Monday, April 4, 2016

T&A III

Illustrated is a stoneware tsubo glazed in my temmoku and ash (t&a not to be confused with t&a, thrown & altered) over a heavily paddled surface. Now I would be remiss if I didn't state the obvious, these tsubo are influenced by the "big three", Hamada Shoji, Bernard Leach and Warren MacKenzie but there is another influence equal to the others and that is from Bill Klock. When I first stepped in to Bill's studio/ classroom there was always a constant discussion about ash and "dobi" glazes as well as pots in every free space with stamped or paddled decoration. Though Bill was influenced by Leach, Hamada and Cardew who he would visit on down time at the Leach Pottery, I was most influenced by how he handled the clay, forcefully paddled or stamped the pots and just how he went about glazing each piece. To this day at each and every step along the process I am thinking of what I can only think to call the "big four" as each of these potters has made it into my thought process of making and glazing while hopefully making pots that come across as distinctly my own.

"What the world calls originality is only an unaccustomed method of tickling it." George Bernard Shaw