Back From The Mountain

Posted on 17/05/2016 by hotnsticky

We spend a bit of time looking closely at the Nabeshima pots on display, and it is true that there is very little texture in the pale blue gosu, natural cobalt ore, background pigment.

We make our way back down the mountain past the noborigama kilns and other pottery workshops and display rooms. As it has been raining for a day or two, the stream is running quite noisily. Our guide, Tsuru san is very knowledgeable about the ceramic history of this area. Born and bred here, she knows more than we can take in.

The water driven clay crushing hammers are working hard, unattended, pounding the soft porcelain stone to powder all through the day and night without a power bill.

The fish seem unperturbed.

From Okawachi, we drive to another interesting site of early Arita porcelain development. We go to visit the re-constructed Korean climbing that is said to be the one used by the originator of the porcelain industry here, Li Sampei or Ri Sam Pei.

Its a magnificent kiln stretching all the way to the top of the hill, with a slight bend in it to suit the lay of the land form, just as the original one did, as excavated by the archeologists.

On our way home, we call in to visit the Rice Field Potters Kiln. Unsurprisingly, it is set in the middle of some rice fields on a gentle side slope. It has also been reconstructed recently from the information gleaned from an archeological dig on the site. This kiln dates from the time when potters didn’t work full time, but fitted their firings into the rhythm of the season along with rice and vegetable farming. They were the original self-reliant potters.

I really love the way that this old kiln wriggles and snakes its way up the slope. If I were a self-reliant, wood-firing gardener/potter, I’d love to own a kiln like this one. Come to think of it. I am, and I do!

Both of these kilns were built with dog-legs in them to follow the natural surface contours of the local terrain. They are both used intermittently by the local potters groups to keep them working and alive.

It’s been a long day and we have just enough energy left to visit the local sake brewery for a tasting. I can’t decide which one is best, so I am forced to taste them all before I can decide. A total lack of knowledge about sake can be an advantage sometimes?

A Trip to the Mountain

Posted on 15/05/2016 by hotnsticky

We are taken on an excursion to the mountains. It’s a foggy moist kind of day with intermittent rain showers. On the way we pass a really obvious white pegmatite dyke in the side of one of the hills near the road. I’m keen to stop and look, but it appears to be on private land and there is no easy access to it. We drive into a trucking company’s yard to get a closer look, but it is still a bit too far away and it is raining. I don’t fancy bush bashing in my good ‘going out’ clothes. So we let it pass for today. I may try to come back here if there is time on a fine day.

We press on over the mountain top, past a very pretty water fall. Yesterdays rain has brought it to life today. It wasn’t flowing like this the last time that I was here.

We go to Okawachiyama for a 2nd visit. I don’t mind, I’ve been here before, but Janine hasn’t. It’s a pretty place and there is always more to see. You can’t see everything on one visit. There are still lots of lanes and little walkways to explore. This remote valley once housed the Nabeshima Clans’ potters. They were held here in captivity to create the finest, whitest, polychrome enamelled porcelain. They managed to find the whitest of materials and restrict their use for the shogunate only. The creamy white clay glaze combination that they created is still a wonder to this day. It’s purity and translucency is just remarkable. I went on a geology tour of the local porcelain stone sites last week with Kanaiwa san. We visited many places around this district, but we couldn’t find the lost kaolin mine of the Nabeshimas. Kanaiwa san has made a life long study of the ‘nigoshide’ white effect. He has managed to make a modern synthesised version using 3 of the local varieties of porcelain stones. I don’t know his technique, but his knowledge of froth flotation technique that be came obvious to me during one of our early conversations, leads me to believe that there might be some fertile ground there for experimentation. I have certainly found it an essential way to remove iron from otherwise ‘dirty’ rock samples back home in Australia.

On our walk up the steep Okawachiyama Valley road, we call in to see one of the last ladies that can do the seamless cobalt background brushwork. It is a very difficult technique and is now almost lost. These days this kind of background is either sprayed on, or transfer printed. Of those who still hand paint the ‘gosu’ cobalt blue background. and there are only a few of these left as well, the technique used these days is to gently squeeze the ‘fude’, pronounced ‘foo-day’, brush to control the flow of the gosu pigment and loop the brush tip back and forth, producing a layered, slightly overlapping, background pattern. The Nabeshima technique used here is to hold the brush by the handle, not the hair, so no squeezing is used, They tilt the brush, up and down, to control the flow of the pigment. It is a truly astonishing technique.

400 Years of Porcelain History

Posted on 15/05/2016 by hotnsticky

We have arrived in Arita, the famous porcelain town in the Southern Japanese Island of Kyushu. Japanese porcelain was first made here in this village 400 years ago this year. It is the site of the naturally occurring, weathered porcelain stone, which was discovered here by the Korean Prisoner-of-War, Ri Sam Pei. He was a trained pottery who was captured by the war Lord Hideyoshi and brought to Kyushu. He was familiar with the techniques of making porcelain from a single stone back in Korea and the story that is told here says that he recognised the special cloudy quality of the water that was running out of the nearby hills. I’m presuming that it was a cloudy white colour because it contains some dissolved kaolin and white sericite mica. The river that runs through the town here is called the ‘shirakawa’ river, which translates as ‘white river’. He presumably also recognised the shape of the local hills and the special look of the local stone, once you get up close and personal with it. Weathered acid volcanics of this kind have a particular set of fracture angles that is quite specific.

This porcelain stone occurs all around these hills where the local white granite has weathered down into a softer white to off white, mixture of kaolin, silica, felspar and specifically sericite. Sericite is a white, plastic mica. This means that it is throwable on the potters wheel as well as vitrifying to a translucent glassy matrix when fired.

This week is the special Spring Festival week called Golden week. It has been traditional for the Arita town Council to have a Ceramic Fair on this week. They close off the main part of the Old Street and all the local pottery businesses set up pop-up stalls all along the street, selling everything that you can imagine that is made from ceramics. There is something for everyone, with pots starting from 10 cents going up to tens of thousands of dollars.

It is very busy. I am told that there will be about one and a half million visitors coming through here over the holiday period.

We stop for coffee in the back lane where it is a bit more relaxed and not so busy and the disposable coffee cups are made of waxed paper, but have been specially printed in blue and white Arita porcelain coloured print.

We don’t need any more pots, but with millions of pots on display, we manage to restrain ourselves to 2 beautiful little sake cups and a small pickle dish. Quite a good effort. It takes at least 6 hours to walk up the main street and we still don’t manage to look at every stall. We need to go back 3 times, over three days, to get a reasonable coverage of what is there, but still we miss a lot.

We suffer ceramic shopper blindness after a couple of hours and need a break. It’s just like gallery blindness and museum blindness. You just can’t take it all in in one go without a break. Coffee helps!

Best wishes from the two dropped shoppers

The Lost Nabashima Clan Kaolin Mine

Posted on 14/05/2016 by hotnsticky

Mr Kanaiwa tells me story about the Lost Kaolin mine of the ancient Nabashima Clan. The Nabashima clan were very well known for the excellence of their white porcelain with overglaze enamel decoration. The tough men of the clan marched into Arita one day, 350 years ago and stole the kidnapped Korean potters away from Arita and took them to the hidden valley of Okawachiyama, where they put them to work making the most excellent shirajiki – super fine white porcelain, that was destined for the exclusive use of the leaders of the clan and their cronies. This porcelain had to be the whitest and finest of any that it was possible to make under the threat of death. These twice kidnapped Korean potters did just that and to achieve it they had to find some very white materials to do the job.

So, the legend has it according to Kanaiwa san, that they found a source of ultra pure, white porcelain stone and kaolin somewhere to the south East of Arita village up in a tributary valley. As I understand it, and I could have this wrong, but what I thought that I was told, was that this lost mine was located at a place called Iwatanikawachi.

Kanaiwa san has spent a lot of his life researching the special milky white glaze quality of the early Nabishima wares and has analysed samples of the ware. He shows me the analysis sheets and the Seger formulas that he has derived from them. It’s a wonderfull and extensive piece of research. I’m Impressed. It’s the sort of thing that I would have done if I were here doing his job. I can read the formula and know the general glaze that he is describing. It’s not anything special, with no surprise ingredients. I know it well. As with so many things in life and particularly in ceramics. It’s not the secret formula that is important, but the materials that are used and how it is all fired that creates the special quality.

Kanaiwa san suggests that we go for an expedition into the Iwatanikawachi valley and look for the stuff of legends. I agree enthusiastically. So we set off and park the car at the foot of the valley where we make a ‘habakari’ stop. Tsuru san who is my translator on this venture, reads out from a memorial plaque set in a stone in the pack. She exclaims with excitement that this is the very site of an early kiln. One of the first in the valley 400 years ago. This kiln made imitation Ming Dynasty wares for export to Europe. When the civil war in China closed off the export trade in porcelain to the Dutch Traders, they came to Arita to see if they could make similar porcelain wares for their export trade. The potters here were given sample of the Ming porcelain to copy, and they did that exactly. Even to the extant of writing “Made in China in the Ming Dynasty” on the bottom of the pots in ‘gosu’ cobalt blue pigment. Some of these ‘fake’ Ming wares are on show here in the local museum. Tsuru san is very excited to see this sign and reads it out to me. She knows the story well and has seen the wares, as she works in the museum part time. So this is the very spot where the archeologists discovered the shards!

Everywhere around here reeks of history and can surprise even the locals it seems.

We set off on our walk up the valley. As we go Tsuru san translates for me the story that Kanaiwa san is telling me in his local Arita dialect. This walking track was once upon a time the main road from Sasebo to Hasani and would have been the very road that Ri SamPei would have walked along to get to Arita where he discovers the special porcelain stone that has made this place rich over the 400 years since. We walk. He talks. Tsuru san translates. I listen. It’s a nice warm day and the sun is out, but we are walking all the way in the shade of the dense forest canopy. There are beautiful samples of porcelain stone all along the track, but none of it is ultra white and pure. There must be, or have been, a particularly pure vein of pegmatite somewhere along here that could produce such a stunningly white and clear product. I can’t see any sign of it. I’m supposing that others must have looked. If Kanaiwa san has found old documents that indicate that this is the place, then others must know this too and have been along here with the same intension.

I don’t find the pegmatite dyke, but I do stop and admire the exquisite beauty of the small gurgling stream as it passes over some small falls. The word shibui comes to mind.

Eventually, we arrive at the top of the mountain, to find a reservoir under repair and maintenance. There have been heavy trucks and earthmoving equipment coming and going in the last few days from the other direction. I ask where they come from. Kanaiwa san tells me that this is the end of the Utan street. I’m amazed. We have almost half circumnavigated the Arita valley from South to North on the East side. Utan street is where Tatsuya San’s workshop is located and where I worked briefly last year.

We set off back along the old Edo period road. Its been a beautiful, if largely uneventful day. We discuss where the deposit might have been, as we haven’t seen any sign of extensive excavations anywhere along our path. We come to the conclusion that any workings that might still remain, must be well covered with the dense undergrowth of the valley and are most likely on the other side of the river to the path that we have taken. As it is late in the afternoon now, we decide that we will need to make another trip with more preparation to slash our way through some of the denser thickets on the other side.

Nothing is ever finished.

Best wishes from Steve in the Iwatanikawachi valley of the Nabeshima Clan

Tracking the Elusive Wild Felspar

Posted on 13/05/2016 by hotnsticky

Porcelain stone occurs in many of the hills around here in Arita, where the local white granite has weathered down into a softer white to off-white, mixture of kaolin, silica, felspar and specifically sericite. Sericite is a white, plastic mica. This means that it is throwable on the potters wheel as well as vitrifying to a translucent glassy matrix when fired. A very rare and specific combination of qualities.

Today I ventured up into the hills to look for some felspar/porcelain stone deposits that I’m told are all around here. Most were closed because they were worked out of the most precious ultra white material. The deposits around here were very small and used by the potters in the immediate locality. Each little district had its own small mine. This used to give the different villages a slightly different quality to their work. However, ultimately, none of them could compete with the large-scale and very high quality sericite that is being mined at Amukusa, just a couple of hours from here. Economies of scale and the quality of the product, along with increased specialisation of the work force made every one concentrate on producing saleable product and abandon self-reliance.

We can drive up the mountain to the scenic lookout and then park the car and go on foot. This is the ‘Black Hair Mountain’ and I’m told that it is a very spooky place. It’s a dark, wet and cloudy day and the Mountain is shrouded in mist. I’m not spooked, because I don’t believe in ROUS ‘Rodents of Unusual Size’ ‘Fire Swamps’ and ‘ Lightning Quicksand’. The Princess and I press on, the track is very wet and slippery after last weeks constant rain. In dry weather we could have gone a bit farther by car, but not today. So we walk. The little track wanders around the contour of the hill and would have been quite manageable at the time when it was in use and repaired to handle constant traffic of the ore down hill. We head off up the hill on a stone staircase to get to the top. It takes some time before we realise that we are on the wrong track. We go back and try again.

This time with more luck. We find a diagrammatic map along the way that shows us the location of the old mine, but not in much detail. Up the hill, over the bridge across the river. Through the ‘Fire Swamp’ and the valley of ‘Lightning Quicksand’. We keep going until we reach the water fall and then it shouldn’t be too far, according to the map, and then there ought to be another bridge to cross back to the other side of the river. Through Dead Mans Gulch. Then up along The Valley of No Return, up the sacred mountain to the water falls and then a righthand fork should lead you straight to it. We do and it does – more or less.

Except that I lost my nerve when we didn’t find any sign of a mine after such a long trek. The road became very narrow and washed out after some very heavy rain. There were trees across the track. The sound of crunching twigs under foot coming from the forest around us and an owl hooted, while a black raven swooped overhead. It was quite obvious that nobody had come this way for a long time. This was indeed the path less trodden!

We retraced our steps and consulted the map. This time I photographed it. It seemed that we were almost there when we turned back. We tried again and this time found that the turn off to the old mine was just another 100 metres up and around the side of the mountain. What we found was a rusty steel mesh gate with large red warning signs all over it. I can’t read Japanese, so what I read into it, was that this is the place that you are looking for. ‘Keep going, it’s just a little way on from here”. Almost there!

Of course it could also have said. “This is the old dangerous mine site. No Entry! or “proceed with caution!” Or maybe it said that the bridge is closed because if you tread on it, it will collapse!

So we did. It meant swinging out over the stream to get around the gate. Then onward and upward. We knew that we had reached the correct place when we found the boarded up mine shaft entrance.

There was plenty of spalls all around on the ground outside. So no need to go in. The material looks just the same all over the world. Similar colour and texture, similar fracture angles, but the hardness varies due to the amount of weathering and decomposition of the felspars down into kaolin.

The softer the stone, the greater the degree of weathering and the more refractory it will be with an increased kaolin content. so it will be more plastic, but less fusible at high temperature. The harder it is, the more fusible it will be and the more vitreous at high temps, but the less plastic to work with. Somewhere half way between is a good compromise, or a blend of two different stones will achieve the same result.

This stone is quite hard to break and is probably quite high in felspar, sericite and quartz. It feels to me to be a useful glaze stone. We walk back down the mountain, happy trekkers with a pocketful of samples. I learn the next day that the reason that this site was closed, was because there was a mine collapse 30 years ago and a number of miners were killed there. Very sad, but not spooky.

News travels fast. The next day, Mr. Akio Kanaiwa san. A retired geologist and lecturer in ceramic chemistry from the Ceramic University here, specialising in porcelain stone, calls in to see me. Miyuri san, the local cultural guide here in Arita has met him and mentioned me and my special interests to him. We get along very well and in just a few minutes we manage, even with so little language, to exchange our views and knowledge about porcelain stones. We both can read chemical analysis, X-ray micrographs, SEM data files and ceramic Seger formulas. He shows me some of his research that he has brought along. As he flips through his files. All in Japanese. I can read them out to him. He realises that I know exactly what he is trying to tell me in chemical terms. The only thing that I can’t do is understand his excited Japanese Arita dialect. It turns out that I am the only person that he has met that has his own Denver cell for froth floatation separation and purification of ceramic minerals. The only difference in our techniques is that he uses pine oil and I use kerosene. Amazing!

We arrange to go on a geology excursion the very next day with Tsuru Miyuri san as our translator. It turns out to be a very full day, as Akio Kanaiwa san has a quite a few sites that he plans to take me to. I am thrilled. We both really enjoy our time together with Miyuri san. She is amazing, such good value. She is so knowledgeable about ceramics in Arita and her English is excellent, so she is so good to have along on a trip like this. We go to site after site. He really knows his stuff. Through Miyuri, we exchange ideas and analysis data.

At one point we all have to stop and laugh, as Kanaiwa san and I find ourselves agreeing on the importance of secondary mullet crystals in the development of strength, translucency and slump resistance in porcelain bodies. Miyuri san, who is quite faithfully translating our conversation, back and forth, is stunned and mystified by what she is having to say, as she doesn’t understand a word of the technology involved. When Miyuri doesn’t know the word or a suitable work-around sentence to convey the meaning, Kanaiwa san and I revert to writing the chemical symbol or formula. It’s a wonderful, positive, cultural exchange.

Miyuri san explains to Kanaiwa san how I collect most of my materials where I live in Australia and my amazement at how similar they all are to these minerals that we are looking at there. The only difference is that these minerals are mostly much cleaner and lower in iron. Only one of the sites is still being used, an open-cut quarry where an interesting felspar/quartz stone is being mined for use in electrical insulators and industrial tiles. It is called ‘The Dragon Gate’ mine. There is a lot of iron present here, but it is in bands and veins, so could be sorted out or extracted.

Our last visit in the afternoon was to a glaze stone mine in Takeo. The ‘3 splits’ mine. This name causes a lot of muffed laughter. Apparently it is not really the true name of the mine. It is named after the combination of hills and valleys that look like the gap between someone legs. This is a name that can’t be said by a lady. A more literal translation might be ‘fork’, as in ‘a fork in the road’, but more likely ‘crutch’, as in the gap between a persons legs? I don’t end up knowing what it is called. Perhaps it’s 3 cracks? Because if you go up the crack it ends in a tunnel?

No one will say it in English. So I’m calling it the 3 splits mine.

Kanaiwa san says that I look like Indiana Jones or Harrison Ford in my hat. I reply that I can’t afford a whip, but my name is Harrison.

There had been several attempts at mining here over the last few hundred years. Some open-cut and others in deep shafts and drives. All closed now. Again, the shaft is barred by a wire fence that declares that this is the correct place alright. The fence seems to have fallen over at one of the mine shafts, so I can’t read the sign that might say ‘don’t enter’. So there is nothing to stop me. – Except the fact that it is all flooded inside.

The water is a pretty translucent pale blue. Just like blue celadon over porcelain!

I explain that this is the most dangerous site that we have visited yet. Not because of the risk of mine collapse, scrambling through flooded water or drowning, but because of the crumbly asbestos fence!

Kintsugi

Posted on 08/05/2016 by hotnsticky

Kintsugi is the traditional Japanese art of repairing damaged pots with gold.

I am surprised and delighted to find out that there will be a kintsugi workshop held here in the next 2 days. Kintsugi is the ancient technique of repairing old broken porcelain pots with gold and lacquer. It is astonishingly beautiful where it is done well and I have often wondered how it was done. In fact, just before we left Australia to come on this trip, we had a wood kiln firing and I had 2 nice pots with cracks in them. I decided to repair them as best I could, using araldite and gold leaf. As I didn’t know any better. I did a rather clumsy repair with the two-part resin bond which worked out sort of OK and then ordered a packet of gold leaf. The gold leaf only arrived in the post one day before we left. I was so busy packing that I didn’t have time to open the letter. It is sitting waiting for me to return so as to finish the job.

I have always admired pots with chips and cracks that had been repaired with lacquer and gold. It shows such respect for a treasured object. The philosophy of kintsugi is based in the honour that is shown to objects, everyday objects and the respect shown to things that are old or even damaged. It is linked to the idea of wabi-sabi in Japanese Zen Buddhist practice. A beautiful thing that is broken in some way is still a beautiful thing, just as it always was. Being shown the respect of a tasteful and respectful repair, makes it even more beautiful.

A beautiful thing that is broken is not necessarily rubbish, but something worth showing respect to and honouring by giving it a new life as an even more beautiful repaired object.

Years ago, I was told of a story of a Japanese shogun that had a very valuable Chinese tea bowl, which got broken. He loved that bowl and sent it back to China to be repaired. It was returned with a lot of metal staples holding the parts together. He was bitterly disappointed and asked someone to invent a method of repairing his cherished bowl in a more elegant way.

Although it was developed in Japan for the repair of valuable tea ceremony objects, kintsugi has found favour all around the South East Asian area over time.

I spend 2 days in an intensive workshop with the local Kintsugi Master. I take along some cheap, cracked and chipped pots that I found in the rubbish pile at the workshop here.

First, we learn how to clean the pot, prepare the surface, repair the crack with the special bonding agent and then leave it to set overnight. Once the repair is secure, for big cracks or for pots that are broken into many pieces, or for pots with small pieces missing the procedure takes longer, as the missing parts need to be filled and worked up, back to the original contour. This can take many days for a big job, as there is so much drying time between layers.

On the second day I learn how clean and prepare the surface again so as to accept the lacquer. A red lacquer is used to build the surface of the repair, as gold reflects well off a red background. Once this part is completed satisfactorily and the lacquer is ‘going off’ and getting ‘tacky’. The gold is applied so that it will stick to the prepared surface. This is then left to dry well before burnishing. We don’t manage to finish all our pieces in the 2 days. I will return later to collect my dried and stabilised pieces. I manage to get one simple one completed and take home with me. It’s a really great experience and couldn’t have come a better time for me. I’m cleaned and prepared and ready to be filled with Kinsugi information. I can’t wait to get home to try it out on my own pots.

A repair done on a large, chipped antique porcelain bowl by the master using both gold and platinum.

Traveling South to Kyushu

Posted on 07/05/2016 by hotnsticky

We say a temporary good-bye to Kyoto with its cherry blossoms all finishing up. Mostly on the ground. Its raked gravel gardens and Maiko make-over girls. We’ll be back, we always seem t find an excuse to return here.

We take the long train ride south to Kyushu. We leave Kyoto, and after a while the concrete high-rise scenery starts to diminish slightly and is replaced with low-rise. After a very long while we realise that the buildings are far less common and there is farm land starting to appear. It’s not that there isn’t any farmland near the bigger cities. There is a small, very small, plot of rice being farmed only 1 kilometre from Kyoto’s main central station. Amazing!

As we rumble on, we pass through farming districts and extensive fields of golden crops already for harvest with their heads golden of bearded barley ripening in the sun. I can’t imagine that harvest time for these crops is very far off.

We also see farmers out in the flooded fields with their mini tractors and rotary hoes, working up the inundated mud, presumably preparing the silt for the coming planting of the rice crop. Ploughing now, if you can call this ploughing, is to kill off the weeds and any competition for the young rice seedlings that will be planted soon.

A field of purple vetch. A nitrogen fixing plant used as green manure to organically enrich the soil.

A small vegetable garden in the middle of some rice fields

When I was last here 6 months ago, they were smack in the middle of rice harvest in the autumn. We arrive in the far south in Kyushu, not too far from Kumamoto, about an hour away. Everything here is OK, different strata or geological sequence? We only had a level 2 shake up here. So the kilns are still standing and all the pots are still on their shelves.

It’s all foggy, rainy and damp when we arrive and the hills are coated in a beautiful mist.

Our first visit here is to a place near Karatsu on the North West coast. We visit an old pottery studio that has existed in this little secluded valley for a couple of hundred years. The old lady tells us that her family have always been potters here since the arrival of the Korean potters 400 years ago. The war Lord Toyotomi Hideyoshi launched 2 failed invasions of Korea in 1592 and 98. Each time he captured and brought back prisoners of war. Some of whom were potters. One in particular found and developed the first porcelain pottery in Japan in 1616. Exactly four hundred years ago this week.

She is a sweet old thing and at 83, has seen a bit of life. Her son is now the resident potter here. She tells us that there were once 300 houses in this valley, most of them making pottery and farming rice and vegetables. Now there are only 5 houses here and only one potter.

They are in the middle of packing the kiln when we arrive. It’s a well-loved old nobori-gama wood fired, 3 chambered climbing kiln.

They pack the pots on rice husks to stop them sticking to the kiln shelf during firing, as rice husk is composed mostly of silica, which is refractory. It also creates a shiny ‘flash’ of colour on the exposed clay at the foot of the pots.

Later, we travel home to Arita via the ‘Hitakata’ ancient kiln site. This little valley once had a number of korean potter families working and farming here. But they are all gone now and only the archaeology remains. This site has been fenced off now to stop looters from stripping the site of old artefacts.

It was one of the first Korean kilns built here way back in the late 1500’s. It is set in a beautiful forested glade with a small but fast flowing stream nearby. Quite idyllic! This kiln was built without the use of fire bricks. It was constructed out of rammed earth. The local soil here doesn’t look particularly refractory, so it probably had a short life and needed to be rebuilt often.

I can’t read the Japanese on the information board, but the illustration shows 9 steps or doorways into the tunnel-like chamber. My teacher back in 1973, the Japanese potter Shiga shigeo, to whom I was apprenticed, trained near Kyoto after the war and his teacher, Saburo Saito had a 3 chambered climbing kiln, all made from rammed local refractory clay and home-made bricks. I was told that the fire-box needed rebuilding after every firing and the first chamber arch was likewise re-built after every 2nd or 3rd firing. This was the traditional way back them and is still used by some potters even today, if they are keen on reproducing the old effects.

Janine and I made all of our own fire bricks to build our wood fired kiln. The current kiln has had twenty firings and is still going strong. However the time will come when it needs to be pulled down and rebuilt.

Such is the way of the world.

Nothing is ever finished, nothing is perfect, and nothing lasts!

Fond regards from Steve and Janine in the shaky isle of Kyushu.

The Shosei-en Garden

Posted on 06/05/2016 by hotnsticky

We decide to make the pilgrimage to the shosei-en Zen garden before we leave Kyoto.

This garden has a very long and chequered history. It started its life as a beautiful orange grove , called the ‘Kikoku-tei’, somewhere in the Heian era around 800 to 900 AD. Built by the son of Emperor Saga. In the 1600’s the Tokugawa shogunate ‘acquired’ the land and passed it to the Higashi Hinganji Zen temple. Perhaps to appease their conscience?

Anyway, whatever its past history, god had her own way and it was completely burnt to the ground in 1858, and then just to prove that she really meant it. She did it again to what was rebuilt 6 years later. Get the hint!

In the early years of the Meiji restoration around 1870 to 1900 Everything was rebuilt and restored to what we can visit today. A beautiful, tranquil space, right in the middle of Kyoto, just a few hundred metres from Kyoto’s busy main station.

There is a very pretty tea house on the lake – lovely !

A Brief Visit to Tamba

Posted on 01/05/2016 by hotnsticky

The small village of Tamba is situated up in the hills somewhere inland between Kyoto and Osaka. It is more or less indistinct, except for the fact that it has a very long tradition of pottery making going back 800 hundred years.

The village lies along strangling secluded valley. It isn’t really close to anywhere in particular and is about an hour and a half from Kyoto by train to Aino station and then a 25 min bus trip to the village of Tachikui. Tachikui is the name of the village where the tradition of Tamba pottery technique is centered.

There are about 35 pottery workshops speed out along the valley. This valley doesn’t look all that different from any other Japanese farming valley, with a small river flowing along the valley, with paddy fields along either side. The small winding road hugs the bottom of the surrounding hills to maximise the area available for growing crops and vegetables in the fertile soil of the valley floor. The big difference in this valley is that there are lots of chimneys sprouting from the various sheds along the hill-side. These sheds are unique in that their roofs follow the contour of the slope of the hill to maximise the draught available for the firing of the kilns.

The kilns here are unique, in that they are essentially ‘Korean’ style kilns. Shaped like long tunnels sitting on the side of the hill. They are known locally as ‘snake’ kilns or ‘split bamboo’ kilns, as this is a reasonable description of their shape. They have a door way every few metres along the tunnel to allow access for the pots to be passed in during the packing of the kiln and then again during the unloading after firing. There are 9 doorways all together and the whole kiln is 47 metres long.

The kiln is fired with wood in the old fashioned way. After all, it is an 800 year old tradition. The fire is kindled from the fire mouth at the front of the kiln and the fire is progressively increased in intensity, with more and more wood being introduced into the front fire mouth until the full heat is achieved at the front of the long tunnel.

Once the top temperature is reached at the front, then wood is introduced into the small circular stoke holes situated all along the kiln, every 50 cm. or so. This takes the temperature of each subsequent section of kiln up to the top temperature required to melt the glazes in a short time and is very efficient of wood fuel. The whole process from start to finish takes just 48 hours. 12 hours of gently steaming. Then 24 hours of firing the main stoke hole at the front of the kiln and another 12 hours of side stoking.

Because this kiln is situated on such a steep slope, there is no need for a chimney as such. The whole steeply inclined tunnel kiln chamber creates its own draught up the slope. The end of the kiln is fashioned into a kind of ceramic colander, so the flames just escape to the atmosphere from the grid of holes at the back off the kiln.

This is the village community kiln, has been on this site for hundreds of years. This particular construction is just a year old. The old kiln on this site threatened to fall down from lots of use over many years, so was demolished and rebuilt as a community effort less than a year ago. This is its 2nd firing. It is fired just twice a year, with many potters contributing work to fill it, and taking turns in the firing schedule shifts.

It is a wonderful community effort and we are pleased to be here to witness it at this time. We are very lucky. Tamba is one of the 6 ancient kiln sites of Japan. It is a special place, but well past its prime just now. But still, it’s great to be here to witness this community event.

best wishes from the two ancient potters from Australia, doing their ceramic hajj.

San-sho Pepper

Posted on 29/04/2016 by hotnsticky

I love San-sho pepper. It seems to be quite hard to find in Australia. We can get some that is already ground, from the Japanese supermarket in Sydney, but it is quite old by the time that we get to it and has lost a lot of its flavour. I’ve always been happy with it, but I didn’t know how good it could be fresh.

We are lucky enough to stumble onto a place where they are preparing some fresh san-sho pepper. We get to see, smell and taste the whole seeds, as well as the freshly ground san-sho pepper directly after being ground.

I didn’t know that it has a high citrus note in the aroma when it is fresh. It’s great stuff. It’s hot and spicy and so delicious. Be careful however, because if you get too greedy like me and take too much, then it suddenly overdoses the taste buds in the tip of my tongue and my tongue goes numb. It’s powerful stuff. Restraint is the key.

A little goes a long way.

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