The Story of the Handle Man: Why practice based research? As a student of ceramics in the 1980’s we had a field trip around a pottery factory in Stoke on Trent. The ceramics industry was in terminal decline, yet in Stoke, the majority of the jobs were in the potteries and peripheral industries serving the factories. To such an extent that the whole of Stoke had Potters Holiday in June, the whole place closed down. In this factory we saw skilled mould makers, arcane jigger and jollying work making dishes, expert engravers cutting copper plates to print willow pattern from, women whose sole job was banding 24 ct gold on the rims of flatware. What most fascinated me was the handle man. Standing in front of an 8 foot rotating rack full of teacups, he unhinged a plaster mould, popped out a dozen or so cast, green, handles and attached them to the teacups so precisely, so neatly, so perfectly and so fast that after every twelve handles he gave himself the treat of ...