KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 23 — Lee Ee Vee lays a large piece of clay that has been coloured a dark coral onto her work table in her home-based studio.

On the shelves around her are plates, espresso cups, fruit juicers, vases, and mugs. Most sport angular shapes, several are cylindrical and some of the plates are textured. There’s a mixture of completed designs and bone dry pieces that are ready for the kiln.

There are several methods to shaping pottery, Ee Vee tells me. "You can throw it on the wheel,” she says, indicating the apparatus sitting on the floor next to her and immediately that famous scene from the movie Ghost comes to mind. "Or hand-pinch it for an irregular shape, or hand-build it as what I’m doing.”

Lee Ee Vee will flatten the clay before measuring and cutting it

With a ruler, she marks out the exact dimensions she needs before cutting into the clay, extracting a rectangular piece. She rolls it over a cylindrical form to achieve the desired shape, but notices that parts of the clay are cracking. "It’s too dry,” she explains. "There’s no point firing this up in the kiln because it would probably just crack further, and that would be a waste of time and money.”

That’s just one of many variables that Ee Vee needs to keep an eye on as she works on her ceramic creations under her label, Thirty3 Eleven. The name was inspired by Exodus 31 verse 1-3 of the Bible, which says: "And I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with wisdom, with understanding, with knowledge and with all kinds of skills”.

In Ee Vee’s case, pottery making was a skill she only picked up last September although her passion for it has roots that go far back. "Since I was young, I have loved interior design and always dreamt of houses and decorating rooms. I couldn’t draw, however, so I turned my attention to other things,” Ee Vee recalls. "But that love never left me.”

Cutting the clay to specifications

She studied Communications in college and worked as a Brand Manager for a beauty brand. She gave that up to co-found The Last Polka (TLP), one of the first artisanal ice cream producers in Malaysia, with university mate Tee May Yee. "I told myself I’d give it (TLP) two years, but we did so well that it ended up being four to five years. I knew that at some point, I’d still want to do interior design.”

After leaving TLP, Ee Vee took off to France where the plan was to pick up the language so that she could enrol in an interior design course there. It didn’t work out the way she had hoped; the language was far more complex than she expected.

After months of studying, she found it difficult even to hold a normal conversation. Ee Vee then returned to Malaysia after about seven months, did a short stint at a restaurant in Penang, and was then offered an internship at a friend’s interior design studio. It would seem that her childhood dream was finally coming true, but that too didn’t pan out.

To make the cups and mugs, the clay must be rolled before it dries up

"I realised I wasn’t good at servicing clients, at having to convince someone to accept my ideas... with TLP, I didn’t have to face that. I made what I liked and if people liked it and bought it, great,” Ee Vee explains. The experience threw her into a loop; she took a shot at her dream and didn’t like it. What next?

It would have been all too easy to give up and call it all a failure, a thought she admits crossed her mind after her time in France. "But then I said to myself, no, I didn’t fail, at least I tried. Paris was an amazing experience, I enjoyed just roaming the streets even though I was broke at the time. I gave it my everything and I have no regrets. When would I do something like that again?”

Using the hand-pinching technique can yield interesting irregular shapes

Paris left another mark on her; one of her favourite shops there was Astier de Villatte, which sold beautiful handmade ceramics. Initially, Ee Vee thought of bringing in those items to sell but realised it wouldn’t be a viable business as Malaysia imposes a very high tax on ceramics. "I couldn’t afford to buy them for myself, so I thought why not make them myself? Pottery was on my bucket list anyway.”

After that first class at Clay Expression in Subang Jaya, she put in regular practice, read up on the subject, watched YouTube videos, tracked professional potters on Instagram, and went through countless trials and errors as she worked on building a brand.

"I went into it with the aim of setting up a business which, on hindsight, was not a good way to start as it placed a lot of pressure on me.” Like French, Ee Vee found that pottery making was a big challenge, an art that could take years to master and one that some people even take up degree courses for. "It was something new for me altogether, which meant that I had to learn from scratch. And there I was thinking I could do it in a matter of months!”

The decagon Laine dessert plates are perfect for pies and cakes

But she did; the learning and experimenting was moving along slowly but Ee Vee realised that she needed to start making something that she could sell. She took up a booth at Bangsar Shopping Centre’s Seek & Keep artisan market this past March as a way to push herself.

It was a rather ambitious plan; she only began production in January and that was already considered late, given the tedious process and the amount of time needed. With the support of her teacher, Cindy Koh, she managed to complete – by the skin of her teeth -- the first batch the evening before while the second was only finished on the morning itself! The good news is the 50 pieces were sold out.

Two months may seem like a long time to get 50 pieces done up but the final product often looks deceptively simple, belying the many steps it takes to get from raw material to functional product. Besides, every component has to be perfect in order to have as flawless a finish as possible.

The clay can take on a completely different hue after glazing and firing (left). Hexagonal vases to hold your favourite blooms and brighten up your space (right)

Ee Vee starts with white clay, which she will colour according to her designs. She wedges the clay, which is not unlike kneading dough, to get the air pockets out before rolling it flat.

It then needs to dry to a leather-hard stage — that can take one to two hours, depending on the weather — before cutting the clay into the required dimensions. Except when she’s making cups, that is; for those shapes, she will need to cut and roll up the clay immediately before the clay dries too much. In drier form, they hold angular shapes better.

Ee Vee then leaves her hand-built designs on the shelves until they get to the bone dry stage. As she doesn’t own a kiln, she gingerly packs them up and drives them to Clay Expression and pays to use theirs, being careful not to go over hard bumps along the way and praying hard that no one knocks into her car!

There, she starts by preparing the glaze. "In liquid form and after it dries, the colour of the glaze can be contrastingly different. It depends on how the minerals react to the heat.” Every piece has to be glazed individually and with an even hand, and some require more than one coat. She then has to wipe the glaze off the bottom so that they won’t stick to the kiln.

Many of Thirty3Eleven’s pieces have multi-sided angular shapes (left). Some of her designs have two tones, but the overall palette is one of earthy and muted shades that mix and match well (right)

When the glaze has dried, the pieces are ready to be fired. There are two rounds: The first is known as bisque firing, after which she will polish the surfaces to smoothen them. Then comes glaze firing, which is the final step. As this uses a large kiln, she has to wait for other potters’ pieces to come in as well, in order to meet the minimum number.

This last mile is mentally and physically draining, taking up to several hours and with a lot of waiting in between. Plus, there’s that constant worry of whether the final product will turn out well. Will there be cracks? What if the shade is too dark or light?

"The colour can differ from batch to batch, but I use all earthy tones so they complement each other. Likewise, the drips of the glaze and the way they dry may also vary. None is ever perfect and no two are exactly the same.”

Yet, for all the uncertainties it involves, Ee Vee has found peace in pottery making. "Once I started doing this, I felt settled. I draw meaning from my work and I like to keep things as natural as possible. Pottery making is an earth-to-table approach.

Bone dry pieces that are ready to be fired

I take from the earth – even the glaze is made of natural minerals – and it ends up on my table. In my mind, it all makes sense!” she muses. "Besides, I love cooking, so now it’s not just about the food but the plates as well. This is what I enjoy the most — making things that improve my space.”

Thirty3Eleven epitomises all that, and its creator. There’s a serenity to the designs, from the muted palette to the simple yet timeless forms. And when Ee Vee speaks of them and of pottery, as she shows me page after page from the books she references, and as she explains the minute details found in ceramic pieces I have never paid attention to, her passion is palpable.

I sense a fiery drive and enthusiasm that makes me think of the searing kilns that complete her artisanal work.

It’s slow-burning, for sure, but ultimately rewarding. "It’s slow work, you can’t rush it or you risk making more mistakes. It’s forced me to really slow down, made me take a balanced view on life too and taught me about letting go,” she reflects. "I don’t know how long I’ll be doing this for but I will never regret learning this skill.”

Catch Ee Vee at Bangsar Shopping Centre’s Seek & Keep Artisan Market this November 4-6, or follow @thirty3eleven on Instagram.

You can also email her at contact@thirty3eleven.com

Vivian Chong is considering taking a pottery class while she sips her morning coffee out of her new favourite ceramic mug. Find more of her stories at http://thisbunnyhops.com/