In Jeremiah 18, God sends the prophet down to a potter’s house to watch a man at his wheel. The pot goes wrong in the potter’s hands, and he doesn’t throw it away. He presses it back down and makes it again, into whatever shape seems good to him.
That is the whole picture, and anyone who has sat at a wheel knows it in their hands before they know it in their head: clay that hasn’t been fired can still be reshaped. At The Potter’s Hands Studio in Oxford, Mississippi, where April Dupuis throws and carves every piece, the passage reads differently once you’ve had wet clay on your hands.
Below is what Jeremiah 18 and Isaiah 64:8 look like from the potter’s side of the wheel, step by step, from centering to the kiln. If you’d like the technical side of how a piece is made, our page on sgraffito walks through it.
What Jeremiah 18 actually says
The Lord tells Jeremiah to go down to the potter’s house and listen for His word there. Jeremiah goes, and he watches.
And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter: so he made it again another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it.
Jeremiah 18:4 (KJV)
Then comes the word Jeremiah was sent to hear: “as the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are ye in mine hand, O house of Israel” (Jeremiah 18:6, KJV). In its first setting, it was a word to a whole nation about God’s freedom to tear down and to build up. Christians have long heard it closer to home too, as a word about one life in the hands of a patient Maker.
Isaiah says it as a prayer rather than a warning:
But now, O LORD, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand.
Isaiah 64:8 (KJV)
Centering: nothing holds its shape until it’s centered
Every pot on a wheel starts the same way. You set a lump of clay on the wheel head, wet your hands and lean in while it spins, until the clay runs true with no wobble.
It’s the first thing a beginner learns and the last thing anyone stops thinking about. A pot thrown off center can look fine for a minute. Then you pull the walls up, and the weak side gives.
The clay doesn’t center itself. It’s centered by steady pressure from hands that stay on it the whole time the wheel turns. That is a fair picture of being in the potter’s hand. We aren’t kept steady by our own grip. We’re kept steady by Someone who doesn’t let go.
When the pot collapses on the wheel
Sooner or later, every potter watches a pot fold. A wall gets too thin, a rim goes out of round, or the whole cylinder slumps sideways and sinks into itself. It happens in a first class, and it happens to people who have thrown for decades.
Here is the part Jeremiah saw. While the clay is still wet, a collapsed pot isn’t lost. You gather it up, wedge it, set it back on the wheel and center it again. The same clay becomes another vessel, and sometimes a better one, because the potter has learned where it was weak.
Notice that the potter in Jeremiah 18 doesn’t trade the marred clay for fresh clay. He keeps working the clay he has. That is the shape of grace in Jesus. He doesn’t set aside the person who has fallen apart. He gathers them up, puts His hands on them again and makes something new from the same life.
Collapse is part of learning the wheel, and nobody at the studio pretends otherwise. If you’d like to feel this for yourself, a class at the wheel in Oxford is the honest way to learn it.
Leather-hard: the season for carving
Once a pot holds its shape, it’s left to firm up to leather-hard. It’s still clay, but no longer soft enough to fold. That’s when April coats the piece in white porcelain slip and carves her design through it by hand, so the darker clay beneath shows through. Every flower, leaf and lily on her work is made this way.
The carving only works because the clay is still unfired. It can still be cut, still be changed. In her artist statement, April writes that she carves trees “that reach toward an eternal goal.”
There is a window at this stage. Leather-hard clay takes a carved line cleanly. Let it dry too far and it chips. Much of what shapes us comes in seasons like that, while we’re still soft enough to be marked and not yet set.
The kiln, and treasure in earthen vessels
Then the piece goes into the kiln. After firing, April works earth-pigment oxides into the carved lines, then underglazes and a clear glaze, so the detail and color come alive in the kiln.
Firing is the point of no return. A fired pot can’t be pressed back into a lump and thrown again. The heat sets the clay for a lifetime of use, which is why the studio’s everyday tableware is high-fired stoneware with a food-safe glaze. It’s also why nobody rushes it. Rushing firing or glazing is how pieces crack.
Paul reached for the same kind of vessel when he wrote about ordinary people carrying the good news of Jesus:
But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.
2 Corinthians 4:7 (KJV)
An earthen vessel is a clay pot: plain, breakable, useful. Its worth is in what it holds. Every mug and bowl that comes out of the kiln is a small reminder that God chooses ordinary clay to carry something precious.
About the name
A studio called The Potter’s Hands invites this comparison, and we won’t pretend it doesn’t. Whether these verses are the reason behind the name is April’s story to tell, so ask her when you visit.
What we can say is that faith runs through the work. April’s carving draws on Southern gardens and faith, and she still helps lead worship at her church. You can read the verses behind some of her pieces in another post.
The same hands make very different things for very different seasons: a carved cross for a family looking for memorial pottery, a mug with a name and a birth flower among her personalized birthday gifts, a platter from her handmade wedding pottery, or a statement piece through the designer trade program. Each one started as a lump of clay on a wheel.
Questions people ask
What is the potter and the clay Bible verse?
The best-known passage is Jeremiah 18:1-6, where God sends Jeremiah to watch a potter remake a marred vessel and says, “as the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are ye in mine hand.” Isaiah 64:8 echoes it: “we are the clay, and thou our potter.”
What does Jeremiah 18 mean?
In its first setting, it was a word to the nation of Israel about God’s right to reshape what is marred. Christians also read it personally: unfired clay can still be reworked, and God does not discard a life that has gone wrong but makes it again.
What does treasure in earthen vessels mean?
In 2 Corinthians 4:7, Paul calls believers earthen vessels, plain clay pots that carry the treasure of the gospel, so that the power is plainly God’s and not our own.
If this passage means something to you, it can be carved into something you keep. See how April’s pieces are made on The Craft, or start a commission with a verse of your own.