The Zen of pottery is that you learn to never become too attached to pottery.
Use it, admire it,enjoy it wash it, but no matter how careful you are
one day it will break. Then you get a new one.

Introduction

Chawan

Guinomi

Tokkuri

Bizen

Hagi

Oribe

Shino

More Japanese

American Bowls

Other

Acoma

 

Figure 1: Cowan Pottery. R. Guy Cowan was a popular potter during the early part of the nineteenth with a studio located in Lakewood Ohio, later moved to Rocky River. The studio closed during the Great Depression. My grandparents lived in Fairview Park, the city next to Rocky River and purchased this piece from the studio. This is shape B-15 with frog.

Figure 2: Shuki by Gayle Chin. I got these at a Berkeley Pottery coop one Christmas. I also purchased a beautiful bowl but when I returned she had moved and I have never heard of her again.

Figure 2: A vase by Gary Holt of Berkeley.

Figure 3: Salt glaze yuinomi by John Chambers

Figure 4: Yuinomi by Gary Holt

Figure 5: Bowl by Gary Holt

Figure 6: Bowl by Gary Holt, I think this was in the seconds bin.

Figure 7: Bowl. She was at Eighth Street potters in Berkeley for a couple of years, I had another piece by her but it was damaged in the 1994 earthquake.

Figure 8: Small bowl. I never tire of this bowl, its just the right size for fruit.

Figure 9: Bowl, this potter used to be in Berkeley on Eight Street but has moved for many years. She also did the one below. The colors are not usually my taste and in the hands of another potter these might be too designy, but they work so well here and I think its because of the artistic restraint of the potter. We use these dishes often.

Figure 10: Bowl

Figure 11: Plate by Gary Holt

Figure 12: Plate by Gary Holt

Figure 13: Plate, these people had a pottery business in San Juan Batista where I used to visit the Mission.

Figure 14: Bowl by Gayle Chin. I bought this when she was in Berkeley at the Eigth Street Co-op back in the early 1990s but she moved and I do not know where.

Figure 15: Bowl purchased at the Berkely Art Coop.

Figure 16: Bowl purchased at Palo Alto street fair.

Figure 17: Bowl purchased at the pottery store in Old Town in Albuquerque, I think after going there many years this was the only piece I purchased.

Figure 18: Another bowl by Gary Holt, here you can see something that makes using pottery fun, seeing the inside of the bowl is a treat in itself and the design emerges from the technique.

P ottery is something that has been a major part of almost every culture. At some point in history various individuasl located in different places at different times noticed what happened to clay when it was fired, probably accidently. Perhaps they had made bowls before and never figured out how to make them hard until an accident of some sort or someone making an observation others thought was stupid. For whatever reason and probably we shall never know the craft of pottery developed.

But pottery has been an important tool for people, a functional tool for such thngs as eating, storage, drinking, all important to human survival.

this page will be developing.

I am not sure what to think about American pottery. This page has a lot of stuff that I like. But I am not impressed by the “official”stuff of the Art wolkd int he United States. Much of the Art is non functional, and I think functional pottery is a much higher art form than non functional.

For many years I liked to buy pottery and use it, often buying ini the seconds bin. But I was always turned off by the attitude of the official art world about pottery.

Curators and non-functional artists seem to think that Real Art is not something that should be usable by people Rather iIt functins on some “higher level”, like some insight to the meaning of life that is beyond the ken of normal people.

When I discovered Japanese pottery and that some people really cared about the same things I did I was very happy to ignore learning about American pottery.

About six months ago at theTrax gallery in Berkeley I first learned about Warren MacKenzie. Since then Ihave bought a shino bowl madde by him and have been drinking matcha from it to learn about his pottery. And it seems that the “officialart world” likes him.

So I will begin learning about American pottery now and this page is going to grow on what I learn.

Meanwhile here some photographs of pots that I have purchased and use regularly just because Ilike them.