The other week, I was sitting under our plum tree at the studio, holding a cup I made, still warm from the bisque kiln and smoothing its gentle planes with sandpaper. Looking down, I noticed the ground littered with the little stones from last year’s fallen fruit. Many were split open, revealing the tiny hollow where the seed once sat, the potential of a new tree safely enclosed in the hard shell. Now just debris, the small, brittle, old stones were joined by hundreds of tender white blossom petals.

It is spring, and the plum tree is wearing its flowery crown like white cloud against the blue sky. The promise of a new harvest.

I knelt to reach under the bench and collect some of those old stones, some whole, some half. I weighed them in the palm of my hand, and an idea formed. Holding both the stones and the idea, I returned to the studio.

I rolled out a thin slab of porcelain and used a plaster mold to create a small bowl. I pressed those plum stones into the material’s soft surface, their rough edges biting into the smooth, yielding clay. Each press was deliberate, a quiet choice to carry last year’s remnants into something new.

Inspiration is all around us, offered in textures, vistas, memories. Potters know this, weighing strange tools or materials in their hands. They study the plants in their garden, pondering how they could use them for their creations. Often the humblest and overlooked object can light a spark if one only shows up with open eyes and willing hands, but the transition from thought to action is often easier said than done, the yearning to create towards the act of creation and a step not taken.

Like the little old stones, my creativity laid forgotten and fruitless for years. I moved to a different continent, built a new life, learned a new language and had a living to make. Grieving the loss of my home and family for a long time, the joy of creating faded to a vague memory. I bought some art supplies, but did not know what to make, draw, write.

The simple act of pressing the plum stones into this new bowl is a small, quiet act of creation, not to craft a masterpiece or change the world, but to affirm my place in it. The stones, once whole, now broken, didn’t promise a new tree, just as the bowl offers no promise of permanence. But both held possibility, the way spring whispers of fruit to come without guaranteeing the harvest.

Once bisqued, I used pink underglaze to dot plum blossom petals over the surface, joining the stark hollows of the stone impressions. They remind me of that small moment of inspiration and that small acts, done with intention, are enough. A charcoal black glaze applied to the underside and visible around the rim, frames the design and honours shadows overcome.

This bowl now, small and imperfect, feels like a small prayer of gratitude for finding passion in my craft and friendship in pottery, by chance and a courageous first step into the unknown nearly a decade ago. It holds the wisdom of small acts, reminding me that inspiration doesn’t demand perfection or scale; it asks only for attention to what’s already there.