Vulcan

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

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

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

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....

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!

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

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.