The Potter’s Nod Hypothesis
“Potter’s nod” usually refers to the small, sometimes subtle and sometimes pronounced, instinctive head movements a potter makes while working on the wheel. You can see the nod in action in Bernard Leach’s demonstration here, or catch a distinct example when I’m at the wheel myself.
my nods in action
For most people, the potter’s nod appears as a strange habit, a quirk that experienced potters perform almost unconsciously. For a long time, I believed this movement helped me track the unevenness that develops as a clay cylinder rotates on the wheel, but I struggled to articulate exactly how or why the head movement helps, or what mechanics underlie it.
Tonight, after a full day in the studio throwing tall cylinder variations and teaching a class, the thought suddenly struck me. I have spent much of my art practice studying ways to sharpen sensory perception. Over time, I’ve learned that I have unusually strong tunnel vision: I see things in high definition, but within a narrow frame. My left eye is legally blind, and my right eye is -0.75, which limits my depth perception without corrective lenses. My peripheral vision is restricted as well; often, I must consciously disengage from this small, high-resolution field in order to widen my awareness.
The tunnel vision I describe corresponds to the fovea (central vision), which spans about two degrees of visual angle. This is where acuity, color sensitivity, and depth perception peak. Many activities that demand precise alignment, such as baseball, basketball, darts, golf putting, and archery, rely heavily on this small cone of clarity.
From sports science, I borrow the concepts of gaze control and the quiet eye. Gaze control refers to the regulation of eye movements to optimize information intake during motor tasks. Within this framework, the quiet eye is defined as a prolonged, final fixation on a critical point just before executing a movement. This steady gaze improves accuracy and control, reduces saccadic noise, and supports fine-motor coordination. The quiet eye also reduces cognitive load, stabilizes the visuomotor system, and facilitates motor planning.
Why the Potter’s Nod Helps
The potter’s nod may represent a compensatory strategy that aligns the foveal axis with the tactile and proprioceptive feedback from the hands. This nod could serve several interlocking functions:
Align the fovea with action-relevant cues. By shifting the head, the nod centers the ~2° foveal field precisely on the contact point between hands and clay.
Enhance depth perception. Small head movements create tiny changes in angle, which sharpen depth when vision alone is limited.
Stabilize the quiet eye. The nod can anchor gaze helping maintain a steady fixation before fine adjustments of pressure and alignment.
Compensate for visual or spatial limitations. For individuals with subtle acuity or depth perception challenges, the nod functions as an adaptive behavior, coupling visual and tactile feedback more tightly.
In this way, what seems like a peculiar habit may instead be an embodied technique: a bodily strategy that fuses seeing, touching, and moving into one continuous act of making.
Nerdy things to flip through
Quiet eye → precision action (foundational):
Vickers, J.N. (2009). The quiet eye as a bidirectional link between gaze, attention, and action. Prog. Brain Res. 174:325–342.QE differentiates experts & successful trials (review):
Klostermann, A. et al. (2018). The Quiet Eye and Motor Expertise. Front. Psychol. 9:1962.Gaze anchoring during reaching (recent empirical):
Barendregt, T. et al. (2025). Gaze-related functions driving gaze anchoring in reaching. bioRxiv.Head movement contributes to depth from motion parallax (review):
Kral, K. (1998). Side-to-side head movements to obtain motion depth cues. Behav. Processes 43:171–181.Human depth from motion parallax depends on head/retinal velocity relationship (review):
Kim, H.G.R. et al. (2016). Neural basis of depth from motion parallax. Curr. Opin. Neurobiol. 41:162–169.Head-movement direction modulates depth judgments (empirical):
Ishii, M. et al. (2011). Comparison between lateral head movement and to-and-fro translation in depth perception from motion parallax. PLoS One 6:e16361.Even millimeter-scale head motions influence depth judgments (empirical):
de la Malla, C. et al. (2016). How aspects of motion parallax influence distance judgments. J. Vis. 16(10):22.Modeling shows differences between disparity vs. motion-parallax depth (empirical/modeling):
Nawrot, M. & Stroyan, K. (2014). Modeling depth from motion parallax with equivalent disparity. Front. Psychol. 5:1103.VOR & anticipatory mechanisms stabilize gaze during self-motion (mechanism link):
King, W.M. (2011). Anticipatory eye movements stabilize gaze during self-generated head movements. Exp. Brain Res. 210:425–434.
