Euan The Potter

Opening the Box

2009-07-13T12:26:00.007+09:00

No matter how cleverly you stack the kiln, or how well you have mastered the firing, the fact remains that the results from a wood kiln are in the hands of nature. You will never know for sure how the pots will come out until they do, actually, come out. It is a matter of faith, of trusting the process of nature. And if you have guided the firing well, the kiln will reward you with exceptional pots, far beyond the limits of your own ability.

My firing on Saturday took 13 hours, so it was fairly fast, but I gave it a very heavy reduction, including a reduced cooling. When I opened the kiln this morning I was surprised by a slightly metallic lustre on the surface of flashing and blue clouding in the black glaze. The pink spot on the rim of the plate is porcelain slip with 2% of Copper Oxide, so it is a good indication of the heavy reduction. In oxidation it would be green. The green slip trailing is also porcelain, but with 2% Chrome.

There was also more orange flashing towards the fire face than usual, which will balance with the heavy carbon trapping from the previous firing when I display them together at my next exhibition.

There were more losses than I've had recently, but that is mainly because of the large number of plates with the black glaze. Just one grain of sand or flake of kiln wash will ruin the whole piece.

Two hundred of the pieces from this firing will be going into my next exhibition and will be available for purchase at New York Takashimaya Home, 10F Takashimaya Department Store, Shinjuku, Tokyo, from next Wednesday, July 15th till July 28th.
I will be at the exhibition on the 15th, 18th, 19th, 25th, 26th, 27th and 28th, if you would like to visit while I am there.

How I Stack My Kiln

2009-07-11T01:32:00.004+09:00

There are many people who have now built my kiln, and everyone will stack and fire it differently in order to achieve their desired result. Just for the record though, I wanted to show you how I stack my kiln and why.

Firstly, The brick arrangement under the shelves is designed to force the flame to the front of the kiln. The surface area of the space between the bricks is equal to the surface area of the flame inlet mouths at the back of the kiln which also equals the exit flue in the floor off the kiln. That means that the same amount of flame can come into the kiln, find its way through the work and exit the kiln. draft can then be controlled by the damper and the stoking volume and rate.

The first layer of shelves goes onto the bag wall right up to the fire face. There is a coil of wadding along the bag wall to stop the draft going straight under the first shelf. It forces the flame to go up first without taking short cuts.

There is a gap of 13cm on either side of the shelves. The pots can overhang this gap as much as you like, it won't affect the firing. You will notice how crusty the kiln is; that's because I've fired it 120 times over the last 10 years.

Between the shelves I leave 1.5cm of space only, this is part of the total exit space calculation.

It is important to stack this kiln tight. How tight? Tight as a salmons sphincter should do it. I only leave one or two milimetres of space between pots. Firing raw means the pots will shrink away from each other anyway, but it is also important to stack as tight as possible because the kiln is built of insulating brick and doesn't store a heat mass, so the work must become the heat mass.

I try to get as many pots as possible into the kiln. These cups have no glaze on them at all, I am relying on the wood effects to glaze them for me, the best place for them is at the fire face. Glazed work should be stacked at the front of the kiln away from the direct flame.

The handles force me to leave more space above the pots than I would like. Ideally the space should be about 1cm.

I stack right up to the arch, keeping it as tight as possible. There is plenty of space between the pots for the flame to get through, and as it does it leaves ash and vapour flashing. If there is too much space around, above or between the pots, the flame will rush straight past the pots and up the chimney, taking all its ash and vapour with it.

The front shelves go in with the same 1.5cm gap.
A long brick bridges the gap over the flue.

The front stack is also stacked tightly, with work that I would prefer less ash on, like the black glaze, or pots that I want more red or orange flashing rather than ash deposit.

This firing only used 40 kiln shelves, but the maximum I have used is 80, all plates. The tighter it is stacked, the better. It usually holds about 400 pieces per firing.

Fourth of July

2009-07-03T21:13:00.003+09:00

An auspicious date to open a new chapter in my pottery adventure. Tomorrow sees my work available for sale in the USA for the first time!

I know there have been many people out there waiting for this to happen, particularly since the Ceramics Monthly feature. The truth is that I have been too busy here in Japan to pursue international galleries. (Which is also why I haven't written any blog entries recently, but that's another story!)

My good friend Gary Jacketti has recently opened a gallery, BEACON ART....SHORTWAVE GALLERY in Stone Harbour, New Jersey, and I have sent him a small selection of work, thirty pieces in total, including Tea Ceremony ware. Gary was involved with the early World Art Educators Workshops here in Mashiko, and is a highly accomplished sculptor and artist in his own right. I wish him all the best with his new gallery, and if you are in the area by all means drop in and check out the work!

Vanished

2009-06-04T22:37:00.004+09:00

I spent hours last night writing an entry to create a word picture for you. It described my day in fine detail from the rising of the sun to laying down my head to rest. I hit the publish button and it vanished as completely as if it had never been. Only the first paragraph remained, truncated. I decided it was late and I would do best to sleep and rework it in the morning. It did make me laugh though.

We live our lives like that, we experience the world and engrave it in our hearts. No one can see the world as we do, feel our feelings or know all the moments of our souls. When the day, the hour, the instant is gone it remains only in our minds eye.

When I make pots, I give form to my feelings about those moments. I try to share the joy that I feel in living by creating vessels that will enrich other peoples moments. Long after my day is gone, those pots will continue to touch peoples lives and hopefully bring them happiness. I will not know. My own happiness is here today, every moment of my life. It is the sum of all that I have learned and have become through my experiences, and it is the gratitude I feel for the blessings that I have. It is not some distant destination, it is here and now for that is all any of us truly possess.

Imagination

2009-06-03T22:27:00.006+09:00

The exhibition continues, with many friends and customers, old and new, sparing the time to visit me here and enjoy the new works. Alas and alack, I find myself bereft of the appropriate software to download any photos. On top of that, most of the best work is walking out the door before I can photograph it anyway!
So, without visuals, I will try to paint you a picture.
The morning light filters softly through the paper shoji screens, and I wake to an unfamiliar ceiling. It is covered with a layer of fine bamboo, darkened by charcoal fumes, completely unlike the ceiling of my bedroom at home (undressed cedar with a screw missing). I turn my leaden head to take in the rest of my surroundings, a tea room, a shelf of my tea bowls, tea caddies, water vessels and vases. A sign above me says in Japanese characters "帰庵”, Ki An, a tea room to come home to. I realize suddenly where I am, just feet away from the busiest street in Tokyo, 150 km from home, from Mika and the children, but safe at another sort of home. For nine days every year, for the last sixteen years, this has been my home.

Mingei

2009-05-31T00:05:00.006+09:00

So much has happened I don't know where to begin.
I am sitting in the Ebiya Gallery in Nihombashi, it is late and all the guests have left after the opening party. This is my sixteenth exhibition here, and now I have the gallery to myself. The last few weeks/months have been so hectic I haven't had time to scratch myself. It is only after the exhibition begins that I can catch my breath. I will be here for a week, so each night I will try to catch up on one of the exciting episodes that have occupied my time.
For tonight I would like to just talk about mingei, as it has been featuring significantly in my recent endeavours. Having studied under Shimaoka sensei both his and mingei's influence are unavoidably entwined in my work and philosophy. There seems to have been a great deal of discussion about the meaning of mingei this year, particularly its definition and place in modern society. So, let's start from there.
Mingei is a word which was invented by Yanagi Soetsu in 1926. It is a contraction of the phrase "minshuteki kogei" , which has been, I believe, unfairly translated as "folk craft". In fact "Minshuteki" means "Democratic", and I would translate "Kogei" as "Art", though it is labelled "Craft" by many, and the definition of "Art" is so blurry as to be almost meaningless; the "Craft vs Art" argument doubly so. Art embraces such a plethora of meanings that everything from War to Palmistry is considered "The Art Of....". There is a huge difference in the implications of "Democratic Art" as opposed to "Folk Craft", wouldn't you agree?
What then is "Art", and what is "Democracy"? My goodness gracious I have opened a can of worms! "Kogei" in Japanese I feel would be best literally translated as the "Skill of Making things". "Art", the associated words "Bijutsu" and "Geijutsu" are a much bigger discussion, let us deal with that another day.
"Democracy", a concept with which the ancient Greeks blessed the world, has more recently been defined in political terms as " Government of the people, by the people for the people". The man who said "All great art is political" was a politician, not an artist. I don't believe that Yanagi sensei had government in mind when he coined the term, so let us put it together as "The skill of making things of the people, by the people for the people". Cumbersome, but nevertheless relevant. If at this stage you feel that you don't fit into any of the aforesaid categories (ie people, people or people) then you may stop reading any time you like.
Simply put, Yanagi felt that the objects created by a traditional lifestyle (and that includes the lifestyle itself), not appealing to a critical audience for aesthetic plaudits, were made of necessity in the same way that nature dictates the forms of "things" as an expedient to their existential efficiency. No pretense or "Artifice", merely the most effective use of available natural materials to achieve a healthy and humanistic lifestyle. Nature makes things in the most efficient way possible, bound by the laws of physics, and they are always beautiful. In a traditional society humans live lives that are bound to the rhythm of nature. They do not distance themselves from those constraints but embrace them as common condition of existence. Consequentially they find solutions to problems of survival by utilizing those same laws in as efficient a method as possible with the materials at hand which are, as a matter of course, beautiful. They do not set out to make something beautiful in the Ars Gratia Artis sense, but as a result of shedding unnecessary adornment achieve a beauty of uncluttered and healthy efficiency. That is Mingei in its essential form.

The Mingei movement, as opposed to pure mingei, acknowledged that the "traditional" lifestyle and culture of the world was doomed to extinction by the global industrialization of society. The grand homogenization had begun and an urban society which ignored natural process and deified uselessness was robbing people of their humanity. The cumulative error of fashion and ephemeral, superficial gratification was creating an artificial culture where sameness was the rule and humans (who are by nature like nature and infinitely variable) were losing their sense of self and self purpose.
The objective of the Mingei movement was to consciously incorporate the aesthetics of traditional MINGEI into products which were relevant to modern lifestyle, thus rehumanising a rapidly desensitised society.

Cool.

The problem is that, a generation later, so called Mingei artists are now making "mingei-like" virtually useless objet d'art which is irrelevant to the needs of modern society. They are either mistaking regurgitation for tradition and producing things people neither need nor want, or are equating technique with tradition and producing work which looks fine but is unpleasant to use.
I asked Shimaoka sensei one day, when I was wedging clay for him in his studio, " What is the future of mingei?"
He said, "Euan, you always ask difficult things," and laughed.
"Mingei as such is finished. Traditional society is unable to compete with the luxury of materialism. It is the task of the mingei artist, however, to make work which reminds people of their individuality and their place in the natural world. To make work in line with the principles of mingei and a natural, traditional society, which people can use every day and be reminded of their own humanity and the beauty of life." Of course that's a translation of what I seem to remember he said in Japanese, so it's probably just my interpretation.
For me, the challenge has been to discover that which does not change, the things which all people in all cultures identify with because we are all human. I have discovered that it is as simple as asking myself, "What do I love?"
Regardless of culture, race, religion, language or education; every single person on earth can look at a sunset every day and be moved by its beauty. Though we individually may have preferences, we all love delicious, fragrant and wholesome food. There are intrinsic commonalities that bind us one to another, and we have more in common than we have that differ. Though the differences are obtrusive, they are superficial.
I am not a people, I am a person. All of humanity is made of individuals like me, like you. I will continue to use all of my skill to make things that I personally find beautiful and useful, of a personal nature, by this person, for the person I love. That's Mingei.

Something Fishy?

2009-04-15T07:57:00.005+09:00

Easter snuck up on me again this year! You see it's not on the Japanese calendar and, as the dates change every year, it's a bit hard to make work schedules without clashing. It's also hard to explain that the first Friday, Saturday and Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox is a holy festival to a non christian community. It does coincide with the "Koi Nobori" season, in which Carp shaped streamers are hung in the wind to celebrate having healthy sons and to symbolise them having a "swimmingly" successful life. So as of this year the Craig household began a new tradition, in which we hang the Koi Nobori on Good Friday, the day we traditionally eat fish for Easter. The Koi Nobori remain until "Kodomo no hi" (Boy's Day) on May 5th.

For similar reasons it is impossible to get Hot Cross Buns or Easter Eggs here, so Euan and Mika Bunny have to make them themselves.

Mika Bunny bravely took on the task of hiding eggs around the back yard, occasionally impaired by the added weight of Sean.

The kids excitedly hunted around the yard till all the eggs were discovered!

And what a collection they have made!

But wait...where is Euan Bunny? Ah, that's where the clash comes in. While the egg hunting was going on I was doing a wood firing workshop for a group of thirty Japanese potters in Mashiko. One of the participants from the kiln building workshop in 2007 organised his pottery guild to do a firing in the Euan kiln at Mashiko Pottery club on Sunday (Easter Sunday!) and then a workshop here it my studio on Monday. So Sunday I spent teaching them how to fire the kiln, which fired perfectly in just 12 hours, from raw to cone 10 flat.

There were also a couple if people from Israel and Australia who joined the fray.

The greatest challenge of the weekend was fitting thirty plus people into my spatially challenged studio! They particularly wanted to see the Euan Bunny in his natural habitat, so the studio became a mini amphitheatre, with rows of people squatting, standing, climbing on wedging tables and work benches.

So this Easter started with carp, but seemed to finish with sardines!

The Word about Pottery and Food in Japan

2009-03-31T20:47:00.004+09:00

Over the last few years my collaborations with chefs has raised a lot of interest in the ceramics community both here in Japan and overseas. My greatest ally in these endeavours has of course been Touru Hashimoto from Toyoda in Nihombashi. I have gained invaluable insight into Japanese cuisine and culinary aesthetics through our friendship and have been able to share some of those experiences with many people all over the world. It also seems to have opened a few eyes here in Japan.

I received a copy of "The Four Seasons of Japanese Cuisine" (Nihon ryouri no shiki) which was officially released today. The monthly magazine for professional Japanese chefs produces this annual book every Spring. In this Issue, No.40, there is a five page article on Hashimoto san and my collaboration. It seems that this kind of collaboration has never been done before.

They came here to my pottery to do the interview with us, and the article is fantastic. If not before, then most certainly now, my work has been accepted by the professional Japanese culinary community. Hooray!

Also today the Nikkei BP website has launched the first half of a two part documentary on me and my work as part of a series entitled "Foreigners who inherit the Japanese Tradition" (Nihon no dentou wo tsugu gaikokujintachi).

I will always be Australian, but there is a commonality between human values that transcends nationality. I believe it is that common ground underlying traditional cultures that the Japanese community is recognising in my work now. Regardless of my country of birth, this is my home.

The Principles of Shino

2009-03-13T22:54:00.004+09:00

Over the past few weeks I have been asked by several potter friends about the materials for Japanese shino glazes and their equivalents in the west. I haven't actually used a shino glaze for about fifteen years, but with some of the restaurant collaborations and requests from chefs, I may soon be revisiting the shino arena.

It is probably useful to firstly put shino into a frame of reference.

Once upon a time there was a tea master named Shino Soushin (1444-1523) who directed that the potters of Mino produce a white glaze. Their solution was to coat a low iron clay, either mogusa clay or gotomaki clay, with a local feldspar, occasionally mixed with some clay to make it more user friendly. The resulting glaze, wood fired of course, tended to be slightly grey in oxidation (Nezumi Shino meaning Mouse Shino) or pearly white with red flashing in reduction.
Generally Shino glaze is accredited to the Momoyama period (1568-1600), and, yes, some of the finest shino glazes come from that period, but it had its roots in the Muromachi period (1336-1573). Interesting to note the overlap.

So...what was the feldspar?!

The simple answer is Hiratsu Shino Choseki. Choseki is Feldspar, the Kanji "長石" means "long rock" referring to the rhombic crystalline structure of feldspar. This feldspar has a high Alumina to Silica ratio, combined with fairly high Sodium/Potassium content. It is in fact the Sodium and Alumina under reduction that give the distinctive soft pink and orange flashing of Shino. Which is why Nepheline Syenite lends itself so well to shino style glazes. Compare the analyses;

Hiratsu Shino Choseki ;

SiO2 65.4
Al2O3 20.5
Fe2O3 0.09
TiO2 0.01
CaO 0.14
MgO 0.03
K2O 6.89
Na2O 5.13
Ignition loss 1.59

Nepheline Syenite;

SiO2 60.1
Al2O3 23
Fe2O3 0.09
TiO2 0.02
CaO 0.37
MgO 0.02
K2O 4.75
Na2O 10.6
Ignition loss 0.47

Many recipes have been based on this material, especially with its high sodium content. With the addition of up to 40% Clay (Ball clay, Kaolin, Porcelain, Terracotta or Fire clay) a huge range of variations can be achieved.

The representative Ball clays added to the feldspar in Japan were either Gairome;

SiO2 49.72
Al2O3 34.55
Fe2O3 1.23
CaO 0.16
MgO 0.24
K2O 0.74
Ignition loss 12.8

Or Kibushi Nendo;

SiO2 48.56
Al2O3 33.48
Fe2O3 0.87
CaO 0.30
MgO 0.15
K2O 0.36
Na2O 0.63
TiO2 0.12
Ignition loss 15.76

Other recipes have taken note of the high alumina to silica and high Alkaline flux and have included Soda ash into the mix. Others depend on fluxes other than Soda, the most significant being Lithium. In the west many Shino glazes use Spodumene as the base, which is basically;

Li2O. Al2O3. 4SiO2

This is as rare as hens teeth in Japan, and the best replacement is Petalite;

Li2O. Al2O3. 8SiO2

Of course the Silica present in the rest of the glaze needs to be reduced to compensate. This can sometimes be done by replacing Kaolin for Ball Clay, but it is important to test with the materials one has at hand, as there are huge regional variations. Alternatively an addition of Lithium Carbonate and Alumina will compensate, but you will need to do the math!

It is this high alumina, high alkaline flux that gives my pottery its distinctive peach blush, as I am using a porcelaineous, high alumina, low iron, clay in a wood firing, from which the natural salts vaporise from the wood, with the addition of a small amount of soda ash at the end of the firing. Not Shino, but based on the same principles.

There are books that purport to tell the secrets of Japanese wood firing, with lists of "American" shino recipes and no examples of any actual representative Japanese ceramics whatsoever. OK, I can live with that. As recipes they stay within the parameters of the original Hiratsu Shino style, and if you are satisfied with that, fine.

But that is NOT all, oh no that is not ALL!

Japanese shino glazes are not all made with Hiratsu Shino Choseki, and not all flashing is Soda/Alumina. One must not forget our old friend Iron, who so happily serves the potter with a huge gamut of glaze effects.

"And so", said the Cat in the Hat, "So, so, so, I will show you another good trick that I know!"

As my sempai Ken Matsuzaki demonstrates so well, any feldspar can make a Shino, given the presence of Iron either underneath the glaze or within range of the external glaze surface. It is the nature of Iron oxide that in a heavy reduction atmosphere, between the temperatures of 1090 and 1130, over an extended period of time, it will volatise and migrate to the surface of the glaze. This must be done before the glaze cinters, sealing it and preventing the Iron from seeping through the porous glaze matrix. By painting a decoration in Iron under the glaze, or by utilizing a small amount of Iron in or on the body beneath the glaze an Iron blush can be created on the opalescent white feldspathic glaze. A wash of Iron inside a saggar surrounding the work can give a similar effect.

Maintaining a heavy reduction during cooling is essential, but in the end the micro fine layer of Iron will re oxidize to give the distinctive Shino blush. Merely seeing Iron through a semi transparent glaze is not Shino. There is a lustre and warmth that springs from the natural process which makes shino special. Colours that resonate with sunrises and sunsets, that remind us of the soft warmth of human skin.

The Japanese traditional teaching system does not put the onus on the teacher to teach; It is the responsibility of the student to actively learn. Shimaoka sensei told me that there are no secrets. You just need to ask the right questions.

MASHIKO

2009-03-08T20:46:00.009+09:00

Being busy is a good thing, but even I have limits. Since my last entry I have had a successful three person exhibition at Takashimaya department store in Nihombashi, Tokyo, with Penny Simpson and Peter Seabridge; A three day workshop for the International School of the Sacred Heart; Completed the order for G'drop and I am right now in the middle of a solo exhibition at the Kyohan 6 Gallery in Mashiko. So please forgive me for the extended silence!

This is my first exhibition in Mashiko this century, having had a number of exhibitions here during the nineties. In fact it's my first exhibition in Tochigi prefecture in four years, the last one being at Gallery Ciel in Utsunomiya. I have been concentrating on exhibitions in Tokyo, Saitama, Miyagi and other areas of Japan as well as overseas, and I have neglected to do anything locally for far too long.

The Gallery is directed by Ikuzo Fujiwara, an exceptional architectural ceramicist and sculptor who studied at the Kawai pottery in Kyoto. I knew that he was going to write a comment for the invitation card, but did not see it until the cards actually arrived. Here is the translation.

Concerning Euan Craig

Quite some time has passed since I visited his studio and he showed me the kiln that he developed.
Very efficient, burning only recycled wood, these days it would be referred to as an “Eco-Kiln”. I was impressed by his ingeniously considered solutions, his uniquely rational way of reforming anything into a personal method.

His approach to “The Art of Function” is also unique. What kind of food will be served on his vessels? How his works will be coordinated as tableware? He takes steps to address these issues, to make work to fulfil those purposes and achieves a degree of total design that a potter would not normally undertake.

Vessels that come to life through the act of use; what simple and powerful works these are.
And yet, not stopping there, he turns “The Art of Function” into “The Function of Art”, striving to change the Art of Function into an even more positive force. A fine example of this is the unique flame colour of his work. His original porcelaineous body brings with it the warm flavour of clay.

By taking that extra step, his work holds the power to alter peoples’ lifestyles. This is what I would hope is the essence of the art of function.

When one thinks of “Mingei” in global terms, it can be said that his stance is pointing a way forward for the inheritance of “mingei” in the modern age.
By all means, I invite you to consider his work.

Ikuzo Fujiwara
Director
Kyohan 6 Gallery
Mashiko, Japan
February 2009

This is my twentieth year in Mashiko, and I came here with a hunger to learn and understand the Japanese tradition. I have learnt a great deal about myself in that time, and have come to understand that there are commonalities that we all share as humans that transcend race or culture. I am honoured to have been accepted here in the home of Mingei, not as a guest, but as a fellow craftsman.

G'DROP

2009-01-13T09:21:00.004+09:00

Happy New Year everyone!

It has been a busy and exciting time since my last entry. My last big job for the year was an order for the wine bar and restaurant in Nihombashi, G'Drop. You may have read about it in Ceramics Monthly. From January 5th till the end of March the restaurant will be serving all of their cuisine on my dishes. The prices are very reasonable and the food is delicious. They are open for lunch and dinner, Monday to Friday.

Earlier in the year I began making prototypes for this restaurant, but we only nailed down the final designs and numbers at the start of December, only three weeks before we were to go to Australia! So ensued a marathon production cycle, which included an emergency increase in shelving.

It is hard to explain the sheer volume of work involved in producing a range of twelve designs for a sixty seat restaurant. In order to ensure 100% "A" grade work sometimes twice the number of pots need to be made.

I got the order finished and delivered on the day before we left, still warm from the kiln.

We then went to Australia for two weeks with my family and a great adventure for the kids.

When we got back there was a message on the phone... they had started using the pots and the response was great! But they needed to talk to me about the pots. So the day after we got home I drove the family down for lunch in Nihombashi.

The food was fantastic, and especially exciting for the kids as all the pots were made by Daddy! It turned out that what the restaurant needed to talk to me about was MORE POTS! The menu has expanded from the original plan and they need more pots for the extra course.

They would also like to do a signature dinner event in early February where our guests can enjoy the food and dishes with the Miyake and Craig families. More information as it comes to hand!

So it's back to the wheel where I belong.

Back in the kitchen

2008-12-04T20:23:00.007+09:00

How were the results of the last firing? The colour was excellent and there were very few losses. I was really pleased with the evenness of the firing, with the black glaze coming out amazingly well from top to bottom. These dinner plates were from the top shelf and the bottom shelf. The difference is barely noticable, the edge of the glaze turning amber on the left hand plate.

You'll have to wait until I get the photos to see what the chef has done with them, but today was my first chance to try them myself. I always like to test the new work in my own kitchen first, it's the best way to find out the strengths and weaknesses. Lunch today was for three, as Rohan was home from school with a cold, so I tried out three of the new designs. It is interesting to compare the same food on different vessels. For Rohan, who is six, I chose this 7 sun (21cm) plate with slip trailing on the edge. "Sun" (the "u" is pronounced "oo" as in "foot") is the traditional Japanese inch, 3.03cm. Ten "Sun" make One "Shaku", the old Japanese foot. Many Japanese potters, chefs and craftsmen still use the old measurements.

I finely chopped some "Negi" from the garden, which is like a Japanese leek, and lightly fried it with diced celery in extra virgin olive oil. To this I added a small can of tuna and a half glass of light red wine. The wine was made by one of my friends from Yamanashi and he gave it to me at the exhibition opening to bring home to Mika....she let me have half a glass. I served her pasta on a 9 sun (27cm) celadon dinner plate.

After the wine had reduced to half I added black olives and a can of whole tomatoes, then simmered it down till it thickened. A pinch of salt to finish, then I served it on the pasta with avocado topping. (Avocados were cheap this week, 99 yen each!) My plate was a 9 sun "Hira zara". When we sat down to eat we added some freshly ground black pepper and a sprinkle of Parmesan. I'm not sure which plate worked best with the food, but it all tasted delicious!

St Ives and 5 watts

2008-12-03T08:45:00.011+09:00

I seem to have magically gone from the middle of a firing to the middle of an exhibition! My solo show at Gallery St Ives started on Saturday and goes until Sunday December 7th. During the exhibition the french bistro three doors from the gallery, Cafe 5 Watts, is serving all of their food on my dishes. The exhibition itself is 260 pieces, and I have provided 100 pieces to the restaurant to use during the exhibition. The pots were designed in collaboration with the owner, Aoki san, and the chef, Motoki san, but they didn't see the actual finished pieces until very late on Friday night! I was quite flustered when I was doing final preparations and forgot to take my camera to Tokyo, so I'll show you the meal when I get the photos from the restaurant.

I finished the last firing on Wednesday of last week and have been so busy since that my blog is still only at 600 degrees!

The next step in the firing after 600 is to start stoking above the grate at the back of each fire box. I throw 5 pieces of wood at random to the back of the fire box and put a full bundle under the grate. If you stoke at the front of the grate the flame will blow back in you face seeking oxygen. Stoking at the back above the grate keeps the flam all inside the kiln. The wood under the grate stabilizes reduction and preheats the air going into the kiln before it hits the wood at the back.

When the wood is exhausted at the top, stoke again. Make sure that you stoke alternately, don't stoke both fire boxes at the same time. While one is freshly stoked and reducing, the other is neutral or oxidizing and giving heat rise. By alternating stokes you can maintain reduction and heat rise.

The bottom wood will take about an hour to burn out.

When it does restoke with a fresh bundle.

By 900 degrees a reduction flame will come out of the blow hole at the top of the kiln every time you stoke. I generally close the damper down to about half at this point.

When this flame vanishes it is time to stoke the other fire box. The kiln will be getting hungrier by now and you need to change your stoke.

This wood is thin and has lots of surface area, so continuing to stoke at random will give a heavy reduction but the wood will burn out without recovering any heat rise. To fix this problem I stack the wood in wads of five planks and stoke in three stages; right, left, middle. Once again I alternate stoking time between the two fire boxes.

When the right side burns out it looks like this.

Then I stoke it by placing the wad of wood at the front of the grate and gently pushing it back with a metal rod.

The left side will then burn out.

I then stoke it in the same way.

Then the middle will burn out ready to stoke.

When I saw the photo of stoking the middle, I realized that perhaps I wasn't firing alone after all. I do not know who the face in the flames is on the top left, but the firing was perfect so whoever they are, they're on my side!

At about 1100 the balance between carbon and oxygen changes. The kiln will reduce heavily with no heat rise, unless you either decrease the carbon by stoking less or increase the oxygen by opening the damper to pull more draft into the kiln. By now you have a very healthy reduction flame blasting out the blow hole. Stoke when it sucks back in and NOT before or you will choke the kiln.

By 1200 + there will be flame coming out of the top of the chimney.

The fireboxes remain open throughout the firing and airflow is controlled by the chimney damper and stoking volume.

13 hours after I lit the kiln the pyro is reading 1273, but the Seger cone 10 is flat, which means that the heat work is 1300. I let the kiln crash cool down to 1100 then put one last bundle of wood in the bottom on each side and close it up. I unpack 36 hours later when the kiln is below 70 degrees. This firing took 70 bundles of wood at 130yen per bundle.

The pots came out GREAT!

Wood firing

2008-11-26T11:50:00.007+09:00

I am firing my wood kiln as I write. This is my last firing before my exhibition at Gallery St Ives, which starts on Saturday. Here is half a kiln load of pots out to dry on Monday.

I rebuilt this kiln 9 years ago and have fired it once a month since. That makes this the 108th firing in this kiln. The old kiln in my Nanai studio was fired 50 times before we knocked it down and moved it here. The bricks were second hand to begin with so...the door bricks are crusty. Beyond crusty; fragmented, lumpy and misshapen.

Instead of looking like a nice mosaic the door was looking like a crazy paving colander. Firing before last I sealed up the door with fire clay, for the first time in fifteen years, just to hold it together.

As a result I got a much heavier reduction and, as there was nowhere for the flame to escape through the door, I had to open up the damper completely to compensate. My firing has changed, not dramatically, but enough to warrant a new firing record for future reference.

In the door I have left a spy hole top and bottom with cones visible through them. There is also a quarter brick size "blow hole" at the very top of the arch to help guage reduction later in the firing. The pyrometer is positioned in the door at the top left. This means it reacts more to the left firebox which must be taken into account if using the pyro to time your stoking.

It is important to not push the pyro too far in as the outer casing can be damaged by the direct flame. As long as the tip is protruding into the kiln it should read accurately. Remember, the pyro is only a guide, it measures air temperature not heat work.

The firewood I am using is broken up palettes and boxes from Japan tobacco. A recycle company here cuts them to 40cm lengths and ties them into bundles of 21 planks. Each bundle weighs about 6kg.

I like to have two firings worth stacked on hand. I would expect to use about 60 to seventy bundles per firing. Each bundle costs 130yen.

Up until 600 degrees I keep the fire at the front of the fire box under the grate, as far away from the pots as possible. There is a sudden expansion of the silica in the clay at 573 degrees, called the alpha/beta quartz conversion. Once this point is passed the possibility of the pots cracking is minimal. As I don't bisque fire, I take the first 600 degrees very slowly, usually 7 hours, to avoid cracking the raw pots. Just under 100 degrees per hour.

During this period I stoke both fire mouths simultaneously with five pieces of wood each. The wood is cross hatched so as to allow oxygen to reach every surface. After 400 degrees I start to push the embers back with each new stoke, building up a heat mass in the fire box. Each time you stoke the temperature will drop, sometimes up to 10 or 20 degrees, then start to climb again. The temperature will peak again, then start to drop, at which point you need to stoke again. At the beginning of the firing there is fifteen to twenty minutes between stokes, but by 500+ you need to stoke every five minutes or so. This will vary for every different firing, type and shape of wood.

I need to concentrate on the firing now so I shall continue this later. Wish me luck!

Salt and Pepper

2008-11-14T23:15:00.003+09:00

Some of you may remember my trip to the Niigata sea side earlier this year. While I was there I filled a twenty litre tank with sea water for Canaan to make salt. I have fond memories of lugging it home across the moonlit rice paddies from the village hall. Well, now that it is getting colder and we are lighting the wood stove everyday, it seems a good chance to make good use of the heat.

While the rest of our lives go on, while pots are being made and deadlines being met. While children are being sent off to school or meals are being made, a fry pan full of filtered sea water slowly evaporates on the stove.

By the end of the day all the water is gone and we have a fry pan full of salt crystals. From one litre of sea water we get about 30 grams of salt, so eventually we should have about 600 grams of sea salt. I already use it in the cooking, and it has a mellower flavour than rock salt.

Mika took this snap shot of me photographing the salt and pepper, and it seems that I have more in common with it than I thought.

Friends in Mashiko

2008-11-12T21:00:00.003+09:00

Michael Warner and Kate Carruthers came to visit us on their way to Australia from their pottery "Starfish Ceramics" on Mull in Scotland. During their stay we visited the Hamada Museum in Mashiko. The original Hamada pottery is now a reference museum, and the current Hamada pottery has been moved next door. Sitting at the kick wheel brought back fond memories of my time at Shimaokas.

Of course Hamada sensei himself usually worked cross legged at the hand wheel. A stick would be notched into the hollows at the edge of the wheel and the wheel "wound up", then momentum would keep it spinning long enough to centre, form the basic shape and then "wound up" again to finish the pot. Very soft clay and slow revolutions makes the process very expressive. Without the hum of the electric wheel, with a veiw of the garden through the shoji screens, it could not help but imbue his pots with a great sense of peace.

In the garden stand a pair of statues of sheep. Mika wondered if he put them there to remind him of his time in england. The leaves are turning to orange as the autumn gets colder.

Beside the workshop firewood is stacked between bamboo to warm the space through winter. Fire was always a danger with thatched rooves, so the Kanji for water is marked in the end of the thatch, along with a turtle to ward off fire.

Many of the buildings are thatched in the traditional way. They are all buildings which Hamada moved to the compound from other parts of Japan to preserve them. This guest house was moved to the site on horse and dray on dirt roads. Some of the beams are so massive they had to be moved by two drays in tandem.

We let ourselves get too busy and flustered to take notice of the beauty that surrounds us. It is that simple beauty that inspire Hamadas work and which we must try to discover in our own lives, not only for our own sakes, but for generations to come.

The Art of Tea

2008-11-05T08:43:00.009+09:00

I was talking with a third generation Japanese potter and the curator of a major western public art gallery a few years ago, about Tea Bowls. "Why, " asked the potter, "Do western potters insist on making tea bowls when they have no understanding of their use?"

The curator and I mulled over the question and came to the conclusion that there were two reasons, firstly a recognition of the tea bowl as a pinnacle of functional art and therefore worthy of emulation, and secondly a kind of syllogism. The thinking goes like this: Great potters make tea bowls so if one makes tea bowls one must be a great potter. Unfortunately it doesn't quite work like that. One of the most important conditions of making functional ceramics is being familiar with the function.

AND SO.....

After years of deliberation Steve Tootell and I finally did something about it. This years World Art Educators Workshop , the Art of Tea, focused on understanding the basics of tea ware and Japanese "kaiseki ryouri" functional ware through a hands on experience of their function.

Twenty participants from around the globe gathered in Tokyo at the pottery studio of the International School of the Sacred Heart on Friday morning (Oct. 24th) for a demonstration first and then hands on production of functional ware designed for a specific Japanese meal. This included slab plates, mold making, throwing, trimming and altering forms.

On Friday afternoon we all headed to Kamakura to the ancestral home and traditional tea house of Noriko Saito sensei. Saito Sensei is a Master of the Omote Senkei school of tea, and the tea room "Sai An" was the focus for revitalising the tea ceremony during the post war period. Here the participants were able to experience the tea ceremony first hand with step by step instruction. Each member took turns making the tea from the hosts perspective and also receiving the tea as a guest. Saito sensei explained the philosophy of tea and tea ware, emphasizing that a tea bowl is only one part of the greater artwork which is the tea ceremony itself, and should form an harmonious focal point without being obtrusive. Even the weather becomes part of the experience, the sound of the rain being a foil to the quiet of the tatami room, the soft natural light from the garden, the scent of the wet leaves and soil wafting in on the light breeze blending with the fragrance of the tea and the flavour of the sweets. The art of simplicity; the art of function.

With this experience fresh in our hearts, the taste of the tea still on our lips, we hurried back to the studio for a demonstration of the making of tea bowls by Masakazu Kusakabe Sensei. He analysed and demonstrated a wide variety of traditional and contemporary forms and techniques, then the participants made their own tea bowls based now upon a new understanding of their function in context.

Saturday morning we focused on the making of other tea ware, as the tea ceremony entails more than just a bowl. The "Kensui" for taking the used water, the "mizusashi" for the fresh water, the tea caddies and the lid rest, a wide variety of vessels are needed.

At lunch time we went to Nihombashi, the centre of Japan, to experience fine Japanese cuisine. Master Chef Touru Hashimoto at Kappo Toyoda restaurant explained and demonstrated the selection, preparation and serving of "Ocha Kaiseki", and we enjoyed a full course kaiseki lunch. Kappo Toyoda was established in 1863, when Nihombashi was a market place full of fresh fish from Tokyo bay. Hashimoto san is the fifth generation owner chef, and was head chef for the Japanese embassy in Germany. He explained that "Kaiseki", like the tea ceremony, was an extension and a refinement of traditional Japanese home hospitality, striving to bring peace, comfort and happiness to the weary traveller. The meal which was served utilised the vessels which had been demonstrated the previous day, once again putting the vessel into its functional context.

After lunch we moved on to Ebiya Bijutsu Ten, the antique gallery in Nihombashi where I hold my annual exhibition. Established in Kyoto in 1673, Ebiya came to Nihombashi as a purveyor to the imperial household with the Meiji emperor. Masahiro Miyake, the ninth generation owner, showed us a range of historic tea bowls, from kourai chawan, commissioned from Korean potteries by the Tokugawa shogunate, through a variety of Japanese bowls explaining their history and provenance, to two fine examples of black and red raku tea bowls. We were able to hold these bowls, feel their weight and proportions. With an understanding of their function these historic bowls brought the reality of fine tea bowls into sharp focus. Also in the gallery were a variety of other historic tea ware, include the "chashaku" tea spoons in bamboo and ivory.

Once again we returned to the studio to glaze raku tea bowls that I had prepared earlier, and sake cups by Kusakabe san.

On Sunday morning we raku fired the bowls and cups, preparing tea for each other in the freshly fired bowls. I brought out the youhen tea bowl which Shimaoka sensei had given me as a graduation present and prepared a cup of tea for Kusakabe san, and the participants each examined the bowl in context. Every one went home with a wealth of experience and information, and a better understanding of tea bowls, functional ware, and the art of tea.

Halloween feast!

2008-11-01T22:10:00.003+09:00

Anyone for a glass of blood? Well perhaps some vegetable juice will have to do.

Halloween has come again and the kids all masked up for the occassion.

Of course we had to have a ghoulish feast, with green rice, blood and guts (tomato and capsicum curry), eyeballs in puss (quaill egg curry), and fingers in gravy (curried sausages).

The most time consuming job was trimming fingernails, but I must admit it was finger licking good!

Pottery Festivals

2008-10-30T08:36:00.004+09:00

Along with the falling leaves, Autumn brings a flurry of pottery events each year.

Weekend before last was the "Murata Machi Kura no Toukiichi", a pottery festival in Miyagi prefecture, at which I have been exhibiting for 7 years now. Each year the site of each display is decided by ballot so that the 66 potters have a fair chance of displaying their work in the various　historic storage houses that form the venue.

It is a chance for me to meet the customers, talk with them, share with them, and I have made some very good friends. There is always joking and laughter, and occasionally beer, but most of all it is an opportunity for communication. Tens of thousands of people gather to veiw the works, meet the artists and purchase pottery, and I spend each day explaining the techniques, the lifestyle and the philosophy that are inherent in the creation of the work. The guests also share with me about their needs and their impressions, and often customers return every year bringing stories of how my pottery has become part of their lifestyle.

Among the many people who I look forward to meeting are some who were unfortunately unable to attend this year through illness, and I pray for your speedy recovery.

The Mashiko Pottery Festival starts on Saturday November 1st and goes until the 4th, and you will find me there everyday at the Toubou Mashiyama, on top of the hill in the main street, right opposite the public lavatory ( very handy)! If you're in the area, drop in for a chat and maybe even an ice cold pint. Cheers!

Thank you!

2008-08-22T22:10:00.008+09:00

Being busy is a good thing. Finding a balance between making, selling and being with my family is not always easy. It was wonderful to meet with all of the people who visited my exhibition at Takashimaya, but I could only be there for seven days out of the total three weeks. Thank you all for coming, and I'm sorry to those of you I missed.

Takashimaya was followed a week later by an exhibition at "Utsuwazaka" in Sakado in Saitama Prefecture. Once again the exhibition was quite long and I was unable to be there except for the last weekend. The gallery owner, Chiba san, was very understanding. Though this was my first exhibition with him he has been dealing in my work through a Mashiko gallery for a number of years. He also knows that I put my family first, and if they need me here, then here is where I choose to be.

The work in the two shows was different, Takashimaya focusing on western cuisine, Utsuwazaka on Japanese. The common thread was vessels designed to enhance and bring out the best in the food, pots to bring joy to the user. It is always important to realise that completion of the vessel is in the hands of the user, and I trust the user to bring out the best in the work, just as I have learnt to trust the forces of nature in my work process and surrender control to them.

When doing signature dinners I design the work in collaboration with professional chefs, but then surrender the work into their control. I trust the chef. In these exhibitions the gallery staff displayed the work for me, in ways I would not have done myself. They are professionals in their field.

The table coordination at Takashimaya, for example, incorporated crystal, silver and lacquer ware by other artists as an accent to my work. It put my ceramics in perspective, as it would be rare to serve a meal with only my vessels.

Even though I work alone in my studio, I am not making my pots for me. Yes, they are a personal expression of my perception of beauty and function, but I make them for the people I love. By giving up control to nature, to the user, to other professionals, it allows the work to go beyond my abilities and become part of a greater work.

TAKASHIMAYA EXHIBITION

2008-08-19T06:52:00.003+09:00

Tomorrow is the opening of my exhibition at Takashimaya department store in Shinjuku, Tokyo. It will be my first exhibition at a department store. The venue is New York Takashimaya Home, on the 10th floor of the Shinjuku Times Square Takashimaya Department Store, a space dedicated to western style table ware, and they have been displaying a small selection of my work for the last year.

The focus of this exhibition is tableware for western cuisine, vessels for eating and drinking in the tradition of my native culture.

The exhibition starts tomorrow, August 20th, and continues until September 9th. I will be at the gallery on August 20, 23, 24 and September 6, 7, 8, 9. If you find yourself in Tokyo at that time, please come and visit!

How to build a kiln in just 4 days!

2008-07-29T07:38:00.004+09:00

Welcome back to blog land! We have been off the air for a little while due to computer crash, but we're back on line and ready to go! It's a fortnight since my return from the UK, and lots has been going on, but before any of that I need to review Steve Tootells kiln building project in North Wales.

In earlier blogs you will find a layer by layer description of the building of Laura Inoues kiln in Nagano, and a series about the kiln building workshop in Mashiko. Every project is different, and it is important to be flexible. With great thanks to David Frith and Steve Tootell, the kiln shed was built, the floor was beautifully flat and level, and all the building materials were on site ready. The only foundations that needed to be finished were under the chimney, and Daniel, Nicola and I finished that off first thing on the first day, so that the chimney could be started on day two.

Steve did the first layer of bricks dry with bricks that had a channel underneath. This will allow air to get underneath the kiln, reducing heat stress on the slab during the firing and preventing moisture build up between firings.

The next few layers of hard fire bricks up to the fire grate was the same as the other kilns, save that David has a brick cutting machine! The proportions of this kiln is 6 brick lengths deep and 6.75 brick lengths wide. The three quarter brick length is the width of the exit flue. By careful cutting and laying of the bricks only six bricks need to be cut for the second layer, then one brick per layer after that.

Fire clay was used instead of mortar. I prefer fire clay to mortar, as mortar sticks the brick together too hard, making repair to the kiln difficult later, and it dries very quickly making adjustments during brick laying difficult. I find fire clay is better, and usually cheaper. The main objective is not so much to bond the brick together as with a brick building, but to fill any gaps between the bricks and seal the kiln. A metal frame is set around the kiln to give mechanical support to the kiln, and the kiln needs to flex to accommodate expansion and contraction during firing. Mix the fire clay into a large container of water using a glaze mixer and you can adjust the mixture thickness as you go. When it is the consistency of thick custard that should be fine. the bricks can then be dipped into this mixture and laid directly. The fire clay should only be about one or two millimetres thick between layers. If you find that there are variations in brick size a thicker mixture can be made by adding fine grog to the fire clay and this can then be used to make a thicker layer of mortar where necessary.

The first real challenge was the fire grate. In japan I use "I" shaped kiln props on their edge for the fire grate, but these are not available in the UK. A metal fire grate could be used, but it burns out fairly quickly, meaning extra running cost, and can cause iron spotting on the pots.

Our solution was to use thick cylindrical kiln props, which Steve had acquired from Stoke on Trent, on their side, set through the wall so that they can be replaced if necessary by sliding new ones in from the outside. We decided to finish work on the first day after the fire grate was finished.

Our next big challenge was the kiln floor. Double length bricks are apparently unavailable in the UK, so to bridge the fire boxes and make the kiln floor we had to use one and a half length bricks. That is in fact the exact width of the fire box so we made a step of one eighth brick each side on the layer below and corbelled the floor layer.

The outer walls and chimney were then constructed, regularly checking for squareness and level. The walls of this kiln are in fact lower than the kilns of this design that I have previously built. That is because the arch bricks for this kiln had been taken from an old kiln and we intended to use the original arch former. As that arch was deeper, we made the walls lower so that the top of the inside arch was the same height as my original kiln design, and so the inside volume and flame flow would be the same. Day two finished when we had finished the outside walls and the chimney damper.

On day three we filled the inside walls of the kiln with insulating fire brick. These are laid dry, that is without fire clay, so that they can slide against each other as they expand and contract in the firing with cracking. This means however that the there will be a slight height difference between the inside and the outside wall equivalent to the outside walls fire clay thickness. This gap is filled by cutting bricks on the inside wall to come up level with the outside wall.

A soldier course of bricks laid side by side on top of that, bridging both layers, ties the wall together and gives a solid base from which to spring the arch. The rest of day three was spent re welding the metal frame, which must be attached to the kiln before the arch goes on.

On day four we addressed the arch. The original arch former had shrunk over the years so a new arch former was made by Nicola and Daniel. A frame was constructed underneath the arch former so that when the bricks had been placed the frame could be collapsed and the arch former just drop out.

The place in Czech where the Seko twins work has a long history of ceramics, and the kiln builders there do not interlock the arch bricks, thus avoiding horizontal stress on the arch and eliminating cracking across the joints. So, we tried that method on this kiln. We also made the arch shorter, so that the kiln door could be butted up against it instead of trying to fit bricks under the arch every firing.

Once the arch was up we filled in the back wall, sealed the outside of the arch with fire clay, then a layer of ceramic fibre.

On top of the fibre will spread a thin layer of refractory adobe, then a layer of metal reinforcing mesh and the a thick layer of adobe. The adobe was made from fire clay, grog, sand, cement, sawdust and vermiculite, mixed with water to a soft workable consistency. Daniel and Nicola finished the chimney and we put up the chimney frame.

Lo and behold, an elegant and most excellent kiln!

Throughout the whole process, our support team, Jane Tootell and Nicola's fiance Ina, provided us with delicious vittles, excellent coffee and copious amounts of the fuel necessary for any great endeavour, beer!

Everyone was so happy and contented they even laughed at my endless stream of jokes. Without our support team none of this would have been possible.

ODYN GAN IWAN

2008-07-16T20:43:00.004+09:00

Since July 1st I have been in Denbigh, North Wales in the UK building and firing one of my kilns with Steve Tootell. The site was provided by David and Margaret Frith, and Nicola and Daniel Seko from the Czech Republic flew across to help. Nicola and Daniel have already built one of these kilns at their own studio in Czech, so their experience helped to make the kiln go up lickety split!

Michael Warner was also scheduled to come down from the Isle of Mull, but his fiance, Kate, has gone into hospital for some long awaited surgery, and we all hope that everything has gone well. Our thoughts go out to you both.

I have been battling with jet lag since getting back on the weekend, and trying to catch up with myself, so for now just check out the quick video of the kiln building. I will put up some detailed photos of the whole process in days to come.

"Odyn gan Iwan" incidentally is the title which Steve has given the kiln. It is welsh for "The kiln that Euan built".

The week that was.

2008-06-30T22:07:00.004+09:00

This last week has been hectic. On monday the Japanese pottery magazine "Tsukuru Toujiro" came to photograph and interveiw for the August issue. They are dedicating six pages to me and my coffee mugs.

My studio normally feels too small, but with the back drops and camera equipment it was like potting in a shoebox.

I finished the mugs ( all 200 of them), handled, dried, glazed and fired them by Saturday. I had to fire by then so that I could unpack and deliver to a gallery in Utsunomiya today. While I was firing the kids "hung around" and enjoyed the fine weather.

Yesterday was a day of rest and Mika celebrated her birthday.

The children and I baked and decorated her cake.

Tomorrow I fly out to the UK, to build and fire one of my kilns at David and Margaret Friths pottery in Denbigh, North Wales for Steve Tootell. I will also be giving a lecture and demonstration for the North Wales Potters Association on the sixth. Hopefully I will be able to research some traditional beer at the local pub while I'm there!

Art and Artifice

2008-06-22T20:33:00.004+09:00

That which is beautiful does not cease to be so merely because we are inured to it. Modern society tends to cauterize ours basic senses and makes us blind, deaf and insensitive to the simple and essential beauty that is inherent in nature, surrounding us every day. It takes a great deal of effort to peel away the veneered layer upon layer of false values and preconceptions that have been pasted over our perceptions and become aware of the simple truths that are self evident around us. It is easy to judge your life, your success, by monetary standards, but those standards are artificial and manmade, not intrinsic or even necessarily real. Nor is it healthy to constantly judge yourself based on opinions of others, for everyone of us has the freedom of thought to define themselves.

I find great joy in simple things. "They" say that "small things amuse small minds", but I disagree. The ability to perceive the magnificence of nature in something as simple as a sea shell, or to find joy and satisfaction in making a coffee mug, or two hundred coffee mugs, is acknowledging ones place in this droplet of life in the vast desolate cosmos. Every day is a miracle, every moment a revelation.

God is in the details, I have heard said, and I think that is true. Nature does not forget the underside of a shell or leaf, each is a masterpeice, no two the same, and yet they are all in harmony with each other. Modern society has set too much value on uniformity, on sameness, and lost the beauty of pattern and rhythm that is a part of nature and traditional craft and society.

The things which we make with our hands, for our hands to use, should be as beautiful and immediate to us as the beauty of nature. They should not be mechanical sterile barriers between us and nature. That is the difference between art and artifice, a difference that is vital to the future of human society.