New Delhi, Feb. 21 -- I love making tea bowls," says Adil Writer, ceramic artist at Mandala Pottery, a pottery studio in Auroville.

We're in front of a large wall shelf at Mandala Pottery, lined with tea bowls and pots in various shapes and colours-artistic, beautiful, unusual, familiar, whimsical. I met Writer at the launch of a tea room in Auroville. Finding a tea lover, who also makes teaware, I was keen to chat. Also because, in seeking a side-handle kyusu some time ago, the only locally made one I found was from the Mandala collection.

Puducherry has long been a pottery town. There is a deep tradition of terracotta here, and also an influential school of stoneware that began with the arrival of American ceramic artists Deborah Smit...