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AFTER 40 years in the business 65-year-old potter Robert Francis is experiencing the best of times of his career, moulding items as small as an ash tray to as large as decorated flower pots.To learn and perfect his craft the St Mary native spent many years in Kingston, St Andrew and St Catherine before moving to New Longsville in Clarendon where he leased a spot from which he creates hundreds of items from clay.Francis boasts of producing items that are "well-fired" and not easy to break like the ones being produced by other potters.While many Jamaicans are experiencing an economic pinch from the novel coronavirus pandemic, things are on the bright side for the humble, hard-working elder who built his own furnace and potter's wheel which are crucial to his work."I learned this trade in Bull Bay from a man named Mr Richard. At that time we used to get our clay from Rema in St Andrew and then carry the clay to Bull Bay. Then I stopped working with him and I started out on my own at 9B Retirement Crescent, also in St Andrew, in the 1980s."Leaving from there I went to Portmore and had a next business with flowers and pottery. I left Portmore and got this piece of land to lease in Clarendon and started to do it here. This is profitable."I sell to the flower shops and the ladies on the street who have flowers. They buy from me and sell back. They can buy five [of the smaller pots] from me for $10,000. Five pots don't take a week to make. Sometimes they come more than once per month for pots," he said while expressing pride that he has been able to supply people from all over the island."You have some man who, when they build the pots, they break easily. My pots are well-fired. I supply pots in Kingston, Montego Bay, Old Harbour and all over."According to Francis, his clients include teachers and policemen who either buy from him for their personal use or to sustain their business."Over the 40 years, sometimes you don't mek no money. I used to do machine work alone then, gradually, I started to do 'pinch work'. I started selling to flower shops, stores and the street people [who sell]. It has gotten very interesting."Since the pandemic it changed a lot for the better instead of the worst. Since the pandemic a lot of people, especially young people, are going in the pottery work. They have greenhouses on the road side and they just come and buy wholesale and go back. If it was just the old people, it wouldn't push off like how the young people come een and buy pots now," Francis told the Observer as he argued that pottery could be a profitable avenue for young Jamaicans."A business is there for the young people in the pottery. I built my own furnace and my own machine with a one-man wheel."Simple as you see it, it costs $40,000 to build it. All these stuff were built on it. Some of these smaller ones don't take me more than two minutes to build. I can build more than 50 of these from morning till 12:00 pm. If I want, I can make 100 of these for the day. The bigger pots are not made on the wheel; those are pinch work," Francis shared, explaining that pinch work encompasses attaching bits of clay to each other until the item reaches the preferred size and shape.