LESSON LEARNED

It never fails, the other day while working, I ran out of most of my colors and slips and figured, heck, I'll get to it tomorrow. Well, I forgot to get to it and had no choice but to spend the morning making them up to decorate another group of pots destined for the bisque. Had I not procrastinated, I would have completed at least half again as much as I did get finished. You would think I would have learned my lesson from all the previous times that having put off a tedious chore only to screw up my schedule; this time putting off a bisque for a day. I do wonder if a lesson was learned or I will simply put off till tomorrow, what I surely should have done today.

Illustrated is a group of Abstrakt Resist and Falling Leaves pieces I finished up this afternoon after getting the colors and slip made up. Seventeen pieces finished and only a zillion more to go.

 "Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday."  Don Marquis (b.1935)

INCOMING VI

I rarely know what will show up these days and that was the case with some pieces I have just put up on my Trocadero site. Listed is a seiji fluted cyclone vase by Ono Kotaro, an Iga hanaire by master renaissance potter, Kishimoto Kennin and a very noble kannyu-seiji shinogi-zu mizusashi by celadon specialist, Minegishi Seiko. Three pieces that are classic examples by each of the potters mentioned. Illustrated is the celadon mizusashi by Minegishi Seiko, about as articulated a pot as one could find.

If you are so inclined, please take a moment and have a look;

www.trocadero.com/stores/albedo3studio/catalog/query.php

ANOTHER CLASSIC

Illustrated is another one of those pots, that is just "out of time", it is neither old nor modern. From my perspective, Furutani Michio, who made this classic Iga mizusashi, had a knack for making such pots, that defied a particular era and were just great at existing in the now. There is little else that I can say, except, what a classical beauty .

FROM PAPER TO POT

I am a huge fan of seeing the two dimensional designs of potters and then the design as articulated on a three dimensional form. The original art/design gives a glimpse into the mind and creative process of the potter as well as into the manner and techniques he employs to fit the design onto an actual form. Some potters are rigid and maintain the design exactly from paper to pot, while others prove to be very flexible and maintain the concept of the art, but not necessarily the literal nature of it. Either way, it does give you a sense of how the design came into being and how the potter see design and form. As a potter and collector, this process fascinates me and the various methods employed are ultimately what makes the pot work and the design communicate with the viewer.

Illustrated on the left, is a drawing I found on the internet of a Ron Meyers teabowl with a stylized fish design. On the right is a very similar design, fully articulated in color on a wonderful covered jar. Based on the two, it is obvious that this quickly produced fish is part of the vocabulary of designs that Meyers is very familiar with using. Both are based on an archetype, yet each has their own unique personality and impact on the viewer. Either way, Meyers has captured the vitality of his fish on pot and paper.

A MYSTERIOUS GLIMPSE

It is not like there aren't a myriad of attributes that make Shigaraki pottery  a fascinating and  endless wonder. As I look into various chawan there is another characteristic that can be seen; using light on the interior looking on the outside or on the outside looking at the interior, areas where there is lots of melted feldspar shine like stars in a night sky, a Shigaraki constellation. The see-through feldspar inclusions dot the landscape of true Shigaraki clay making for windows of translucent light to occur under the right conditions. The walls need to be just the right thickness for these apparitions to appear, a very "yugen" experience. As the bowl is fired, the coarse feldspar inclusions in the clay become molten, some boil up through the surface leaving the tell-tale characteristics of Shigaraki-yaki as tombo-no-me, other just melt in place becoming opaque gems that convey light. It is like Blake's allusion in Augeries of Innocence, except you can glimpse a ko-ucho (small universe) on the interior of a chawan.

Illustrated is a startling view from inside a Shigaraki chawan with a light source outside the wall of the bowl. It really does appear like a small and concise universe trapped inside the chawan.

"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science." Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

ONE OF THOSE MONDAYS

I will not regale you with the pitfalls on my particularly trying Monday; the details would most likely just  bore people. I am trying to take solace and some level of tranquility by looking through various book at the wonderfully serene designs of Kawai Kanjiro. Many of his painted and slip trailed designs are based on his interpretation of Buddhist ideas, designs and iconography, how can you not be inspired but the spontaneity and effortlessness of his hand? Problem not solved, but it seems a bit more manageable.

AND ON IT GOES

I am still in the midst of throwing and making terra cotta pots for several galleries and shows. The bulk of the work is divided into black & white slipware, carved tebori black slip and the abstrakt resist. Making a variety of forms and figuring out how to adapt designs, that go together, is one of the constant challenges any potter will face, but some of the forms my brain comes up with are a bit more difficult than others. The safer pieces are the bowls, plates and trays, the more difficult pieces are jugs, covered serving bowls, covered jars and storage pots, though adapting the 2-D to the three dimensional is good for the mind. On top of this challenge, the tebori carved pieces can be very time consuming and labor intensive depending on the idea and its intricacy, though the bulk of designs are bold and do not have a lot of detail. The biggest problem is how easy it is to get burnt out in a day of just carving pieces. It is always best, to break up the day with a variety of tasks, from throwing and trimming to even general studio chores. As much as I don't like it, there is much more to making pottery, than just sitting at the wheel, throwing.

Illustrated is a medium size terra cotta v-bowl, out of the first firing of my current extended cycle.  The bowl is brushed with black slip which is later carved away to produce an image, in this case a "celestial jig" of my Landscapeman design. Each one of these pieces is quickly mocked up with brushed ink prior to carving and I doubt I have ever done the same design twice. By its very nature, each one ends up being mostly unique and spontaneous; they are fun to design and less so to carve!

"I like work; it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours." Jerome K. Jerome (1859-1927)

SERENDIPITY

Without sounding like I am not totally grounded in some sense of reality, I am  a strong believer in fate and that as a collector, if you are meant to own a piece, at some point, you will. It is also important to remember, that time and patience also play a huge role in collecting and it has to be approached as a long term thing as opposed to , say, the immediacy of collecting PEZ at the local 7/11. What brings this up is a story, about 20 years in the making in which the maxim, "patience is a virtue" is surely put to the test.

Back in the early 1990's on one of our trips to Japan, we had made arrangements to visit with Shigaraki /Iga potter, Furutani Michio. By luck, he had just opened a kiln and in his yard were blue tarps and boards, covered with pots of every shape, size and variety, all fresh out of his kiln and many with dango (cookies) still attached that separate pots during the intense fire. We had gone to visit with Furutani-san with the express interest in acquiring a slab style vase and we were given the pick of his new work. As we picked the piece we wanted and looked about at all the treasures, I was immediately taken by a board full of pots, all hidden away near the shed. As I survey the pots, a chawan, upside down and with wads still attached to the foot caught my eye. That was the bowl for me! Well, it turns out, that wasn't the bowl for me, it had already been picked out by a gallery manager for an upcoming exhibit and he couldn't sell it. Out of respect, I did not push or inquire further, just resigned myself to having had the fortune to see and handle so many wonderful pots. Months later, in the mail came the exhibit catalogue with the chawan in it as a reminder of the serene and animated Shigaraki pot.

Flash forward 20 years and here is where the serendipity comes in. As I was tooling around a number of the usual websites, there it was, available for sale and at a very good price. I ordered the piece and it was shipped off and when it arrived, 20 years later, it was just as I had remembered. The foot that first drew my attention is a classic and well proportioned Furutani Michio foot and the firing a blend of ash and hi-iro accentuating the form and settling on the protruding ridge that further animates the piece. It took a long while to get the pot, but it has a new home now and will be greatly appreciated amid a few other pots made by one of the finest Shigaraki/Iga potters of the 20th century.

"He that can have patience can have what he will." Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

CONNECTIONS

Back in the day, yes, I said back in the day, a show on PBS (BBC) had all of my attention. The show was CONNECTIONS narrated and written by science  historian James Burke. Ultimately, the show spawned additional series of the same name and he was able to trace and tie the collection of seaweed for the production of Scotch whiskey to the development of the atomic bomb, no short feat. As a history major, this type of thought and linkage was fascinating and over the years I have wondered if the same can not be done within the context of either world or country specific ceramic traditions.  I think it would be positively amazing to see how the production of Momoyama era chawan could be somehow linked to the movement espoused by Shoji Hamada. I am sure there is a way to trace this genesis of ideas as was done by Burke for his series. The connections and conclusions drawn would be nothing short of fascinating; it would be like tracing the evolution of pottery styles from country to country along the old Silk Road among a great variety of important potters and pottery traditions.

For those unfamiliar with CONNECTIONS and James Burke, he is a clip of one of his shows as hosted on Youtube, entitled, Balanced Anarchy;

TNSL1

It would seem that the pottery of Oni-Shino exponent, Tsukigata Nahiko is not that well known in the West. As a potter who had several television specials, several books, numerous national exhibitions and catalogues regarding his work, in his homeland, some have called him the Picasso of Japan. Beyond his pottery, Tsukigata is well known for his sculpture, wood carvings, painting and calligraphy and for his prize (Grand Prix) winning oil paintings. His paintings were exhibited throughout Japan and abroad and there are also several books dedicated to his oils of a wide array of subject matters. 

Illustrated is a bold and colorful still life from the mid-80's with a wonderfully balanced composition pitting pot against flower blossoms rendered in quick swirls of bold color with thick impasto borders. The pot on the other hand is finished in a simple monochrome manner that allows the texture of the brushstrokes to accentuate the image. This is the trademark style of Tsukigata that allows the vivid, fluid movement to bring the subject matter to life in an abstract manner. Painting or pottery, the hand is immediately identifiable from this renaissance artist.

GLAZE CERTAINTY

There  have been a number of pitfalls to glaze testing beyond the normal, where the tests just don't work. I have had a number of tests pan out to the second stage where they didn't make it and some go on to be made up in larger batches, over 2500 gr. and then cease to work as they had in several test phases previous. But by far the most frustrating and even devious scenarios are where you make up a batch, glaze multiple pieces and the glaze responds perfectly. Now out of the new test glaze, you go and make up more, glaze up more pieces and when you unload the kiln, the new glaze has failed.

 This happened recently, using materials that I "inherited". I made up a cool, bright glaze and glazed a number of pots, all came out well better than expected, however, the glaze ran low and I made up more with the same exact materials and the glaze failed miserably. My current suspicion is that the original glaze was made up with chemicals that have been around since the 70's and the new batch from materials I bought as far back as last spring. I think I can ultimately solve the problem, but I won't hold my breath. There is never any glaze certainty when testing is involved.

Illustrated is one of the blend glazes I came up with about a month or so ago. This one is called T'pir after the initials of the two glazes it sprung from and has made it through two levels of testing. Unfortunately, the necessity for several cycles of terra cotta has put the next phase of the testing on hold, but once I get back to stoneware, I see some teabowls, small jars and a vase or two destined for the T'pir glaze.

"If we begin with certainties, we shall end in doubts; but if we begin with doubts, and are patient in them, we shall end in certainties."  Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

HAPPY LABOR DAY

"The fruit derived from labor is the sweetest of all pleasures." Luc de Clapiers (1715-1747)