HANDMADE 2020 - 2023: How do we create things by hand? What is it about handmaking that matters? The process of making by hand lies at the intersection between mind and matter – linking the plasticity of the brain to the variety of bodily techniques and material forms.

HANDMADE was a European Research Council (ERC) funded project, led by Prof Lambros Malafouris based at the Institute of Archaeology, University of Oxford, that proposed to fill this gap in our knowledge attempting an anthropological exploration of the hand and its skills focusing on the craft of pottery making.

The basic hypothesis was that the process of handmaking constitutes a form of thinking with and through clay.

The project involved multi-sited participant observation, used new techniques such as eye tracking and operated in several traditional ceramic workshops spread around mainland Greece and the Islands. My role was to record images that were subsequently used in ethnographic interviews. Handmade culminated in an exhibition of my photographs and a series of workshops in the Museum of Geological Formations of Meteora alongside many of the potters who had participated in the project.