The longest year ever: 2025!

The kettle on the wood-stove sings a bubbling song to me about making pots of tea,  as the sun rises over the shoulder of Mount Akagi. It is the last morning of the year, at least that’s what the Gregorian Calendar says, though it does seem rather arbitrary. I have always felt that the start and end of a year would be linked to some actual natural marker, like the Winter Solstice, or the Spring Equinox. It was pleasing to discover that my favourite poet and philosopher, Omar Khayyam, agreed, and developed the Jalali Calendar, which was adopted by the Seljuk Empire on the Spring Equinox of 1079AD. That day became the 1st day of the 1st year, in a calendar based on a 2,820 year cycle and which was more accurate than the Gregorian Calendar! But I digress. According to the calendar on my wall, and the society in which I live, today is the end of 2025, and what a year it has been!

January, “Shogatsu”, seems like forever ago, when I was making a documentary for NHK World about “Raking in Good Luck”, the Japanese talismans for good fortune, like Daruma dolls and Kumade rakes, made in Takasaki in Gunma Prefecture.  I also did my first firing of the year, and exhibited the new work in my first exhibition of the year at Neues Gallery in Maebashi!

February, the month of “Mame-maki”, casting out the demons from the house by throwing beans at them, is the coldest month of the year. Between shovelling snow and cutting fire wood, I managed to make a kiln load of new pots and teach a series of workshops for an International School in Tokyo.

In March, apart from making another kiln load of pottery, I built a new wood kiln for a Japanese potter in Shibukawa, Murakami Dofu. The kiln was a 0.5 cubic metre version of my own down-draft fast-fire wood-kiln, and we fired it for the first time on March 29th.

April was time to concentrate on studio production and firing my own kiln, but I also helped with my daughter’s exciting new project of reviving one of her maternal grandparents rice paddies. They’ve been growing rice here for four generations, but they stopped a few years ago because, in their late 80’s, they’re just too frail to continue. My daughter has stepped up, and we cleared, ploughed and flooded the first paddy!

The first week of May is Golden week, and I displayed my work at the Mashiko Spring “Toukiichi” Pottery Festival for the 33rd year! This was followed by a solo exhibition at Gallery Toko in Mashiko, and the planting of the rice seedlings here in Minakami. I also celebrated my 61st circumnavigation of our local star!

June was a big month! I journeyed to Wales on the invitation of my dear friend and colleague Steve Tootell, the North Wales Potters Society and the Aberystwyth International Ceramics Festival!  Starting with a display at the Ceramics Wales Pottery Fair, Steve hosted me at his “Apple Tree” studio in Denbigh, where I made a body of work and we built the arch former for the kiln build and firing in Aberystwyth. We also had a day trip to Aber to harvest local rush, and to do a site and materials check and touch base with the staff and organisers. Then we set up at the historic Gwaenynog Hall, the location of several of Beatrix Potter’s books, in preparation for two one-day workshops on making Japanese “Kyusu” teapots. Next it was down to Aberystwyth University for the kiln build, with a big shout out to the amazing Barry Powell, technician and facilitator extraordinaire, and all the volunteers who helped. Set a new personal record by building the 0.3 cubic metre version of my own down-draft fast-fire wood-kiln in just two and a half days! Stacked it that afternoon, ready to fire on the first day of the three day festival! A smooth 11 hour raw firing to 1300c, then a speech at the Opening event on the first day; a demonstration on the main stage, with Kintsugi artist Iku Nishikawa, throwing for the first time on a rickety kick wheel which I had repaired that morning, then a lecture/presentation in the theatre in the afternoon on the second day; and unpacking a successful firing on the third day! Deep gratitude to all concerned!

July and August saw me back home in the studio, with a commission of new table ware for Miyanoya Soba Restaurant in Niigata prefecture and new range of square and triangular plates for a group exhibition in Mashiko, and a Wood-firing Workshop for the Kochinokai Potters Group.

In September I had a solo exhibition at Yamatoya Honten Gallery in Takasaki, and a wonderful visit to Kyoto where we climbed Mount Atago to the Atago Jinja which enshrines the gods of earth and fire, the patron gods of potters.

October was a month of making, firing and also harvesting, threshing and husking my daughters rice harvest!

November started with the Mashiko Autumn Toukiichi Pottery Festival, then my 32nd Annual Solo Exhibition at Ebiya Bijutsuten in Nihonbashi, Tokyo!

December has been a month of making fresh glaze batches, glazing and doing my 10th firing of the year, and preparations for the Yuletide. We had a wonderful Christmas with all of my family in Japan gathered for the feast! 

And now it is today, preparing the traditional “Toshikoshi Soba” noodles and “Osechi Ryouri” for the Japanese “Oshogatsu” celebrations, and the Craig Family Hogmanay to bring in the New Year! So much has happened between the lines, and each year seems longer than the last.

Hope you had a wonderful 2025, and I wish you all the best for 2026!

Every Bowl Tells a Story...

The earthquake in Tohoku yesterday was strong and long enough to get us jumping out of bed and ready for action, but eventually subsided without incident for us. The radio warned of a tsunami on the Tohoku coast, but we are high in the mountains of central Japan and far, far away...

...but memories of 2011, and the long road to recovery return.

When I was trying to re-establish my studio in Minakami after relocating from Mashiko, I wanted to take a step back from our modern reliance on infrastructure. I wanted to be free of fossil fuels and not dependant on electricity, to live a Mingei life, and was looking for a second hand kick wheel in Mashiko. The Hamada family gave me an old one of the workers wheels from the original Hamada Pottery, which is now the museum. I had the local garage de-rust the bearings, restored it to original condition myself and installed it in the new studio in our old farm house.

This tea bowl was made on that wheel, in the light from the window, with water drawn from our well.

Later, when the 8 chamber Noborigama at the Hamada Museum was restored, 30 Mashiko Potters were invited to fill the kiln so that it could be fired to set the repairs. Each of us had a share of the chambers, drawn by lot, and a small space in the fire mouth.

It was such a moving experience to have my pots spread out on Hamada Shoji's throwing deck, preparing the shells for the tea bowls filled with "Igusa" tatami rush.

And this was one of those bowls, rope marked in the Jomon style with silken "kumihimo" in homage to my master, Shimaoka Tatsuzo, fired in the first chamber of the Hamada noborigama for five days. You can see it still raw in the last photo, on this side of the middle board of bowls, second from the back.

There are not many of the pieces from this firing remaining now, some ten years on, but this is one of several which I will be sending to a two man show in Melbourne with my dear friend and colleague John Dermer at Skepsi Gallery next April.

There is so much to tell about this bowl, about all of the pieces from this series, that one post and a few photos barely scratch the surface...

 

Thusness

Long before humans existed, before we invented words like "beauty", long after we are gone, and every moment in between, the world, the universe, in macrocosm and microcosm, is beautiful as a matter of course. In the Bernard Leach adaptation of the writings of Yanagi Soetsu, The Unknown Craftsman, this is referred to as "thusness", the sublime and infinitely variable perfection of things as they are, as they should be, accepted and embraced without ego. We seem to forget that. To forget that we are a part of that, or to convince ourselves that we are other than that.

Instead we see ourselves as masters of the universe, imposing our will, our prejudices and preconceptions, upon nature. Our hubris. Our egos. And therein lies the source of another of our greatest inventions; Ugliness.

As a potter, working with natural materials and universal forces, I have come to understand that my greatest challenge is to not get in the way. My task is to understand the nature of those materials, their potential to interact with those forces, and to help them, guide them, facilitate their becoming. If I am successful in this endeavour, then a new expression of that "thusness" may come into being. One which also expresses my unique perspective as a fragment of nature gazing in wonder upon itself.