to think, to understand, to make a technique their own rather than simply copy it.

I know my videos create my own competition. But I enjoy making them—and why? Because it’s an art form too. Like any art, it pulls me in. It lets me learn and experiment in yet another medium.

Of course, you weren’t expecting me to just turn on a camera and upload a single take! Editing, animation, 3D, special effects, sound design… a whole universe to explore.

I keep learning. Always.

People sometimes call me “the Master”, usually because I introduced them to pottery or helped them progress. It’s flattering—but it’s not true.

I don’t see myself as a “master potter”—far from it. A Master is someone who has spent a lifetime mastering something very specific. But ceramics is far too vast for anyone to “master pottery”. At best, you master a branch of a branch.

Mastery means reaching perfection. My way of working prevents me from mastering anything. I pick, I skim, I test—and once I understand something, I move on. Never mastering. At best, being versatile… and that’s exactly how I like it.

I feel too much in motion for mastery. Every kiln, every pot, every texture, every glaze can still surprise me. I try to enjoy my craft—to let clay, sometimes, decide for me.

After all these years, I still see myself as an apprentice—not out of forced modesty, but because clay can never truly be tamed.

I like moving forward without knowing whether tomorrow will look like today. I keep learning, evolving—and the more I progress, the more I realize how little I know, because ceramics is an infinite field.

The story continues, one pot at a time.