A friend of mine has a potters wheel which I’ve used a few times-with mediocre results-those Minoan pots look better than my stuff did-apparently it has never been easy to make a perfect and functional clay vessel using a potters wheel...
I wasn’t good at pottery-making in college, but I enjoyed using the wheel more than hand-building. A skilled potter can make a beautifully formed vessel easily. One of the students was a grizzled older guy who would come in and make quite large vessels. He seemed to be a pro who just needed the equipment and space, so he apparently audited the course. I suspect he sold his work. He’d come in after I got to the pottery workshop, throw something, put it in the drying area and disappear, leaving me and the occasional rat to bumble along by ourselves.