When you ask us how long we have worked this clay, we cannot answer with a single year. The craft is older than any of us. We inherited it father from grandfather, generation after generation, until its age in our house passed four hundred years.
The workshop is run today by the sons and grandsons of our grandfather Abdullah bin Hamdan al-Adawi. Our elders learned at their fathers' hands, and our young ones are learning now at ours, just as we once sat as children watching the hands before us turn with the wheel.
The clay has not changed; only the fire has
The clay is the same clay as the first jar our grandfathers made. We bring it from the land of Bahla, knead it and leave it until it softens, and centre it on the wheel with our hands, not with a machine. That has not changed.
What changed is the kiln. Our grandfathers kept the fire burning three or four days until the pottery was done. We have added an electric kiln that shortens the time, but we kept the traditional kiln in our yard and light it as they lit it, because it is part of this craft that we do not want to lose.
We have not turned the place into a museum: the fire is still lit and the wheel still turns every day.
We write this journal so that something of all this stays written down: who visited us, what we made, and what we remember from long years at this wheel. Come and visit us, and you too will be part of the story.