pieces she made which I carried around from place to place enjoying the special memories embedded in the clay (see pitcher on right which I still have), and as time went by little by little I began to take notice of pottery. Later I went to art school, learned more about design and slowly I began acquiring bowls, cups and plates for personal use. And I used them.
That’s where I began to discover the zen. Pottery is meaningful to use, to touch, to wash, just to to look at and pick up and feel it with our hands. But if you use it, at sometime it will break. You admire and enjoy it when you use it but you don’t become attached to it. When it breaks get another one and build a new relationship.
In early 1980’s I visited Acoma Pueblo, bought a small bowl, and developed an interest in Southwest Indian pottery. Later I became acquainted with Japanese pottery, specifically shuki and chawan. Southwest Indian pottery is also very beautiful, and the imagery and shapes touch primal places in people. Oriental pottery is built around local styles and individual potters. This is different from western pottery which is built around enterprise and large business, such as Limoge, or Wedgewood. It seems to me that Chinese pottery is a history of the creative development of a style probably from an individual and then imitators work it to farthest extremes of meaninglessness. Korean pottery has its own life of which I know very little, and at one point was a major inspiration for Japanese chawan.
However, Japanese pottery is an experience in itself, especially Japanese folk kilns. Folk kilns satisfy two functions; utility and beauty. The utility is obvious, its what people use for eating, drinking and storage. However their beauty is not that of the head, but in the feeling and spirit. The knowledge and skill of the folk potter comes from the potter’s heart to the hands to create and fire the pot. Traditionally the potter knows one way; the Right Way; the potter learns one style; The Right Style.
Contrast this to the contemporary potter who attends art school, studies different pottery styles, and from this develops his/her own style to offer the world—a style that comes from the head.
Japanese kilns refer to an area where the local potters use the same clay, glazes and techniques and share a common history of potting. Tamba, Bizen, Shigaraki, Hagi, Oribe, Mino, Seto, Karatsu, Mashiko and Shino are examples of Japanese folk kilns that I like. Many of these kilns have been working for hundreds of years supplying local people with utensils for everyday life as well as the special utensils of Cha, shuki and Ikebana. Each kiln has basic identifiable characteristics which unify the generations of potters, and yet each potter has an opportunity for self expression built on the shoulders of those before.
In this section I will present some of my pottery (that I own, I am not a potter) and offer up some small discussion. I am not going to focus on subject matter you find elsewhere presented by others more knowledgable than I am but I will try to give some expression to what makes pottery so special, at least to me.
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