Autumn firing

Just finished my Autumn firing, kiln number 20.

Firing a bit later than usual owing to our trip to England in the summer, but quite nice to fire in November − cool but not too cold and clear skies all week, so perfect weather really. A big thank you to all who helped out, unloading in a couple of days with my exhibition at Osaka Namba Takashimaya starting on December 5th!

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Isetan exhibition

Our group exhibition at Isetan dept store in Shijuku,Tokyo has just come to an end.

Big thank you to all who came and especially to the ‘Nice Things’ magazine team who produced the event! 


Shopping in Bizen!

My favourite kind of shopping! Rented a truck and headed off to Bizen for a three ton load. For those who don’t know this type of clay is dug from under the rice fields in the autumn/winter, usually about 2 or 3 metres below the surface.

This particular clay, from an area called Sagarimatsu (underpine!) is very fine,black and very sticky. It gives good colour but is a little weak in the firing on it’s own so I mix in 20-30 % rough yamatsuchi, mountain clay which strengthens it and opens up the body a bit.

Clay is a finite resource for me. It doesnt come out of a bag and good clay runs out. Three years ago Mr Sumikawa dug up 100 tons of this and I picked up the last three tons yesterday. All gone now. I’ll  try to use it well.


Images of England…Pt1

Back from our three week trip to England, back to work and getting back into the rhythm of life. It was the first time back to the uk for over two years and I took a few photos of things I found. We stopped off in London for a couple of days at the start and took a far too brief visit to the Victoria and Albert Museum. I could of course have spent hours and hours there but two young daughters weren’t having any of that so we had to speed things along.

I just spent the time looking at pots and trying to soak them in, snapping a few photos here and there. Wonderful to see so many pots I’ve seen in books over the yearseven just to get a snapshot of so many pots from so many places, throughout such a lot of history.

China. Pretty sure this is the pot in Bernard Leach’s A Potters Book I saw many years ago before I came to Japan, bit like going down memory lane looking at this one…

England. I love these old medieval pitchers. I found a wonderful book on English medieval pottery once in a second hand bookshop in Kobe, priced in shillings. Mostly jugs and pitchers ( what’s the difference?) from the 13th to 15 th century, they have something about them which is not so far from the Momoyama ware in Japan…

German pots.. all very famous, but what struck me (again) was how fresh the throwing was on this middle pot, beautiful, like it came off the wheel yesterday, and small too, would have been really fun to drink an ale or two out of these

Likewise these bellarmine wild man jugs, stoneware and saltglaze. Photos don’t do them justice, just really lovely little pots.

 


Kyoto Pottery Festival

  • The annual Gojozaka pottery festival is now on in Kyoto. Aug 7,8,9,10. 10am-10pm
  • My shop, as usual, up the top of the hill, on the right. Shop no. B230!

Summer days…

Tall vase from the last firing now at its new home at the newly opened Apollo restaurant in Kyoto. Thank you Kitano san!


Long Road to the North…

Last night in Sendai, Miyagi prefecture, 840 km from home. Been here for the Miyagi Pottery and Ceramics Fair for the last four days and heading off back tomorrow.

It’s been quite a sobering experience to be here, where that enormous earthquake and tsunami struck on March 11, 7 years ago. Over 16,000 deaths, and over a million buildings damaged or collapsed. Hard to comprehend really. But quite strange to see the thousands of people coming to the event the last few days knowing that most have been deeply affected by it in some way.

The area around the conference hall was all under water at that time and someone told me how their car was thrown up about a metre into the air as they were driving. And of course people have told me about their pottery being destroyed. But mostly people haven’t mentioned it much.

I get the feeling of a people still recovering.