The Ceramic Cafe – Part 1: The Wheel

"Centre it first," said Adam. "Everything depends on that."

"How do I know it's centred?"

"It stops fighting you."

Nino pressed her wet hands against the spinning lump of clay and felt it wobble, resist and then, slowly, settle. She laughed out loud. It was a rainy afternoon in Tbilisi, in a pottery cafe on a steep cobbled street, a long room of shelves crowded with mugs and bowls, smelling of coffee and damp earth. Nino, thirty-three, a photographer from Batumi, had come in out of the rain for a cup of coffee and found herself sitting at a wheel with her sleeves rolled.

Adam, thirty-six, the owner, crouched beside her with his hands cupped around hers. He had dark curls, clay on his cheekbone and a calm that made everything feel simple. "Lightly," he said. "Lift with your thumbs. Let it come up."

The clay rose in a slim wall between her palms, wobbled, and collapsed. They both burst out laughing.

"I'm terrible."

"You are beginning. It's different." He wiped his hands on his apron. "Come back tomorrow. The cup is not finished."

She came back the next day, and the next. She photographed the cafe in the soft window light, and the cups on their shelves, and Adam's hands at the wheel. By Friday she had a small lopsided mug, drying on the shelf with her name chalked on the base.

"It's ugly," she said.

"It's yours. That is the only requirement."

He handed her the first coffee in it, from the new batch, hot and dark. She took a sip and looked up at him over the rim.

"Adam. May I ask you something?"

"Always."

"Would you have dinner with me? Not at the cafe."

Continue the story: Part 2 – Glaze.

Continue the story: Part 2 – Glaze.