In working on a drawing or a painting, one can rework and rework and rework and change ideas until you get it the way you think is right at that time. With clay that's not possible. You either succeed the first time, or you should wad it up and start over again, because you can't mess around with the clay and still have it fresh.

When we finished [training with my wife] we came to St. Paul, because St. Paul was the first place where we got a job offer and we needed some sort of a job to earn some money in order to set up our own studio. It's rather ironic that this job offer came originally through the Walker Art Center.

We moved up here [to St.Paul with my wife] and started to teach, we very quickly found out we were not equipped either to teach or to run our own pottery, and so we decided that we had to have further training.

In looking at these pots at the Field Museum, Alix [MacKenzie] and I both came to a conclusion individually but also collectively that the pots that really interested us were the pots that people had used in their everyday life, and we began to think - I mean, whether it was ancient Greece or Africa or Europe or wherever, the pots that people had used in their homes were the ones that excited us.

I thought I was going to be able to use my painting ideas as decoration on pottery, but my painting did not translate into decoration on pottery. I thought it was going to, and in fact I made, while still in school, a plate with one of my paintings on it, and that's exactly what it was, it was a plate with a painting on it. It was not a decorated plate; it was just a painting superimposed over a three-dimensional ceramic form.

We had a wonderful trip, a seven-day trip, talking and sitting in the sun and so forth [with Bernard Leach]. And as we were approaching England, Leach said, "Do you have a place to live?" And we said, "No, we didn't." We hadn't worried about that. But Bernard had just separated from his second wife, which we had not realized, and Bernard was a person who could not stand to live alone. So he said, "Would you like to share my house with me?" Naturally we said yes.

I don't know, it's very difficult if you're in a strange country to just barge in and say, "Hello, I'm Warren MacKenzie, and aren't you happy to have me as a guest," you know? But artists did accept us and we remained friends for many, many years, many of them as long as they lived; like Lucie Rie and Hans Coper were very good friends, and it was wonderful.