• Kunal trained as a painter before turning to pottery in 2009
• His terracotta vessels can be as small as a grain
• The only tools he uses are the wheel, a needle and a fine blade

Kunal Ukey throws terracotta vessels so small that the tiniest is no bigger than a mustard seed. He originally trained as a painter in Nagpur in central India and turned to craftsmanship in 2008 after the art market crashed. He taught himself the craft of ceramics, and to work in miniature scale, rebuilding his career at the potters’ markets held across the country. To make his pieces, Kunal raises a tall mound of clay on the wheel and draws each vessel from its peak. He shapes the walls with his fingers until they are as thin as paper. In a single day, he can produce up to 300 vessels. “After 15 years of continuous work nothing about clay phases me. I could throw these vessels with my eyes closed,” he says. The pots emerge from the kiln in two colours and Kunal composes them by the hundred within gridded wooden frames of his own making.