SOME TIME TO SPARE FOR TEA

Though I doubt he would even remember our stop, our short visit with Otani Shiro was rather pleasant and informative at the same time. We were given a tour of his kiln, studio and gallery and then we had in his words, "some time to spare for tea" including some delicious, home-made small cookie-like biscuits to go with it while drinking out of generous, Shigaraki yunomi made by Otani-san himself. I should have apologized for all of my questions but back in the early 90s these face to face interviews were as good as gold. The topics ran from his influences and philosophy on pottery making to kilns and firings to the American wood firing scene and his relationship with Rob Barnard and several other US potters as well as several who claimed to have worked with him that in deed had not.          

At the time of our visit he had recently fired his kiln and the majority of pots were thrown tsubo of various sizes and of course various surfaces. An old blog post for 2013 (https://albedo3studio.blogspot.com/2013/10/first-quarter.html) shows a large thrown and slightly altered tsubo that was recently fired with a rather sublime and ethereal blend of hi-iro and tsuchi-aji, a bit like three dimensional poetry and a pot that was hard to get out of my mind for quite some time. The afternoon slipped away rather quickly, we thanked Otani-san profusely for his time and knowledge leaving with a small tsubo and a presento of boxed guinomi and we were on to our last meeting in Shigaraki with Ueda Naokata who despite his busy schedule afforded us an hour of his valuable time and where we parted with a wonderful chaire and a gift its equal if not better. This trip, though poorly planned and cramped for time everywhere we went in Shigaraki Valley was a trek that will not ever be forgotten even all these years later though a few pictures and pots do help jog the memory.