UNLIKELY INSPIRATION

From time to time I like to go to Youtube and watch videos of master craftsman at work and the subject matter is broad from a wood worker making a shoji screen, a sashima knife, a soba artisan, Jiro dreaming of sushi or most recently a bucket maker. I happened across this video of a master bucket maker who starts off with a rough log and using only an ax, a plain, a chisel and hammer, he patiently turns the log into angled staves and using rings of plaited bamboo a bucket is born directly relating to Yangi's "beauty born of use" concept. Watching such cratsman would seem to have little to do with pottery but in many cases it is this unlikely inspiration that sets an idea to sprout. A few days after watching the video, I couldn't get the sense of the bucket out of my mind and figured there had to be a way to create such a piece on the wheel that was not literal but had the spark that originally interested me the most.

After several ideas and attempts, I hit on the illustrated pot, an oni-oke-wan (Oni bucket-bowl) that has what interested me the most in the beautiful cedar buckets that I watched being made. Once the logistic of making the piece were worked out I expanded the idea to also include cover jars, bottles, serving bowls and vases like the illustrated covered water jar with both ceramic and lacquer lid. I am constantly amazed at how a seemingly unrelated inspirational spark can lead tonew things being made and in this case creates the essence of what I was seeing in a wood bucket though in a far more forgiving and plastic medium.