Every potter I know has a default shape, the one their hands make when their head has nothing useful to add. Mine is a plain supper bowl: a kilo of clay, one pull, a rim you can rest a spoon on.
Repetition as repair
When a commission stalls or a glaze betrays me, I throw supper bowls until the wheel feels friendly again. Ten, twenty, sometimes a whole board of them. They’re never wasted — they’re the first thing to sell at open studio, because a good plain bowl is what everyone actually needs.
The stuck feeling rarely survives past bowl six. Somewhere in the repetition the problem quietly solves itself, the way a word comes back once you stop chasing it.