My journey with clay started with a weekend pottery course in 2017. At this time, I was working as a software engineering leader building storage and virtualization software. While I enjoyed my work and the responsibilities that came with it, there was also an urge to try something entirely different and practice a creative slow living. The interest in pottery post the course fueled this urge. I would scroll through pictures of ceramics and want to build pieces as beautiful.

Over the course of the next five years, I continued to try my hand at pottery mostly at home on weekends, but also attending some workshops and classes. I would end up gifting these pieces to friends and relatives whether they wanted it or not. By now, I had invested in a wheel and a kiln at home. I like to think that my pottery studio grew organically.

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Finally in 2022, I decided to take the plunge and dedicate all my time to my home studio run out of my balcony - Studio Mannaana. To be honest, I don't have it all figured out and I'm approaching this as I would any of my software product development projects. Starting off with the minimum needed and tweaking it as I progress. You can see this with my website too, if you've been following along, as I integrate shipping and payment providers as the need arises.

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Studio Mannaana is now a small batch ceramic studio specializing in handmade and custom pieces. “Mannaana” literally translates to mud or clay elephant in Malayalam. Though it is quite a mouthful, I chose it as both clay and elephant are special to me.