Full of Beans

The sunrise on the Summer Solstice is grey and damp. "Tsuyu", the Japanese rainy season, in full swing. After the breakfast rush and getting the kids off to school with "Obento" lunch boxes, we set about our own tasks for the day.

I am packing my kiln at the moment, but the weather is affecting my work cycle. Because I do not bisque fire my pottery, and apply the glazes raw, the pots must be bone dry. A difficult task when it is humid one moment, drizzling the next! (The leak in the studio roof doesn't help much either!) There are sometimes breaks of sun for just a few hours though, so last week I managed to get the pots outside to dry properly.







The kiln shelves are cleaned and coated with a fresh layer of kiln wash. I lay them out to dry on bamboo poles that I harvested in winter with the boys. I lash bamboo poles to the old pipes, from the gas kiln I had in Nanai many years ago, to span across to the edge of the garden terrace. The boys use the pipes for a soccer goal, so I dismantled the structure at the end of the day. Raising the pots up into the air away from the damp grass helps them dry faster, but that is not the main reason for this contraption.





The last thing that I need is pussy foot prints in broken pottery shards. The four kittens we currently have cavorting about the garden are full of beans, but not yet big enough to venture up to the terrace. Most of the time they spend occupying my shoes.



Mid afternoon the rain began, big fat drops sent to reconnoitre at first, then an onslaught of cats and dogs, followed by a persistent skirmish of drizzle. If one drop of rain lands on the raw glaze it will lift away from the clay leaving a crawling scar in the finished glaze surface. There is twenty metres of open ground between the studio and the kiln shed.... Packing the kiln will have to wait until tomorrow.


After cleaning up and taking a coffee break with Mika, the kids start arriving home from school. Homework and dinner preparations begin in earnest. We have the first batch of string beans from the garden to add to the main course, but today I have a special treat in store...because last Sunday was Fathers Day! The family surprised me with an Ice Cream Maker!

I am using it for the first time, so I decided to stick with basics; Vanilla. I just happen to have some Vanilla pods in the cupboard (as one does!), so here it goes.



VANILLA BEAN ICE CREAM

200 ml Milk
200 ml Cream
Half a Vanilla Bean
1 Whole Egg
2 Egg Yolks
80 grams Sugar


Split the Vanilla Bean down the centre and scrape out the seeds with the point of a knife. Mix the cream, milk and Vanilla pods and seeds together in a saucepan and simmer gently for 20 minutes. Blend the remaining ingredients in a separate bowl till ivory coloured and creamy. Pour half the simmered mixture into the bowl and continue blending, then return the whole mixture to the saucepan and heat gently till thickened like custard. Chill this mixture in the fridge and remove the bean pods before placing in the Ice Cream Maker.

Serve with a sprig of fresh mint.

Without a doubt, this is the best Ice Cream I have ever had. The family, especially the kids, agree, and now, like the kittens, the coffee, the ice cream and the garden, we're all full of beans.

Surface Tension

We take the forces at work around us for granted most of the time, hardly realising that everything in nature, even a drop of rain, is as it is because of universal forces. Forces and structure pressing outward, weight and pressure pressing inwards, and the point of balance between those forces, the border line that defines a form, we call the surface.


When forming clay on the wheel, it is the task of the potter to remain still while those forces work against our hands and find balance in the shape of a pot. Once taken from the wheel and allowed to dry partially, the clay shrinks and there is a certain tension in the surface when the pots are returned to the wheel for trimming. The trimmed surface is therefore different in character than the unaltered thrown surface. I have always found the play between these surfaces delightful. I therefore try not to interfere with that too much by cluttering it with decoration.


When doing a collaboration with a french restaurant a few years ago, however, I needed to add a rim motif. I am not one for drawing pictures of things on pots, so I created a small design which extends the idea of surface.

If one scratches a line in leather hard clay, the edges will tear, leaving a jagged and messy edge. If you cut the same line with a sharp tool so as to pare away the clay the edge is sharper and far more energetic. Using a hoop tool with an acute angle I cut an exclamation mark. Below that I add three dots, compressed with a cone shaped wooden tool. As the clay from the dot is not removed from the surface it moves into a raised crater like edge, giving these indentations a different textural character than the cut mark.

Beside these incised and compressed marks I add, literally, a drop of slip. Slip, or engobe, is a liquid clay used for decoration. In order for the slip to be compatible with the clay I use the same porcelain for the slip as that which constitutes 75% of the clay body. The shrinkage of the slip is, therefore, exactly the same as the clay, so there is no chance of cracking or flaking. One slip I make fairly viscous, and add 2% of Copper Oxide. I apply this with a thin metal rod as a single drop, touching the end of the rod to the clay surface and allowing surface tension to pull the slip into a circular droplet on the rim of the bowl. I prepare a second engobe which is thinner, with 2% of Chrome Oxide, and, using the same metal rod, I touch a droplet to the surface of the pot then flick the end of the rod away, once again using surface tension to create a dynamic elongated tear drop shape.

These applied engobes give a raised pattern which counterpoints the intaglio incising and impressed marks on the rim. When fired, the pure porcelain of the engobe becomes slightly glassier than the clay body. The Copper becomes red in the reduction, a form of "Shinsha" glaze, and the Chrome becomes green. Combined with the flame colour of the clay, the Igusa straw markings and tenmoku glaze, this small motif adds a subtle and dynamic accent to the rim of the vessel which is rich in visual and tactile information.


We interact with nature and the world around us on many levels, and tactile beauty is just as important in art as visual beauty, more so for those without the gift of sight. By utilising surface tension and the forces of nature, energy and tension can be expressed intimately in the surface of a vessel.

Through My Son's Eyes

One Sunday, 2010

Now.

I am sitting on the bench on the hill in front of our house. Dad, my little brother Sean and I are eating potato chips together while we drink cocoa. The cocoa that I am drinking, from a mug which Dad made, is warm, it’s flavour mellow and slightly sweet, it’s fragrance soft and gentle. Absolutely delicious.

The vegetable beds were tilled yesterday, and beyond our garden I can see rice paddies, further yet I see hills and forests. I can see far, far into the distance.

Brown soil, green leaves, yellow, pink and pale mauve flowers. The clear blue sky and pure white clouds reflect on the surface of the water in the rice paddies.

The sunlight on the vegetable garden glares brightly, but where I sit now on the bench is dappled with a pattern of shadows from the leaves of the trees.

The harsh voices of a blue heron, flying across the sky, and a white heron, walking through the rice paddy, echo on the gentle breeze.

It may not have been anything special, but I enjoyed it and it’s beauty.

The crumbs of potato chips that have fallen on the ground are being cleaned up for us by the ants. The last mouthful of cocoa is cold, but still delicious.

I am very grateful.

Translated from the diary of Rohan Craig, age 8

　　
(The original Japanese can be found on my Mika's blog Here.　　
美果のブログに、この文章の日本語版がここにあります。)　　　

Mock Fish

Advanced skills are elementary skills, just as the greatest joys are the simplest ones. During my many discussions with my friend Hashimoto Touru about Japanese cuisine, he has pointed out that the high art of Japanese Kaiseki cuisine is based on good old fashioned home cooking. Food was prepared to be served to the master of the house and guests, and certain homes became renowned for their hospitality. As more guests came to these homes with gifts, these homes became more prepared for greeting those guests, and so in time places which specialised in hospitality emerged. That is the root of the hospitality industry, and I think that holds true in any culture.

Pottery emerged in a similar fashion from the need for vessels in the home in ancient times, and as different families began to specialize in particular trades, so too pottery became a profession. Perhaps not the oldest, but fairly close!

I began potting when I was about 14, working part time in studios near my home. Even then functional pottery was what I wanted most to do, and it was the lifestyle and the humanistic nature of the art that interested me most. When I was young I found myself in a position where I needed to question conventional values and find answers that would help me achieve my potential. Pottery allowed me to explore art, science and philosophy, while building my physical strength and dexterity, all in collaboration with the basic forces of nature, and then to give that a form that was beautiful and functional, communicating my feelings to others in an intimate way. It is a career that continues to be challenging and from which I will never retire, and the pots that I make will hopefully bring joy to generations to come.

I have been working with chefs since the '90s, and it began with my desire for my pots to be used and to improve the quality and practicality of my work. In order to make good pots one must know how to use them, so I have always enjoyed cooking and serving food on my work. I am not, however a professional chef, and felt that I needed the input of a professional chef. I also needed to "test drive" the results, so the collaborations began. I love the process of making and firing the work, the preparation and serving of the food, and the ultimate enjoyment of sharing a meal with those I love.

There have been many challenges along the way, not the least of which has been trying to gain the understanding both of the public and my family and friends that pottery is an Art and a Career, not just a glorified hobby. Working with chefs and sharing my vessels in a restaurant atmosphere has been a wonderful opportunity to help that understanding, and the photographs of the work with food have helped to communicate that idea. However, I started to find people saying that the food they cook at home could not do justice to the pottery, and was incomparable to the cuisine served by professional chefs.



Which brings me back to my original point, that even the best of cuisine is based on the simplest of origins; enjoying food in the home with the people you love. One of my favourite meals in all the world is a simple dish that my Mum used to make called Mock Fish. It is made from potatoes mainly, and I have memories of Mum making batch after batch while my brothers and I devoured them with lashings of tomato relish. So when a friend brought me some home grown spuds, onions and tomatoes the other day, and eggs were cheap, I cooked up a batch, and served them with a sprig of dill from the garden. I took a photo of it and that has been at the top of my blog ever since. The simplest of foods, served in the simplest of ways, on hand crafted vessels, enjoyed with the people you love. What could be more nourishing for the body and the spirit?

MOCK FISH　(My Version!)

1 Large Onion, diced
5 Eggs
80g Plain Flour
1 Level Teaspoons of Salt
1 Level Teaspoon of White Pepper
5ml White Vinegar
1kg Finely Grated Potato

Olive Oil to Shallow fry

Add the ingredients to a large bowl in the order shown, and mix each potato into the mixture as it is grated. This will avoid the potato oxidizing and turning brown. When thoroughly mixed, fry 100ml dollops of mixture on medium heat for three minutes each side till golden brown. Serve as shown in the photo, sandwiched with a slice of fresh tomato and a sprig of fennel, or with lashings of tomato relish. They're really nice cold too! 　　
　　

Wabi Sabi

Just as in English there is a whole vocabulary available for the discussion of Art and Beauty, so too does such a vocabulary exist in Japanese. There is a tendency among people with a passion for and some experience in Japanese art to use the word “Wabi sabi”, and yet so little understanding of what the term refers to. Leonardo da Vinci said that, “If you cannot explain something, you don’t understand it.” To be anecdotal for a moment, there was one young American anthropologist who had studied pottery briefly in Mashiko, who gave a slide lecture here to coincide with an exhibition of American ceramics. Anything in his slides which seemed even vaguely Japanese influenced he described as possessing “Wabi sabi”. One of the thirty or so professional Japanese potters in the audience enquired, “What do you mean by Wabi sabi?” He laughed as he responded, “Nobody knows what Wabi sabi means!” The entire audience laughed also, but the young gentleman never realized that it was not because they agreed with him, but because of his naivety. Wabi sabi is not some mystical secret, but a basic aesthetic principal. Merely because he didn’t understand it doesn’t mean that it cannot be understood.

Historically “Wabi sabi” was first coined by Sen Rikyu, the founder of the Japanese tea ceremony. Tea was used as a political tool at that time, and the Daimyou, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, often invited political opponents to enjoy tea with him. The sheer richness and lavishness of his style of tea were designed to impress and intimidate. In contrast to this Sen Rikyu proposed a style of tea which was about simplicity and minimalism. Essentially the tea ceremony is about enjoying a nice cup of tea, with all of the five senses. The word for “Delicious” in Japanese is “Oishii” which literally translates as “Beautiful flavour”. So, tea was about beauty. Beauty of sound, of touch, of taste, of fragrance, of vision. If all five senses are to be involved then it is imperative to control the environment in which the ceremony takes place, hence the birth of the tea house and garden. For Sen Rikyu, beauty was not about lavishness. What he proposed was that by eliminating all of the extraneous clutter it was possible to appreciate the essential quality of beauty.

Etymologically, “Wabi sabi” is based on the root forms of two adjectives, both of which are generally translated as “Lonely”. “Wabishii” however focuses on the object which is lonely, where as “Sabishii” focuses on the absence which makes the object lonely. The principal of “Wabi sabi” is therefore; Beauty reduced to its simplest form, and that form brought to a peak of focus by its relationship with the space in which it exists. That is to say, the presence of an object and the presence of the space interacting to strengthen each other.

The idea that space has presence is not new. Two and a half thousand years ago the Greek philosopher Parmenides proposed that it is impossible for anything which exists to conceive of anything which does not exist and that therefore even the space between objects “exists”. This remains in modern English as the concept that “I have nothing”. In Japanese however, it is grammatically impossible for “Nothing” (Nanimo) to exist (aru). “Nothing” (Nanimo) must be followed by “Is not” (nai). The idea of the presence of a space was therefore revolutionary.

To take it one step further, a tea bowl, being a vessel, is defined by the space it contains. It is not the pot which is important, but the space. In the tea bowl it is therefore possible to have the object (Wabi) and the space (Sabi) interacting within the same pot.

There is a story about Sen Rikyu having a hedge of Morning glory planted in his tea garden, and Toyotomi Hideyoshi was to enjoy the tea ceremony when it blossomed. On the morning of the ceremony, the hedge was in full bloom, a swathe of pink flowers. Sen Rikyu came along and clipped off every flower, saving only the single most perfect blossom, which he displayed in the tea house. Had he left the flowers as they were this single blossom would have been lost in the crowd. In the space of the tea house, however, it was beautiful beyond compare. That is the essence of “Wabi sabi”.

Toyotomi Hideyoshi was apparently extremely angry, and it is interesting to note that shortly afterward Sen Rikyu was forced to commit “Seppuku” suicide.

The long and the short of it is that “Wabi sabi” is about simplifying the beauty of nature to its essential elements, and the vitality brought to that beauty by the mutual interaction of object and space, even within the same object. That which is not there is just as important as that which is. This concept has pervaded the Japanese aesthetic and is not confined to pottery, but can be found in any art, including literature and cuisine. It does not exist in every piece of art work, though, and care should be taken in using the term appropriately. It does not mean somber, that would be “Shibui”, nor calm, that would be “Ochitsuita”. There is a whole vocabulary in Japanese to describe art and beauty, just as there is in English. Perhaps we would be wise to use the one we understand the best.

Trees are generally beautiful, but a leaf is beautiful in a very specific way. Having a thousand leaves does not make a tree a thousand times more beautiful than a single leaf.

　　　
　

Really Good Friday

For a number of years when I first came to Japan I would receive a letter from Mum some time in April saying "I thought you would have at least called at Easter." I would then phone to say "When was Easter?" It isn't on any of the calendars here, and as the dates change every year I completely missed it for the greater part of a decade. (The same is true for pancake Tuesday...only more so!)






Since the children came on the scene I have been more diligent in searching out the dates each year, and trying to give the kids their share of Australian culture (which does in fact extend beyond yoghurt).
This year is the first time since the children started school that the Japanese spring holidays have coincided with Easter. It has been a conflict trying to get the "Good Friday" holiday idea through to non Christians, and this year, at last, the kids are at home without any negotiations!


Yesterday Sora and I, with the occasional itinerant help of Sean, Mika, Canaan and the significant absence of Rohan (who was enthralled in a book about another famous Potter), baked five dozen Hot Cross Buns, which should last till Sunday, even in our house!

For lunch we enjoyed Norwegian Smoked Salmon, (Thanks Kei!), Mexican Avocados and French Camembert with salad and crackers, with a cheeky Australian chardonnay. A meal to leave a Carbon footprint in the sands of time, but ....it is Easter after all!


This evening we enjoyed exotic Fish and Chips, with beer batter of course, and extra tasting to make sure that the beer was OK. We're still not sure, so the tasting continues....


















Hot Cross Buns (This years recipe!)


280ml of tepid Water
1.5 teaspoons of Dry Yeast
5 dessert spoons of Sugar
1.5 teaspoons of Salt
3 dessertspoons of Olive Oil
200 grams of Plain Flour
200 grams of Gluten Flour
20 grams of Walnuts
100 grams of Raisins
1 teaspoon of mixed spice


Mix all ingredients in a bowl in the order listed. Mix thoroughly and then knead for seven minutes (It helps if you are a potter!)

Cover with a damp cloth and raise in a warm place for 30 minutes, or half an hour, which ever comes first, until it is about twice in volume.

Measure the dough into twelve equal balls and arrange on a greased baking tray. Cover with a damp cloth again and raise for a further half to three quarters of an hour until doubled in size.

Brush beaten egg over the buns then drizzle a creamy mixture of plain flour and milk in a cross over the buns. Bake in a preheated oven at 190 degrees Celsius for 25 minutes.

Toast or reheat before serving.

Happy Easter to you all, more news when the bunny arrives!
　
　
　　

Legal standards for functional ceramics in Japan

You may remember by blog entry "Safety First" , concerning the food safety standards for functional pottery in Japan. I have been asked by some of you for more information about this, so I have read the notification in the original Japanese and the following is my brief interpretation of it in so far as it applies to functional ceramics. The law applies to Glass, Ceramics, Enamel and other food vessels and packaging, so I won't deal with the full scope of the law. I am, after all, Euan the Potter.

According to notification #416 of the Japanese Ministry of Health, Welfare and Labour, as of the 1st of August 2009, it is required for all manufacturers and importers of ceramics for food to conform to the standards set by the International Standards Organisation for levels of heavy metals, specifically Lead and Cadmium.

These safety levels are based on the amount of Lead and Cadmium which can leech into a liquid from the vessel under set test conditions. These levels and conditions are set out in the second table on THIS LINK.

The levels differ slightly for vessels which are used to heat food and those which are not. However, Sake bottles (tokuri), Chawan Mushi Chawan (vessels for savoury steamed custard) and other vessels which can be used to heat or reheat food by any method not exceeding 100 degrees centigrade, where heating food is not the main function of the vessel, will be treated the same as vessels which are not for heating food.

The notification does not state the method by which these standards will be enforced, but department stores in particular are asking for certification of safety in Japanese before vessels can be sold. This is probably in line with the Public Liability Laws which were introduced a few years ago making the manufacturer and retailer responsible for injury to customers due to faulty or dangerous products. I believe that it is required by customs for imported ware, and as I was required to provide this for Mitsukoshi, and my pots are made in Japan, it seems to be required for domestic sales as well. I have only been asked by department stores, however, so I am unsure of the extent to which certification is required.

It only applies to vessels for food. In particular it is important with low fired lead glazes and on glaze enamels, but it applies to all food vessels. Within Japan testing can be done in a variety of places, but I recommend the Tajimi Ceramic Institute. Their home page outlines their testing methods and costs. One representative sample of work should be sent for testing, and they return it. I do not know whether they accept work for testing from overseas.

So, there you have it. If you are making vessels for food, Japanese law requires that they be food safe according to ISO standards. That sounds fair to me.