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About Our Name

"The Maker's Image" was actually coined by Tom Miller, Tim's brother.   Tom is a degreed commercial artist and, in many ways, responsible for the founding of The Maker's Image.

(Click here to find out more about our history.)

As a Christian-run business, we are constantly searching for ways to integrate our love for God with our work and our business practices.  Pottery, potters, and pottery making are mentioned over 20 times in the Bible, and clay is mentioned over 30 times.  It is an often-used and powerful symbol used frequently by God for a variety of situations and reasons. 

Among the most well-known Scripture references comes from Isaiah 64:8:

"But now, O LORD, You are our Father; We are the clay, and You our potter; And all we are the work of Your hand."

From God's initial act of hand-making Adam from "the dust of the ground" (Genesis 2:7) to Paul's use of the potter analogy to beautifully illustrate the sovereignty of God (Romans 9:21-23), the Bible frequently uses this picture of the common and basest of substances - the very dust of the ground - being molded and fashioned into something beautiful and valuable.  It is not the intrinsic value of the clay that makes the finished product valuable, but rather it is the skill of the Potter that brings beauty, function, value, and desirability to the product.

When Adam is first formed out of the dust, God proclaims that He has made Man ("Adam" means "man" in Hebrew) in His own "image" (Genesis 1:26-27).  Only Man is said to have been made in the "image" of God in all Scripture.  That image is marred by sin when Adam and Eve fall through disobedience in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3), but God nevertheless reaffirms that Man still bears His own image nearly two thousand years later to Noah after the Flood (Genesis 9:6).

While we are in NO way equivalent to God, nor do we possess the power of creation that God alone retains, there is in the process of making pottery, a certain lesson that I think may be had which teaches us a bit about the mind and will of God.  For in making pottery, we come to experience in a very practical sense both the mastery over the clay, as well as a driving desire to express one's self in a beautiful and articulate way through the clay.

One need only watch a potter at work for a short time to sense the concentration, the "love", the desire to make the clay fit the picture of the finished product in the artist's mind's eye.  One also quickly sees the sheer joy over the finished product when the long process is complete; or else the bitter disappointment over a broken or marred piece when something unexpected goes wrong.

The lessons to be learned from the process of making pottery are likely endless, but for those with some attunement to Biblical allegorical tools, it is easy to see the parallels in some of the components of the process:

Washing with water,

Molding and shaping as a process,

That NONE of the materials used has any intrinsic value.  Rather, it is only the skill of the potter adds value to the product,

The necessity of time and patience,

The differences apparent in the finished product of a skilled vs. a novice potter,

The firing process as trial-by-fire during which all non-essential ingredients are purged and burned away,

The fundamental (chemical) change which takes place in the clay as a result of the firing,

That the finished product is a reflection of the artist, and the artist is known by his work,

Etc., etc.

These ideas are the heart of the name "The Maker's Image".  For just as we express part of ourselves in each pot that we make as potters and artists, so too are each of us an expression of the Artist Who made us.  For we are our Maker's Image.

                                    - Tim -