My name is Cecilia Bynke, born in 1953 in Lund, Sweden. I was fascinated by clay since the day in early schooldays when the class were making a stone-age village in clay. (What clay in it self was, we were never told...) The soft blueclay (as we call it in Sweden, a yellow burning earthenware clay) appealed to me and on my way home from school I say light-blue lumps of "earth" shining in a farmers field. They looked like the wonderful clay we had used in school. As a victim of pennalism in school I had to keep myself busy alone. Totally unaware of the possibilities of the clay I tried to put colour to the dry clay with pastel crayons. A great production of presents for my relatives began. My mother managed to keep herself from laughing and encouraged me as opposed to the education that followed in school. During the art lessons I stared longingly for several years at a potter's wheel in a corner, that the teacher had no knowledge to use. For a long time I was planning to make a vase. It was supposed to look like this: . During the last year the teacher gave in and I was finally allowed to make the vase, that ended up unfired and painted with horrible blue water colour. There was no access to kilns.

In high school I still continued with clay even though no kiln was available. After a couple of years one school in Lund recieved a kiln and I got in touch with the teacher responsible, hoping maybe I would get something fired. The teacher, who later became a famous painter, wanted to see my things and then as the non-ceramic expert she was, gave a detailed, non-requested and scornfull review but promised to fire the pots. A promise she never kept.

But the struggle continued. I never realised there could be any training as a potter and I was never enlightened. In spite of everything, I heard of a pottery course at the Capella farm on the island of Öland. I applied and was immediately accepted. After one year there I went to India and watched the potters there make gigantic, earthenware pots for water storage, on their orientally "backwards" wheels. Home again I continued my studies at the University, got my Bachelor of Arts and bought my first... guess what... Yes! An electric kiln! It was a terrible little thing that hardly reached earthenware temperatures. Later on I bought a Danish kickwheel, which today, thirty years later, I still use!

The production began in the little basement space belonging to the room I rented. A lot of pots were made and I experienced that the pots were possible to sell. I sold them in the marketplace in Lund. The following years were very difficult. Suddenly I found myself a full time potter working almost 24/7 including weekends. Stuck in a hamster wheel I could not get out of. The unlimited poverty that followed (of course nobody wanted to pay for pots) was devastating to the energy to make things change. In those days there were no other ways of selling pots except to shops that would dump the prices even more. Later there were some potter's shops started, I tried to become a member but was not accepted. I had my income from the marketplace...

In the marketplace I was a potter making domestic pots, at home I made more artistic ceramics that I never was able to show to anyone. That kind of ceramics would never sell in a place like the market. Very isolated my only window out to the rest of the world of pottery came through the English and American pottery magazines and through books of course.

In the 80's I managed to buy my own house. I lived in the country and got somewhat bigger space and bigger kilns. I stayed for 11 years while I as a singe mother supported and brought up my daughter born in 1983.

Luckily the marketplace-years came to an end in the 90's. Instead the craft fairs were created. I travelled around the country for a couple of years. The voice inside me was screaming out loudly! The Swedish craft fairs have not much qualitative work and the competition is very unjust. The degradation is overwhelming. This year, 2004, my plan is to quit the fairs and obey what my dreams tell me to do. If only I can afford it...