Sunday, November 21, 2010

First pot made on potter's wheel




This is the first ceramic object I made on potter's wheel. It was thrown in August, but glaze fired only last week. The decoration was totally random. First, I scribbled Lotus Sutra in Japanese and than drew a butterfly with a flower in the remaining surface.

Monday, November 15, 2010

Bonsai metaphor by Shoji Hamada

Shoji Hamada (1894-1978) was a famous Japanese potter who worked within Japanese folk art tradition. In 1974 an American art teacher Susan Peterson wrote a book about him where she transcribes her conversations with Hamada. In the following passage Shoji Hamada talks about traditional art and uses bonsai as a metaphor:
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“In Mashiko and in Okinawa there are deep unconscious roots of tradition in the earth. For instance, compare dwarf trees in the garden and trees on the hill. If it’s a dwarf tree, when the weather gets a little bit bad you bring it in the house, if it gets dry you give it water. You trim the branches or not as you want. A traditional potter is like a dwarf tree. In the case of the [dwarf] tree you have to be careful about the weather, the other half depends on the care you give it. A tree in the mountains grows by itself. I should like to become such a tree.”

Saturday, November 13, 2010

Trasformation in a wood-fired kiln


Last year, I made a little mame / kusamono pot which was fired in an electric kiln and turned out to be quite uninteresting (left picture). I put it in the reject box and forgot about it. A couple of weeks ago, I looked though the box for pieces that could be re-fired in a wood-fired kiln. The picture on the right shows the same pot after it was wood-fired.

P.S. For more info on wood-fired kilns see: http://lomov.blogspot.com.au/2010/08/during-recent-trip-to-canberra-with.html

Pots thrown on a wheel



I am learning to make ceramics on potter’s wheel and these are first bonsai pots I threw on the wheel. The top picture shows a pot fired in an electric kiln and the bottom picture shows a pot with no glaze fired in a wood-fired kiln.

P. S. For a look at several wood-fired kilns see my blog post about them at http://lomov.blogspot.com.au/2010/08/during-recent-trip-to-canberra-with.html