Euan The Potter

Lovely Lips

2008-05-10T10:16:00.007+09:00

It is only two weeks until my exhibition at Ebiya Gallery in tokyo, and I'm into my last spurt of making. For the last few years I have been doing a collaborative dinner at the same time as the exhibition, but this year we have decided to do the dinner in a different season. I am therefore able to focus more on some pieces which are not related to a specific meal but which I just like to make.

I enjoy making jugs, for example, and don't make them as often as I'd like. They are not used so much in Japan, and most of the Japanese purchasers would use them as vases, but I make them to be functional. One of the points is of course the spout. I feel that a pulled spout pours well and is very beautiful.

The rim must be left slightly thicker than other forms. This thicker rim is then thinned out by first wetting it and then pinching and smoothing a section of the rim into a raised flange. Timing is important, as the pot fresh from the wheel may be too soft and the pot can distort or collapse. If the clay is too hard it will be hard to thin and manipulate and is prone to cracking. I usually wait until the sheen has left the pots, which is usally about 4 or 5 hours depending on the humidity. Ideally I would make the bodies in the morning and then spout them in the afternoon or evening. Yesterday I didn't finish the bodies till late afternoon and they were still too soft before bedtime, so I got to them first thing this morning (before the kids got up!).

Once the flange is raised, smooth the edge with a piece of soft leather, then support the outside on either side of the spout with your off hand and gentle push the spout out with the finger of your other hand. After the spouts are pulled leave the pots to dry, trim, handle and finish as normal.

There has always been debate about the ideal angle of a spout. I have found that a smooth upward curve pours well and doesn't usually dribble. Other believe that a spout should curve right over past the horizontal so that the last drip hangs on the edge without running back. I have found those spouts too prominent are prone to spreading the flow instead of focussing it and susceptible to chipping.

The Japanese phrase for something that is easy is "Asa meshi mae" which means "before breakfast". I managed to get all of them and some turning done before breakfast. We enjoyed our famous Craig Dropscones with delicious Acacia honey direct from an apiarist in Nikko. 100% pure, it is clear enough to see your vegemite through.

Puttin' on the Ritz

2008-05-07T09:59:00.004+09:00

I was recently priveledged to receive an order from a very prestigious hotel. Apparently one of their valued guests was in search of a special, personalised gift. I was honoured to receive the commission.

The result was this left handed "Kyusu" japanese tea pot, with two matching cups. A kyusu has a handle one one side, and it is very rare to find one which can be used in the left hand. You may remember the cups from an earlier blog entry.

On each peice we have fired the logo of the hotel in gold and under the foot of each peice we have fired on the name of the customer and date.

We received a lovely note telling us how pleased the client was with the result. It has been well worth the effort.

(With special thanks to Mashikoya)

Boys Day

2008-05-04T21:54:00.003+09:00

Tomorrow is "Kodomo no Hi", which means "Childrens Day" but is more of a holiday for boys. Each household displays carp shaped flags or streamers to declare that they have healthy sons.

I imagine it was originally advertising for other peoples healthy daughters.

The first flag is called the "Fukinagashi" and represents a river. It bears the family crest, or in our case two family crests. Mika's is a stylized plum blossom.

The Craig crest is a knight with a broken lance with the declaration "J'ai bonne esperance", I am of good hope. It's a long story.

Mashiko Pottery Festival

2008-05-03T18:45:00.003+09:00

It's that time of year again! Every spring the streets of Mashiko are lined with hundreds of tent displays by potters from not only Mashiko but all over Japan.

Last year 300,000 visitors passed through the festival. It is a chance for potters to display their work in front of a wide and varied audience, and for the public to meet the artists and obtain their works at direct to the public prices!

For ten days the exhibitors brave the elements, and I for my part try to make it as enjoyable as possible. It is important to have all the comforts home, like a charcoal brazier for toasting your lunch.

It also comes in handy for making the occasional pot of coffee.

But when push comes to shove, we all know the most important ingredient in any successful outdoor event. Yes, that's right folks...Ice!

So Cheers everyone, and if you in this neck of the woods, stop in for a pint.

Vulcan

2008-04-22T21:36:00.007+09:00

It is interesting to note that the Lava flowing from the volcano in Hawaii has a temperature of about 1200 degrees centigrade, whereas the temperature inside my wood fired kiln is 1300 c. Effectively I have a man made volcano in my back yard. (Photo; Sakurai Mitsuyo/桜井光代)

It isn't really such a strange thought. The glazes which I apply to my pots are mixtures of powdered minerals, rocks if you like, which I am trying to melt into a glass. The last time they were molten was when they were either lava or magma, so it stands to reason that the temperature which I need to achieve should be the same. Hotter in fact because I am trying to achieve geological effects in human time scales.

In this last firing I included some rock glaze tests. The traditional Mashiko Kaki glaze is made from the powder of one rock, a local stone formed from volcanic ash called "Ashinuma Ishi". Ashinuma, where it comes from is a five minute walk up the road, and many of the storehouses and building foundations in this area were built from this stone, including our house and the shed which burnt down. A mashiko potter many years ago used some of this rock to close his kilns firemouth after a firing, and when he opened the kiln the rock had fluxed into a beautiful iron rust glaze. It wasn't long before it became the signature mashiko glaze, and because of its similarity in colour and surface to the seeds of the persimmon, it was dubbed "Kaki" glaze by Hamada. It is no longer being mined, and the Mashiko cooperative will only sell the remaining reserves to members. HOWEVER....as I just mentioned, the foundations of the shed which burnt down were built from this stone. One wonders how much of this glaze would be used in one potters lifetime. I put a sample into the kiln as a control, which you can see here. It is usually applied over a "Nami jiro" standard white glaze, but I have applied it over my porcelain clay.

The question which I ask myself is, Does tradition lie in the materials and tools which are used or in the spirit in which they are used? Every tradition has at some point started as a cutting edge development, the repetition of which over generations becomes "Tradition" with a capital "T". The risk is that subsequent generations will make copies of old works which are no longer appropriate in a contemporary context, anachronisms which lack the spirit and relevance of the original works. If the tradition lies in the spirit of the process, the use of natural local materials which are inexpensive and readily available, to create work which is relevent to the society in which it is made, then change itself becomes tradition. What we consider local now, places we can flit to within the hour, may have been days of travel away a century ago. And so I have begun to experiment with some different "local" materials.

Just on the other side of Utsunomiya, the prefectural capital, about 40km from here, is a place called Oya. Oya stone, a vesicular stone once again formed from volcanic ash, has been quarried for centuries for building purposes throughout Japan, particularly the Kanto area. It is hugely abundant, far more so than Ashinuma stone, and is easily worked with hand tools, being light and porous. It is sawn into blocks, and the dust from the sawing process is freely available. When you mix the dust with water, apply it to a pot and fire it to 1300 it looks like this.

To the south of Mashiko in the neighbouring prefecture there are large deposits of Granodiorite in Iwase and Makabe. This is a much harder rock, very much like granite, but it contains a plagioclase (sodium) feldspar rather than an orthoclase (potassium) feldspar. It also contains quartz and muscovite and has a large crystalline structure. It cooled slowly underground which allowed the different minerals to separate and crystalize independently, giving it a distinctive appearance. The dust from these quarries is also cheap or free and there are mountains of the stuff. It looks like this. (You may notice that nature has left the message "CRAP" in black muscovite flakes in the left corner of the picture, this has not been tampered with!) The glaze is a smooth transparent toffee type glaze, similar to traditional "Ame".

I don't know whether I will ever use these glazes, but the point is that they are there. Simple, inexpensive and functional. Similar materials are available virtually anywhere in the world, probably around the corner from you, just waiting for a potter with a personal volcano to bring out the best in them.

Of Mice and Men

2008-03-27T21:44:00.006+09:00

When Hamada Shoji returned from the UK he stopped stamping his work. "My pots should be a signature in and of themselves" he said. The pots that the mingei movement prized most highly were those from unknown craftsmen, whose work sprang from the necessities of a simple and natural lifestyle. They were unassuming and their beauty sprang from the process of their creation as a matter of course. He would sign the boxes in which pots were kept, and seal them with his stamp, but never the pots themselves.

Shimaoka Sensei thought differently. He believed that a craftsman must take responsibility for their work, and so every pot that came from his workshop was marked with his stamp. A simple "TA" in katakana "タ” for "Tatsuzou". It said "This work has my stamp of approval, I take responsibility for it", and the work of the deshi, the staff and sensei himself all passed through his hands and bore the mark of his craftsmanship.

I for my part hold with Shimaoka sensei, and I mark my pots with my logo mark, even though my pots are unmistakably mine. Yet as the years go by they change, as do I. I am not the same 14 year old boy who found sanctuary in the pottery studio in Bendigo 30 years ago and who chose this career as a path to becoming the man he so longed to be. I am not the same young man who left his home at age 21 to establish his own pottery in country Australia, fresh from university and untested in the "real" world. Nor am I the man who at age 26 turned away from everything he knew, his country, his culture, his language, to rediscover himself in the Japanese pottery tradition. All of these people are part of who I have become, and who I am yet to become. My pots express who I am and how I see the world, and as I change so do they. So it is that each year I mark my pots with a different stamp beside my logo mark to tell when they were made, like footprints in the sands of time.

This year is the year of the mouse, "Nezumi-doshi" in Japanese. Not "Rat" as some translators would have you believe, just mouse. Beside my stamp this year is a stylized marsupial mouse. He will bear witness to all my highs and lows this year.

My first firing this year was eventful. The Japanese say "Even monkeys can fall out of the tree", and an order of beer cups proved the point. Over half of the beer cups cracked, whereas everything else in the kiln was fine. Same clay, same glazes, same firing......what went wrong?

It is not enough to just make them again (Though that is inevitable), the cause must be found or there is the risk of repeating the same mistake. I had made them first so that they would be dry, then kept them till I had a kiln load and glazed everything together. They were of course a little dusty, so I had to remove the dust or the glaze would not stick evenly to the clay and would "crawl". Blowing the dust off would be a health hazard, as breathing clay dust causes silicosis, so I wiped the dust off with a damp cloth. AHA! The damp cloth added just a touch of moisture to the clay, and so when I raw glazed the added moisture affected the absorption of the glaze, and the stress difference between the internal wet surface expansion and the external dry "set"surface caused the pots to crack before firing! The solution is therefore to glaze each batch of pots as it dries, and not allow dust to settle before hand! Dust on top of the glaze will just burn off and not affect anything. Problem solved.

And now I have remade them, dried them, glazed them and am making the rest of the next kiln load. I know that Shimaoka had such times, and my grandfather sensei before him, Hamada. My journey goes on.

The best laid plans oft go astray, and potters are no exception.

New Life

2008-03-25T21:47:00.007+09:00

Spring has come after the long winter and with it has come new life. Delicate and fragile, the plum blossoms adorn the yet leafless branches.

The logs of ash wood have been stacked in rows through the winter in the shelter of the cedar grove.

Through their bark the Shiitake mushrooms come muscling their way to the light.

In the grass and leaf mulch "Fukinoto" (angelica) buds of bright green burst forth.

Yes, the winter has been long, but not so long that life cannot reassert itself. It has been a time of gestation, a time of contemplation, a time to question my direction and find that what was true before remains true. To live a good life is the goal, and it is not a distant destination but a daily journey that defines who we are. Before we measured the world and set our arbitrary limits on it, before we invented money or built clocks to rule our lives, before the whims of fame and fashion, we were and will always be a part of nature and only whole when we live as one with it.

To rise with joy at the rising of the sun, to work with ones hands in the earth, to take the gifts that nature gives us and share them with the people that we love, to go to our rest at the setting of the sun and be embraced by the gentle night. To experience the beauty of the world with all our senses, take it and find it within ourselves and then share it with others as something new, an expression of who we are.

We picked a bowl full of fukinoto from our garden today, my wife, my children and I, and we enjoyed them as tempura as part of our evening meal. We ate from the pottery which I made for us, at the dining table we made, on the wooden floor we built. There is no luxury in this, but what life could be richer?

It is not an easy road that I have chosen, it never was, but it is a good one. It's rewards cannot always be measured by conventional values, and for some people I suppose it will always be a mystery. I am not some people, and neither they nor I can live by the others standards. My path is mine, all the hours and days and seasons that I live. And life goes on.

The Passing of Tatsuzo Shimaoka Sensei

2007-12-13T09:34:00.000+09:00

I thought he would always be there. It just never really occurred to me that one day he would be gone. The day has come. At 11:05 pm on Tuesday the 11th of December 2007, the last page closed on the life of Tatsuzo Shimaoka at the age of 88. He collapsed during the firing of his Noborigama last month, preparing for his annual exhibition at Matsuya Department store in Tokyo, and passed away in hospital.

It is sixteen years since he accepted me as his apprentice. He believed that through a dedication to quality, to healthy and natural work practices, to both tradition and innovation, but most of all to the making functional pottery that would enrich the everyday life of the user, it was possible to create beauty that extends beyond the limits of our ego, beyond the limits of our own fragile existence.

He taught me to accept the world for what it is, but also to strive for an ideal, and through that striving to bring the world closer to that ideal.

He is gone, but his influence, his work, will last forever. I miss him, I suppose I always will.

As I was going to St Ives....

2007-11-26T08:52:00.000+09:00

I met a man with 200 pots. In a quiet street in an older residential part of Tokyo, just near the park, is a little gallery that might belong in a village in the English countryside. Isaka san, the owner, spent many years in the UK and has created a gallery that has the feeling of Britain and specialises in contemporary british ceramics.

This is my second exhibition at Gallery St Ives, and many friends gathered to help celebrate the opening on Saturday evening. Guests arrived from as far afield as Nagano and Shizuoka. Australian wine was flowing freely, and Yoneyama san brought a delicious dessert wine from his own vineyard.

Food from my platters and wine from my cups. Sharing the fruits of our labours with friends. That is the art of function, that is the function of art.

St Ives!

2007-11-20T22:19:00.000+09:00

Just as a tree makes leaves in order to grow, so a potter makes pots. Each leaf bears the unmistakable characteristics of the tree, but every one is complete and beautiful in and of itself, and no two are the same. At the end of each year the tree will display its leaves in a blaze of colours and share them with the world.

A year has passed since my last exhibition at Gallery St Ives in Tokyo. We recently had a group exhibition of tea bowls there, but this Saturday sees the opening of my annual solo exhibition. Back in 2001 I exhibited and did a workshop in St Ives, Cornwall, during the September festival. While I was there the world changed, with the destruction of the twin towers in New York. Ever since then I have been active in the British Ceramic scene, and Gallery St Ives in Tokyo, which specializes in contemporary British Ceramics, has accepted me into its "Stable" of Ceramic artists.

Last year we collaborated with Chef Morishige of "La butte boisie" french restaurant in Jiyugaoka for a signature dinner. It was an opportunity for me to explore the function of art in relation to western cuisine. I have always believed that a vessel does not reach a point of completion until it is in use, and by creating a full course menu worth of pots for a french dinner it brought the purpose of pottery into clear focus.

Isaka san at gallery St Ives also invited me to participate in the Tokyo Dome Table Ware Festival earlier this year. It is refreshing to see pots in context and invigorating to find a gallery so committed to the promotion of excellence in ceramics.

This year we will not be doing a signature dinner, but everyone is invited and welcome to a free opening reception at the gallery from 6:00pm on Saturday November 24th. I will be at the gallery on the 24th, 25th of November and the 1st, 2nd and 3rd (final day) of December.

I invite you to come and share with me again this year, my work and my life, and see how much I have grown.

Saffron

2007-11-19T12:59:00.000+09:00

Every year, when the mornings start to become fresh in the autumn, I am greeted with a beautiful splash of purple, yellow and red in the midst of the green lawn. We harvest the red stamens of this delicate crocus for the most precious spice of all, saffron. Worth its weight in gold, it gives to food the colour of gold and the fragrance of autumn. Our crop is not large, but used sparingly it will last us a year till autumn comes again.

One of my favourite dishes is of course saffron rice. Combined with cashew nuts, raisins and turmeric it is the perfect foil for a curry banquet.

SAFFRON RICE

6 cups of rice

1 small onion, chopped finely

1 cup of raisins or sultanas

1 cup of cashew nuts

12 strands of saffron, steeped in 200ml hot water for 5 minutes

1 teaspoon of turmeric

1 litre of stock

25 grams of butter

Melt butter in frypan and lightly fry the onions till translucent. Add cashew nuts and raisins, fry for a minute or so, add turmeric. Put the rice into the frypan and mix well till well coated with butter then add the other ingredients. Bring to the boil on a high flame then allow to simmer on very low, covered, for twenty minutes. Serve with any variety of curries and Naan.

New Kiln in Nagano!

2007-11-16T10:22:00.000+09:00

There is a lot of interest here in Japan (and internationally) in efficient and environmentally responsible wood firing. As a result many people are building kilns based on my kiln plans. There are now at least twelve that I am aware of in this area of Japan and many others in Australia, USA and Europe.

Last weekend I went to Nagano prefecture to build a new kiln for Laura and Giichi Inoue. Two of the participants from the Mashiko kiln building workshop, Sasase san and Yoneyama san volunteered their help, as did Kumon san, a potter from Nagano. A local potter, Okamoto san also came to help on monday.

As I have an exhibition coming up soon I could only spare three days, so we set ourselves a three stage target; fire boxes and up to the floor on saturday, walls up to the arch on sunday and the arch and chimney finished by monday night. It was a six hour drive on friday night, but we started work at 8:00am saturday morning.

The shed and concrete floor had been built be a professional builder so we were starting from a smooth and level base. Hooray! All the bricks and materials were new, no second hand bricks to clean or hedge around. Hooray, hooray! And Fire clay, not mortar, which makes laying the bricks easier as it stays flexible for minor adjustment and afterwards will make maintenance easier. Hip, hip, hooray!

We lay the first layer with the bricks arranged in the pattern of the fire box and upper walls to make sure there were no mistakes in measurements, 6 bricks deep and 6.75 bricks wide.

The third layer has gaps called "Mouse Holes" between the bricks at the sides of the fire boxes which can be opened up to let air in under the embers if they build up too much during the firing.

The fire grate is made of 39cm "I" shaped kiln props set on edge so that they form a natural pattern of gaps. These are slid into a channel so that if one prop gets broken during a firing it can be dropped down into the ash pit with a long rod and a new prop pushed in from the front. The whole lot can then be slid back into the original position along the channel which we made this time by setting that layer of bricks on edge also.This saved having to cut bricks, a time and energy consuming job.

The flue was bridged at the back between the kiln and the chimney at the level before the floor of the kiln.

The floor of the kiln was bridged with double length fire bricks. The space between the flame entry ports has an angle cut to help the flame flow into the kiln.

From that point onwards the walls and the chimney become independent. The walls above the floor are built as a single layer of hard refractory bricks on the outside. We build the outside walls up 15 layers above the floor.

The inside wall of soft bricks is the layed dry (without fire clay). Soft bricks are not as structurally durable as hard bricks and so the stress between the expansion of the bricks and the fire clay or mortar can crack the bricks. The purpose of the fire clay is not so much to stick the bricks together as to fill the gaps between them.

There is a difference between the height of the outside and inside walls wich is equivalent to the accumulated thickness of fireclay between the outside bricks. This is adjusted by cutting soft bricks to fit level with the outside wall. A "Soldier Course" is then layed to tie the inner and outer walls and give a firm springboard for the arch. The arch springs from skew bricks cut to an angle that is calculated based on the curve of the arch.

The Arch former and outside frame are set in place, then the arch brick are layed dry. Sasase san welded the arch in place, but it can be bolted together if you can't weld.

After tightening the angle iron frame the arch former can be removed and then the gap in the back wall filled in.

There is still a bit of finishing off to do for Laura, but there you have it, a kiln in three days.

Halloween

2007-11-01T20:15:00.001+09:00

It's Halloween and the ghouls are out, haunting the house of Craig.

The Jack o Lantern carefully carved from a home grown pumpkin is glowing in the dark, and a fiendish feast is waiting.

Worms in axle grease (squid ink spaghetti)
Witches broth (with pasta spiders, bats and owls) and Chameleon eyeballs(stuffed green olives)
Dried Slugs (grated cheese)
Powdered Lice (parmesan)
and dried Bogies (black pepper)

"Pass the bogies!" calls the vampire.
"Can I have more Slugs?" asks the skeleton.
"These eyeballs are delicious!" exclaims the Cat woman.

"Kick, Punch!" says spiderman

A successful workshop

2007-10-31T21:19:00.000+09:00

It has been full on this last week. Apart from delaying Walis firing till Sunday morning because of a Typhoon on saturday night, everything went according to plan. Even with torrential rain all weekend!

The sasukenei kiln was packed on thursday night, with all hands on deck. We managed to sart the kiln by 9:00pm and then we started the shifts of four people for four hours. After a nabe supper the rest of us crashed till friday morning.

Friday, bright and early we started packing my kiln with bisque ware. Lo and behold we ran out, and I had to go home and get more of my own pots to fill the front. That meant it was a Raw firing, so it was going to be a long day. We got it started by 1:30pm and finished at 1:30am, exactly 12 hours. I didn't seal the door this time with slip and paper, and flattened the seger cone 10, 1299c by the pyrometer.

While this was happening kusakabes firing continued, and Steve Mills built his kiln.

Wali gave instruction on Terra sigilata and Raku, and constructed his kiln.

On Saturday Kusakabe finished his firing, a total of 36 hours. Steve and wali packed their kilns and Steve fired his in 6 hours!

George Guine brought in meals on wheels for a culinary extravaganza on Saturday night and a great time was had by all!

Come Sunday, the weather was miraculously fine and clear, and as wali set the flying kiln into orbit we unpacked the other three kilns. The results were fantastic, with close to zero losses. As we pulled the raku pots hot from Walis kiln it was exciting to see the variety of colours and surfaces that can be achieved with different clays in the same kiln and the same clay in different kilns. It was a rich and fulfilling workshop, and everyone went away with a wealth of new experience.

A Busy Month

2007-10-24T08:49:00.000+09:00

This last week I travelled north to Murata town in Miyagi prefecture for their annual Pottery Festival.

I have been doing it for the last six years, and there are nearly seventy potters from all over Japan and this year Taiwan who display their works there.

It also saw the start of three group exhibitions. The first "ALL FIRED UP", opened on the 15th at the Mashiko Tougei Club gallery. Apart from my own work there is also the work of Masakazu Kusakabe (Japan), Wali Hawes (India), Steve Mills (England) and Steve Tootell (Wales). It goes until the 5th of November.

It is an exhibition of the work of the five presenters of the "FANTASTIC FIRE" woodfiring workshop which starts tomorrow in Mashiko.

At Gallery St Ives in Tokyo an exhibition of teabowls by (mainly) british potters started on the 19th and will continue until November 5th. The opening was a fantastic event, but unfortunately I was in Murata!

The 20th saw the start of "TOTALLY TEABOWLS" at Oakwood gallery in the UK as well, and that will be going until the 4th of November.

If you have time, and happen to be in the right country, please visit.

KAMATAKI

2007-10-11T18:54:00.000+09:00

We have fired the new kilns. We stacked on the fourth, and Kusakabe san started firing that night at about 10:00pm. When I arrived and started firing my kiln at 7:00am on the 5th he was at 380c. Because there were lots of raw pots in the kiln I aimed at a fourteen hour firing. The first 600 degrees are the most dangerous for raw pots, with the crucial temperatures being 350c, when the chemical water is burned off, and 573c when the silica expands.

Kusakabe san sealed the kiln door with refractory mortar slurry on newspaper, like wallpapering, and it seemed like a good idea so we did it to my kiln too. As a result the kiln was sealed much better than my normal firing and so it was much more heavily reduced.　We reached temperature, put in 2kg of soda ash and finished firing in 13 hours. Unfortunately I forgot to take my camera so there are no photos of the firing! We fire again for "Fantastic Fire" on the 26th, so I will do a more detailed record then. Kusakabe sans firing continued until 3:00pm on saturday the 6th, and reached the horrifying temperature of 1375c, and we had to desperately drag it back down to 1320 under a heavy reduction before we finished!

We unpacked both kilns on the 9th, mine had much more carbon trapping than I expected, but there were 0 losses!

Kusakabe sans kiln had excellent ash glazing, and though many peices were lost the results of the suviving work was very rewarding. Next time will be better!

Tea bowls in context

2007-10-04T07:57:00.000+09:00

Like any other funtional vessel, a tea bowl is not complete until it is in use. It is part of a greater art work, art in process, and it is part of the beauty that affects all five senses. Yes, most certainly, a tea bowl is a beautiful object in and of itself, but it is more than that.

If you have read the essay mentioned in my last blog you will understand that it is the interaction between all of the elements of the tea ceremony that complete the bowl. Be it the fragrance of the tatami mats or the sweetness of the Mama Daifuku.

Nor is it just the moment when the bowl is full of fresh tea, but it is also the making process, the drinking and finishing process.

And when you have finished, the way the last skerrick of tea runs back into the "Chadamari" and hangs on the shoulder is just as important an expression of the beauty of process as the whisking of the tea.

Fresh from the kiln

2007-10-01T21:16:00.000+09:00

Just unpacked the firing and the results were very pleasing! Some excellent new tea bowls for example. This Chawan was at the fire face so the ash has built up on the front of the bowl and formed runnels down the vertical surface. The black glaze inside is mirror like and will look majestic when it contains green tea!

Towards the middle of the kiln this Tea bowl shows stronger reds and oranges. I have used a clay with slightly more iron, and there is a lustrous patina on the inside where the igusa straw has marked the bowl.

A smaller tea bowl for the outdoor tea ceremony was near the bottom of the kiln and has developed an almost pearlescent surface over the soft orange flashing.

The Tea bowls will be included in the Tea bowl Exhibition at Gallery St Ives in Tokyo which starts later this month. http://www.gallery-st-ives.co.jp/
It coincides with the "Totally Teabowls" exhibition at Oakwood Ceramics in the UK, for which they have published my essay "Just My Cup of Tea" in their magazine section. http://www.oakwoodceramics.co.uk/MagazineEuanCraigMyCupofTea.htm

Other tea ware also came out of the kiln, like this "Kensui", a bowl for discarding the hot water used to wash the tea bowl in the tea ceremony. It is taller than a tea bowl, with a wider, more stable foot and a flared rim avoid spillage.

Apart from tea ware the wine goblets came out with excellent carbon trapping and transluscency.

There were also two varieties of "Kumidashi" tea cups, which are used for serving tea to guests in a more informal situation. Tea would be poured into them from a "Kyusu" tea pot. This design is like a small version of a "Gohan Chawan" or rice tea bowl.

These kumidashi are collared slightly at the lip to make them more comfortable to hold and drink from. Usually sets are of five pieces, as six is too many and four is unlucky. The word for four, "Shi", is pronounced the same as the word for death, so five it is!

A Taste of Autumn

2007-09-27T23:10:00.000+09:00

Summer is gone. The mornings are cooler now, the leaves are turning colour and the chestnuts are ripe and falling from the trees. For thousands of years before the "Yamato" oriental race entered Japan the indigenous Jomon people grew chestnuts as their staple diet. Chestnut trees, both wild and cultivated, are spread throughout Japan, and we are blessed with both varieties in our garden.

It is also the time of the rice harvest, and Mikas' parents grow organic rice on the family property in Gunma. Each year they bring us the new rice fresh from the harvest. Mikas' sister also gave us some "Kuro Mai" wild rice, so today we will feast on the seasons gifts.

"KURI GOHAN" (Chestnut Rice)

450 grams of white rice

50 grams of "KuroMai"

200 grams of peeled chestnuts

600mls of japanese stock

3 spare teaspoons of salt

Wash the rice and let it stand for an hour. Put all ingredients into your rice cooker, press the button and viola! If you dont have a rice cooker, put all the ingredients into a lidded non stick saucepan, bring to the boil on a high flame, reduce the flame to very low for twenty minutes, then let it stand for five minutes before stirring gently so as not to mash the chestnuts.

One of the neighbours also brought us some home grown "Sato Imo" (Taro Potatoes). One of our favourite Japanese country meals is "Niku Jaga" (meat and potatoes) which is usually made with beef and ordinary potatoes. This is my original recipe!

"EUAN'S NIKU JAGA"

600 grams of Taro potatoes

350 grams of sliced lamb

200 grams of sliced onion

3 tablespoons of honey

6 tablespoons of "Mirin" cooking sake

6 tablespoons of soy sauce

200 grams of "Shirataki" yam noodles

750 mls of water

Put all ingredients into a pressure cooker, seal and cook on a high flame till the valve starts to hiss. Reduce to a low flame for ten minutes. Allow to cool naturally till the valve drops, then serve immediately with a garnish of "Sansho"(Japanese Native Pepper).

Sansho grows wild in the woods here, so I took a stroll up the hill and picked a few fronds. It is best to hold the fronds in your cupped hand and clap once as hard as you can. This bursts the fragrance cells without damaging the leaves, making the aroma fill the air! It was the perfect meal for a Mashiko wood firing in autumn.

Packing them in

2007-09-26T20:54:00.000+09:00

The way a kiln is packed affects the finished outcome of the pots. The height of the shelves and the space between pots can be adjusted to control flame flow.

In this firing the shelves are close together towards the bottom and spaced wider at the top in order to force flame flow up the fire face rather than let it flow through the kiln lower down.

The pots are arranged also in alternating rows to make the flame travel diagonally through the stack. I have done this because I want to have stronger ash and flame effects on the pots at the back of the kiln which are mainly unglazed, and by so doing reduce the amount of ash that carries through to the front of the kiln where I have placed black glazed dinner plates.

The wine goblets have "Igusa" straw tied around the stems, any excess from which will fall into the "Kumidashi" tea cups which fit into the space between their stems.

Too much ash on the black glaze waters it down and turns it a honey colour. I try to keep the straw off the black glaze for the same reason, but want to have markings on the rim.

Pyrometric cones are placed top and bottom to measure the heat work inside the kiln. Made from the same materials as glazes, they will melt at set temperatures. I always put in cones for 1260, 1280 and 1300 degrees celsius.

The last thing to do is close the kiln door, which entails stacking about 200 bricks into the kiln mouth. To prevent grains of sand or dust from falling into the pots at the front of the kiln and spoiling the glaze, I dip the bricks into a tub of water as I stack the door. This also reduces the major health risk of dust in the air.

Once the door is stacked I seal the top with fire clay and it's ready to fire tomorrow.

Waxing Lyrical

2007-09-24T21:08:00.000+09:00

After a day of rest I am back in the studio. I need to get a firing of my own work through this week before we stack and fire the new kiln. The week before the workshop was wet and stormy, but the last week has been perfect weather and the pots are bone dry and ready to wax and glaze.

I don't bisque fire for a number of reasons; firstly it saves the labour of stacking, firing and unstacking one kiln load of pots; secondly it saves the cost of one firing; thirdly it is better for the environment to fire once instead of twice, thus reducing exhaust gases and use of natural recources; fourthly if I bisque fired in my wood kiln I would have to wipe off all the ash deposits before I glazed, when ash is what I ultimately want on the pots anyway (It seems such a waste!); and finally because it is unnecessary for the style of work I do.

Of course this means raw waxing and raw glazing. I wait until the pots are bone dry and then apply the hot wax with a brush. The wax resists the glaze, acting as a mask so that the glaze only sticks to the bare clay.

I melt the wax in glass jars in a large pot of water over a charcoal brazier. The wax is a mixture of paraffin and kerosene, so ventilation is essential. I would prefer to use beeswax and eucalyptus oil, but the first is too expensive for me at the moment and the second is unnavailable in Japan.

I have three jars, two of them just wax and kerosene (one for use, one for back up) and the other has alumina mixed in with the wax.

The alumina wax is used for the feet of pots or the faces where lids and bodies meet. When the wax burns off in the firing the alumina remains as a thin layer on the surface and prevents sticking.

The non alumina wax is just a resist and vanishes completely. It enables me to glaze specific areas of the pots, like the centre of dinner plates, and leave other areas bare for the wood fired effects.

FINISHED!

2007-09-22T18:51:00.000+09:00

Hooray! The kilns are finished.

This morning it was all still looking like a construction site, forklift and pallettes of bricks scattered willy nilly.

By lunch time the arch was up, and by afternoon tea the chimney frame and the last brickwork was completed.

We finished it off with a rendering of fire clay.

Kusakabe sans kiln needed the door and the chimney to be finished.

The last job of the day was stabilizing his 6 metre chimney.

Kusakabe and I are exhausted, but it's been a very fulfilling week.

Our thanks go out to everyone who supported the Kiln building workshop, and look forward to firing with you at "Fantastic Fire".

Arch Fiend

2007-09-22T06:56:00.000+09:00

We finished the walls, cut the skew bricks and set them in place at the point from which the arch springs, built the metal frame and attached it. The chimney is going through the roof as promised. We built the arch former and put it in place BUT........

The size and shape of the arch is crucial, and even if you've got the sums right, if you use a thick pencil or cut on the wrong side if the pencil line, or don't allow for the thickness of the veneer, the arch former can be the wrong size. The best part of the afternoon was spent fixing the problem and we had to pull stumps because of light. SO.... we will finish on Saturday.

The sasukenei kiln is almost finished too, so stay tuned for final finish photos!