About twenty years ago, I decided to try my hand at real modeling clay. For decades I’d messed with plasticine—projects that never lasted, always mashed back into new forms, leaving behind only a few bad photos. Some of those pieces I still miss.

This time I wrapped newspaper into a rough core, tied with string, and covered it with half an inch of clay. My plan was simple: once the bust was finished, I’d pull out or burn away the paper core and oven-fire it. I didn’t own a kiln, but I had ambition.

Over several days, the figure emerged. No model, no photograph—just memory, mostly of my wife. I shaved one side flat, imagining it as a bookend. Between sessions the clay reached “leather dry,” firm enough to carve yet still able to take a wash of slip. I worked mostly in reduction, shaving down, smoothing with a damp brush, letting it rest overnight.

Then came firing day. I set the oven, placed the bust in the center, and told myself I’d rotate it now and then. About forty minutes in, a sharp crack pulled me to the door. Dust hung in the air. A shoulder had exploded. I stepped back, half-expecting shrapnel. Then another crack—an earlobe gone. Another—half a nostril vanished. Each burst was my mistake unfolding: the water I’d brushed on that morning had sealed moisture inside. With nowhere to escape, the steam tore the piece apart.

When it finally cooled, the bust looked like a marble relic battered by invaders. Damaged, scarred, but still standing. I placed it on a shelf where it remains, holding up volumes on the history of the barbarians at the gate—some of whom, as it happens, were my ancestors.

An artifact by accident. A failure turned keeper.