I am firing a bisque today, which somehow got me
thinking about an internet friend of mine who is on his way to Japan in a
couple of weeks on business in Tokyo. Once that is concluded, he and his wife
are going off to Mashiko. Like a moth to a flame, most potters and pottery
collectors are inexplicably drawn to Mashiko where Hamada Shoji, Sakuma Totaro,
Murata Gen, Shimaoka Tatsuzo and many others have worked, creating pottery
based on tenants of the folk craft movement. Like many before me, a visit to
Mashiko was part of our treks to Japan back in the early 1990s. Seeing the
wellspring of what many westerners were pursuing since the 1960s was rather
inspiring and made its way into the work that I would create over the next two
decades. I think in reality, it is nearly impossible to go to Mashiko without
bringing some of it home with you.
Once back from a Mashiko adventure, I began to focus
on creating my own glazes that had that Mashiko feel to them, though I was
determined to make pots that were meaningful to me and not intended as copies.
In essence, I would add the exposure of the Mashiko aesthetic into the blender
and see what came out. Over the years I have gone back to that style to add to
the vocabulary of my pots, though influenced by that trip, they are decidedly
not Mashiko style pottery. Illustrated is a bamboo form teabowl with a iron red
over a clear glaze on stoneware. I stamped cobalt/red iron triangles over the
clear, waxed them off and then glazed the bowl in the iron red to create a
piece that though it pays homage to Mashiko-yaki, is a thoroughly western pot.
"I am a part of all that I have met." Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)
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