Things that should not be done without the help of a machine: Blow-drying your hair. Mowing the lawn. Your taxes.

Things better done without one: Breaking off a bad relationship. Singing in the shower. And, when you’re as talented as Miranda Thomas, making pottery.

Thrown, molded, painted, and glazed by hand, Thomas’s works (make that artworks, actually) are one-of-a-kind odes to the natural world. And not just in their sleek, human-made shapes and individual lusters. In their designs, too. Thomas mastered potting in Cornwall, England, where she paid homage to the area’s critters on her lamps, bowls, and vases. Now working out of her Bridgewater, Vermont, studio, she churns out beauties like vine-covered oversize bowls, pristine pitchers dotted with rabbits and stags, and platters swimming with teensy blue fish — each one as regal as it is rustic.

Which leaves only one task: trusting your instincts about which room to show them off in. That ought to get your wheels turning.

Even if hers isn’t.

Available online at shackletonthomas.com.