Reprise clay making, recapitulation and Coda

Posted on 18/09/2015 by hotnsticky

Today I go to visit another of the local porcelain stone clay makers. It is the 3rd of the 4 that I know off and the largest of the Amakusa stone processing factories in the area. So I’m re-visiting a lot of concepts that I am already familiar with, but it doesn’t hurt to reinforce what I think that I know and take a different perspective on it. This clay factory, I call it a factory, because that is just what it is, It’s huge, is owned by Mr. Coda. So it’s only fitting to reprise my clay making experience with a recapitulation with Coda!

The port in the distance , down river.

Coda san’s factory is out of town, quite a long way out-of-town, almost to the coast. In fact the reason that it is located here, by this river, so close to the port, is for two reasons. The river provided all the energy to power the stone crushing and stamping mills in the early days. But the other important reason is that the Amakusa stone quarry is located on an island to the south of here and in the past, the only way to get the rock to the main island was by boat. These days there is a bridge and a ferry. But back in the day, it was all done by boat. So the larger boat would come to the port and the porcelain stone cargo was off-loaded to smaller craft and floated up here at high tide, so this location proved to be crucial.

The remnants of the levy, leat and water slouches still remain in the river, although substantially rebuilt after some devastating floods that raised the river level to 3 metres above the roadway and half way up the walls of the factory buildings.

As this is the largest of the processors, there is a very large holding area where the new shipments of porcelain stone are sorted and stock-piled on delivery. The factory receives about 100 tonnes of stone per month on a regular basis. This averages about one 10 tonne truck load every 3 days. They hold about 800 tonnes of stone in total, in stock here. This is because the deliveries of the stone are all varied. The deposit, as it is being mined, produces different variations of the stone at different times, so over the year, the material seems to come in differing grades at different times.

The quarry at Amakusa has horizontal strata of weathering, but the mining is done to some extent vertically down the face, for technical reasons to do with stability and safety in quarrying. The whitest and most desirable material is close to the bottom, so a lot of other iron-stained material has to be removed first. For these reasons, it has proved to be necessary to hold a lot of stock to make sure that there will always be sufficient of any one variety, or variation of the material to fill specific orders. I think I understood Coda san was telling me that the quarry also closes during the hottest months of the summer? Meaning that sufficient stock has to be held to get the factory through the lean times.

During our tour, it evolves that this factory supplies clay to Malcolm Greenwood and Simon Reece in Australia. A friend has done all the paper work and organising of the complex, import regulation form filling. So far there have been 3 or 4 orders for 3 tonne lots in the past two years. So that is very interesting. I didn’t know that. I’ve come all this way to find out that my friends are customers here too.

For some special customers the whitest stones are still hand chipped to remove the iron staining from the fissure surfaces. This was once common, but these days it is hardly ever done due to the high cost of hand labour. Coda san gives me a demo, but reiterates that he is glad that this type of processing is in the past. They carry such a huge stock of stone to choose from, that these days they simply choose from the whitest material as it comes to them.

The first thing that you notice as you approach the factory, is the music of the double quick-time rhythm of the stamp mills. These mills run 9 to 10 hrs per day, and there are several batteries of them. All still made of wood, not because they are old, but because the wooden structures have two essential benefits over steel. The first is that they don’t rust and drop iron particles into the stone powder as it is being worked. The other is that wood takes the percussive stresses of the intensive, pounding rhythms that fatigues metal structures.

Once the stone is reduced to powder in the stamp mills, it is transferred to the wet processing area where it is blunged and levigated to remove the excess silica. This is done in a two stage process. Spring water is used in the factory, as they have a beautiful garden just behind the factory buildings and what appears to be a decorative pond, but is actually the water supply for the processing. Once all the fine silica is sedimented out of the slip, it passes through two sets of electromagnets to remove any stray bit of magnetic iron, such as pieces that have worn off the machinery during processing. Magnets can only remove metallic iron particles. The yellow iron staining that is naturally present in the stone, as it comes from the quarry is in the form of iron oxide and hydrated iron oxide. These minerals cannot be removed by magnets. The slip is then transferred to the filter press area to be de-watered and finally vacuum pugged and bagged ready for delivery.

There are 4 separate production lines for the basic yellow iron-stained, medium creamy-white and special high quality white products, plus yellow-stained clay for slip casting that doesn’t have to be so fine and plastic. It’s quite an extensive operation and very well organised. Very modern and very efficient for such an ancient process. Very impressive indeed.

After this very musical, further development and recapitulation of the clay making theme. I pick up my stave and walk to the bars before 4 time!

I’m very impressed with the modernity and efficiency of this slick operation, but there is a part of me that identifies with the romantic idyl of the small rural clay making business of the humble Fuchino family. Having tried clay from all three of the clay makers that I have written about. I rather prefer the idea of rustic, hand-made clay of the Fuchinos.

When I grow up, I want to be like the Fuchinos.

Best wishes from Steve in Arita

The Firing

Posted on 18/09/2015 by hotnsticky

In these times, when we are so concerned about pollution and air quality. I’m amazed to find that it is still allowable to fire a fairly dirty, wood fired kiln right in the heart of Arita’s main street, old town centre.

This is a fairly old-fashioned sort of standard European, industrial, down-draught design of kiln, used early to mid last century. There is no attempt to install any scrubber or smoke minimization at all, not that I can see, and if they do have something in place it isn’t working, as is obvious from the smoke billowing from the chimney.

There are three men on shift over night, bringing it up to temperature throughout the day today. This is a stoneware reduction firing for the glaze. When this material is oxidised, it turns out a dark cream/dull beige colour. Not at all attractive. It’s because of the slight iron content. Even the hand-selected and hand-cleaned, super-white, ultra-expensive clay is just as dull. However, when this clay is reduced, it sings. It comes out a clear blue/white under a clear glaze and is a joy. This kiln is currently up to 1175oC and smack in the middle of its reduction cycle.

The air is super filthy inside the kiln shed. The ventilation is very poor, so the men have to wear paper dust masks, but they have chosen the very poorly fitting hygiene masks, that are ubiquitous here and designed to stop you breathing out or coughing on people in public and spreading mucus carried diseases. They are useless to prevent dust and smoke entering the lungs. If these guys work at this all their days, their lives will be shortened. I’m quite surprised that this is still allowed. The ventilation is so bad that it must be hell in here in summer.

I’m also surprised that they are still firing a kiln like this with wood, as all the glazed pots are stacked in saggars inside the kiln, so there will be no aesthetic of wood fly-ash contact. The saggars add extra weight to the thermal mass and makes the firing less fuel-efficient. Seeing that there is no aesthetic benefit showing on the work. I wonder why they persist, especially as everyone tells me that they are doing it so tough here now and no one is making any money. They could reduce their firing costs significantly and clean the towns’ air quality by switching to a light-weight, low-thermal-mass, gas-fired, fibre or RI brick-kiln. If there really is some sort of aesthetic reason for persisting with the wood firing, then I can’t help but feel that the kiln should be moved out-of-town, changed to a downdraught firebox, or installed with a scrubber. I’m only an ignorant outsider here and have no right to be offering anyone any opinion, but these are the thoughts that go through my mind as I watch.

There are 2 fireboxes on each side of the kiln. Most likely firing up and over a bagwall, then down through the stacks of saggars to exit flues in the floor. These fireboxes are stoked alternately, first on the left, then the one on the right, symmetrical on each side, alternating every few minutes. There is a lot of smoky flame escaping through the vent holes and spy holes in the door, walls and dome. This is to inform the fireman as to the state of the atmosphere inside the kiln. He wants to know when the smoke is lessening and about to disappear. This indicates when it is time to re-stoke the fireboxes, so as to maintain the air-starved reduction atmosphere in the chamber. If I were here, doing this, I’d have all the windows open and a vent installed in the roof to clear the smoke from the work area. Actually, I’d probably get rid of the dirty up draught fireboxes with their expensive and short-lived metal fire bars and replace them with much cleaner downdraught fireboxes. For the comfort and health of the firemen, as well as improving air quality and fuel efficiency. I wonder if they realise that all that smoke billowing out of the kiln room and chimney top, represents expensive energy wasted?

I can only suppose so. Everything has a reason here. Just because I can’t figure it out, doesn’t mean that it isn’t important and valid. It’s just not what I’m used to. Even so, I can’t help think that there will be some health ramifications for these employees, working in that filthy air.

I wonder what the towns folk think about it? Fortunately, as I’m here alone, I don’t have the language ability to get involved in this sort of in-depth conversation. Probably for the better. I don’t want to offend anyone.

Welcome to the new/old Arita!

Four Generations of Porcelain Stone Clay Makers

Posted on 16/09/2015 by hotnsticky

Today I am going out to visit the very smallest of small-scale porcelain stone clay making workshops. This family have been crushing and grinding the local porcelain stone here for four generations. The building is located so far out of town and in such an isolated place, that even my friend and driver, who is a local, has difficulty finding his way there. So many little winding roads and intersection.

Eventually we arrive. Another liminal site, perched just above the edge of the rice paddies, on the edge of the farm track and just below the tea plantations higher up the hill. The family building is absolutely original and built by the great-grandfather here over 100 years ago. It’s a beautiful old wooden structure. Even the supporting frame-work for the stamp mills is completely original and made of wood. The machinery looks pretty original too, especially the stamp mills. The only real concession to modernity here now are the filter presses and the vacuum pug mills.

The family, Mother, father and son still do all of the initial work of sorting and selecting by hand. It is the only way to get the very best quality result. And the result is exceptional. No one else does this to every piece of stone that enters the workshop. One other factory, The Coda Factory, can put through small special batches of hand cleaned superior white stone body, but it is very expensive and only occasionally done these days. The other factories, like Tajima san’s, appear to just take the stone as it comes, wash it and run it all through the jaw crusher. (see, “More, not less, from Japan Posted on 16/11/2014)

On the other hand, this small ‘Fuchino’ family run business puts in a lot of effort to hand sort and classify all the minerals as they are all dumped in a 14 tonne pile straight from the tip truck that delivers the stone from the quarry.

First all the stones are sorted and classified into one of 3 groups. The native Amakusa stone is quite varied in its mineralogy with bands of various minerals throughout the deposit. The quarry doesn’t really discriminate that much. A truck load of this mixture can be processed all together as one composite material, as happens at the ‘Tajimi’ and other two clay makers. Here they spend an enormous amount of time sorting and classifying the mixed load into its components. There is felspar, silica and mica. The silica is deeply inter mixed with the felspar and looks for all intents and purposes, the same as the white sericite mica. However, there is a subtle difference in colour and weight. Added to this there is a very slight difference in hardness. Going on these minor differences alone and using 40 years of experience. The miller can tell the difference instantly and throws each of the stones onto a different pile as it passes through his hands.

To complicate matters, there are veins of iron, that have been leached from the parent material over the millions of years and found itsself concentrated in the cracks that permeate the mass of rock. The iron is slowly leached from the degrading stone as it weathers and concentrates there in the cracks and fissures in wet periods and then dries out and becomes insoluble. This concentrate of iron in the cracks, builds up over the millennia and makes for a red, orange, brown, blackish surface coating around each lump of rock.

To get the best result. The miller sits and patiently chips away the iron coating on each stone, to reveal the white mineral content inside. Hour by hour, day by day. The miller and his wife and son chip and scrape their way through the entire 14 tonnes of hard rock, until it is all sorted and cleaned. It takes them one month to process the 14 tonnes of stone. The result of this gargantuan effort of exacting perfection is three piles of stones which are processed separately.

First they are put through the stamp mills and reduced to a fine powder. It is then sieved and sorted again before blunging and sent to the levigation tanks, where the heavier, coarser silica particles are sedimented out and the finer clay and sericite mica fraction is floated off. This slurry is then concentrated and stiffened using a filter press, the only concession to modernity introduced since the great-grandfather built the operation over a hundred years ago. The stiffened filter cakes are then vacuum pugged and bagged ready for delivery.

The number one product is a very fine white sericite and kaolin based body perfect for the creation of the wheel thrown items. It fires pure white and translucent with perfect glaze fit. This is obviously the most expensive grade and is in very limited supply. The second grade material is creamy white, with a slight iron contamination, but only very slight. It fires white and translucent with perfect glaze fit. Number 2 body is plastic and throwable, just like number 1 body, just not as pure white. The third grade is somewhat yellowish and is made up of all the chipped, hammered, and scraped off iron fragments from the surface of the coloured stones. This is the cheapest grade and the least white, firing a bit grey, with reduced translucency and low plasticity, but with excellent glaze fit.

During my life as a potter, I’ve spent years, cleaning and sorting my collected native porcelain stones. I never really mentioned this to anybody lest they thought that I was mad. Now I know that I’m not. There are at least three other people in the world who are as committed to excellence as I am. The difference is that this family are well paid to produce this special clay for the most famous pottery families in Japan, and can boast that they supply clay to at least three ‘National Treasure’ category potters. These famous, Nationally awarded potters couldn’t have gained their unique status without the sustained diligence and commitment to excellence of this family.

It is an amazing experience to be able to be with these people, if only briefly. To see this old Wabi/sabi building. To learn of it’s long history. To speak with this couple. It’s all a bit amazing. They are so special and yet so ordinary and humble and uncomplicated. Just dedicated to their exacting work and very proud of their achievement. There is no other place like it in all of Japan, that I am aware of, and as this kind of work is pretty special to Japan. It might be safe to say the entire world. The effort that they have put in is rewarded with the status that they have achieved.

Myself, Tatsuya and Fuchino san

I’m thrilled to get to meet someone a little bit like me and to be able to throw my pots out of this unique material. Needless to say there is a months long waiting list for this couple’s product. There should be a National Treasure Award just for clay makers like these, who work at a very unsexy job, but who have elevated it to stratospheric levels of excellence.

I still find it hard to believe that it is possible to do what I have just seen with my very own eyes. I just didn’t really think that people still worked like this in a modern world. Taking so much time to be the best in the world, while not caring that anybody, other than their customers even know what they do. While we are there we buy 5 bags of this amazing stuff, but only the No.2 creamy white body today. There isn’t a skerrick of No.1 to be had for months yet. It appears to be all sold on advance order to the 3 National Treasure potters. I guess that this is one way of cementing your advantage over your other porcelaineous competitors?

I consider my self so lucky to be associated with Tatsuya san, and therefore able to use both the creamy white and hand selected, ultra-pure white varieties of this family’s clay while I am here. Tatsuya san has had a 40 year relationship with this clay making family and I am lucky to be able to tag along and reap that benefit.

I am grateful.

Best wishes from Steve on the outskirts of Arita

The White River Box Maker

Posted on 15/09/2015 by hotnsticky

I’m here in Arita and the layout of the little town follows the meanderings of the river and its feeder streams. This is a modern Japanese town, perhaps city? That has developed over its ancient foundation of porcelain footings. The little river that has prescribed the subsequent development has a few stories attached to it. I was told that the first Korean potter to come to this area, as a prisoner of war, called Ri Sam Pei, noted the absence of fish in the smaller upper river and that this was one of the signs of being in the vicinity of a porcelain stone area that he recognised from back at home in Korea. The water of this stream or upper river drains down from the rotten granite mountain of Izumiyama.

This water, as it drains through the fissures in the granite, leaches out both soluble potash alkali from the decomposing felspars in the granite, but also a tiny amount of kaolinized clay particles from that breakdown process. The mountain was once a molten granite pluton that was pushed up during a very ancient volcanic event, leaving the molten rock to cool slowly just below the surface. Once cooled and slightly eroded by surface weathering the exposed granite would normally take millions of years to degrade by normal surface weathering through the action of wind, rain and winter frosts and snow. What makes this place so unique is that something else happened here.

In just a few places in the world an event called hydrothermal-weathering take place. This involves the passage of superheated steam at hundreds of degrees centigrade rising upwards through the earths crust and passing out through cracks in the rocks of the mantle. In this particular case, it passed up through cracks in the granite mountain. The superheated steam strips out the soluble alkalis from the parent rock. In this case, the felspars in the granite, reducing it to pure white kaolin clay and altering the micas present in the granite, stripping them of their iron oxide and creating a unique form of white ‘plastic’ mica called ‘sericite’. This special combination of pure white plastic kaolin and pure white plastic mica, is a very rare find indeed and makes the perfect combination of minerals to create white, translucent porcelain.

The small amount of this pure white material that then slowly leached out of the rotten granite and into the stream killed the fish and turned the water a milky white. So the river became known as the ‘white river’, or ‘Shira-kawa’.

I don’t know how complete, accurate or even true these details about fish and sericite are? This is just what I was told.

I walk or bike along the Shirakawa river every day, just like all the locals who now drive along it here. The river doesn’t run white any more. Perhaps because the quarry is all but mined out now. Perhaps because of stringent, anti-pollution laws? I don’t know. There are ducks making living on the stream these days. I can’t say that I have seen any fish in the river.

However, I can see that there is a pretty good deposit of porcelain shards in the river bed now. At each bridge that I come to, there are shards to be seen in the shallows below. It would be interesting to walk the river bed and do a sampling of the various dates of those shards, at some dry period in the seasons. I’m sure that it must have already been done. There’s a PhD or MA Hons in there for sure, just waiting to be retrieved and analysed!

Today we are travelling along the stream on our way to visit the box maker. He lives a little out of town. On a beautiful little winding road, up through the forest. It’s all covered in moss and is deep in shade from all the tall trees on each side and the abundant humidity. There are springs trickling out of the rocks on the roadside. I call this part of the road the ‘shibui-dori’. It’s caught on with Miyuri and Tatsuya. It made them laugh. Now they are both calling it ‘shibui-dori’.

Working from home on the liminal edge, where the rice paddies stop and the forest begins. The box-maker has a small, humble house and next to it, large, industrial work shed, where he has all the machinery to make the boxes. The timber planks go in one end and the milled boards are planed and thicknessed, then edge glued to make large sheets, which are subsequently sawn back down to smaller sizes for the individual boxes required dimensions. The four sides fitted and glued together, then squared up and the bottoms installed, then the lids made. It’s all very exacting and precise work. Just like making the Arita style porcelain that goes inside them.

Although the shed is a bit ordinary looking from the outside. Everything inside is modern, and up-to-date, hand-fed, but electrically driven woodworking machinery. Its a pleasure to see the modern workings of someone’s workshop, involved in such modern, yet ancient craft skill. The boxes are just the same as they once were, but now, most of the processes are mechanised to reduce the labour cost. It’s an honour and a privilege to be allowed in here to see and watch the process first-hand. Hand made boxes like these are a bit expensive. You need to know that you will be able to sell quite a few of the pots packed in them, before engaging in ordering a full set for the all the work in a show. There is no way out. It is expected that a decent pot will come in a decent box here. It’s all part of the social contract.

In Australia, unlike Japan. Pots generally sell so cheaply, even in exhibitions these days in Oz, that it just isn’t possible to fund a good, hand-made box, from exotic timbers for each pot. But even here the pressure is on and the box maker now has to compete against cheap Chinese imported boxes. These of course are not custom-made for each pot, but imported in container loads of the most common sizes, for fast-moving items. What can he do. His only option is to aim higher for the high-end art market and hope that he can keep finding enough work to keep himself employed until he retires.

Globalisation is everywhere, affecting everyone. Even the box-maker.

The Soba Noodle Potter

Posted on 13/09/2015 by hotnsticky

I decide that today is my only chance to go and visit Mr Norito, or Noritou, or Noritow. I’ve seen it written in different ways. In Romanji it’s written as Norito, His web site is , but on his card, the hiragana ends in a ‘u’. So I think that Noritou is the best approximation that I can make.

I first met Noritou san when I was taken to his workshop for a brief mid-week visit. He is in his late 80’s I think, although he doesn’t look it. He’d pass for 60’s any time, but I’m told that he was selected as a very young kamikaze pilot at the end of the war. Not unlike my former teacher Shiga Shigeo, they only survived, because the military ran out of planes.

Noritou san is a very gentle character. I can tell from his manner and tone of voice.

He is also a very interesting potter. He is the only person that I have been introduced to so far that makes his own single stone porcelain body for his pots here in Arita. Regrettably I can’t speak Japanese well enough to understand any of the technical information that he is offering directly from him. However, I have Miyuri san with me on my first visit and she is a very competent translator. It was she who brought me here and told me that I really ought to meet this guy. “He’s a bit like you. he makes his own clay from stone”. So of course I had to come. He has no machinery, it’s all very hands on and time-consuming, as all clay making is, but he selects the softest, kaolin/sericite material that he can still find – I didn’t ask where, directly, but I got the impression from Miyuri san that it is from the old Izumiyama quarry. Even though it is now a preserved Historical site, apparently, there is a group of potters who want to preserve the old traditional ways, and Noritou san is one of them. They appear to have privileged access to collect small quantities of porcelain stone from the site. The archaeologist at the Historical Museum on site, maintains that there is still plenty of material in the quarry. This fits with my understanding of the nature of hydro-thermal weathering. it creates an inverted cone shape of ore body. So it should go down a long way, like an inverted image of the mountain that was formally there, now all mined away

Noritou san simply slakes his collected material in water and ashes for a year. Yes, that’s right ashes! He is telling me through Miyuri san that the ash-water, lye perhaps? is necessary to break down the clayey particles and remove the iron staining from the various contaminants? It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me – but!

That is what I was told, or what I think that I heard, but there could be some loss in translation, Ne! He shows me his slaking tubs. I dip my hand into the water. It is certainly slippery, just like lye. This is exactly the opposite of my understanding of clay making. I know from my own experiments, that when I grind the porcelain stone down to powder, it breaks some the chemical bonds of the alkali in the felspars, releasing some soluble alkali. This makes the resulting clay rather ‘floppy’ to use. Sort of thixotropic in nature, becoming softer and more fluid as it is worked, making it difficult to hold its form on the potters wheel. The counter to this is to add some acidic material into the mix to counter the release of alkalis and neutralise them. I choose to use the roof water from my water tank connected to the pottery roof, which has loads of eucalyptus leaves in the gutters, and makes the water naturally acidic. I also add vinegar. As I understand it, clay develops its plasticity better under slightly acid conditions as it ages. The low pH encourages the growth of beneficial bacteria that increases the workability of the mix. Maybe Noritou san knows this too, but is talking about something else entirely. And all this through an interpreter. Imagine what is happening now that I’m here alone this time?

Actually, I don’t always need a lot of words. I’ve spent close to 50 years as a potter, so I have a fair understanding of what is happening in the pottery just through observation. It’s mostly all I need. My limited Japanese is only just greetings and platitudes, in-depth, technical discussion is beyond me, but I manage.

The other very interesting thing about Noritou san, is that he does many things, just like me. We don’t just share a love of fossicking and clay making. He also teaches pottery to visitors on one or two days during the week to bolster his income, because you can imagine, his income from making ceramics by his chosen, slow, hands-on method is very low. That part of the conversation we both agree on! So, a little bit of teaching from home, just like me. The really interesting bit is that he opens his home on Friday, Saturday and Sunday for lunch and early dinner, something like 11am to 7 pm. He operates a hand-made soba noodle shop and is very famous locally. I’m warned to go early as he is usually booked out, so I do. Naughtily, I arrive 15 mins before he is due to open. I’m first in.

He and his wife make all the buckwheat noodles themselves by hand in the old-fashioned traditional manner, allowing them to sit over-night before cooking them, in the time-honoured way. This ageing maximises the buckwheat flavour. I can’t wait to get back there again. It’s Sunday today, so you can guess where I’m going. It’s my last chance, as I’m leaving next Sunday and am booked with other things planned on the other two days.

The meal comes in 3 servings, an amuse of tea and room temperature, crisp, fried buckwheat noodles, with just a hint of salt. Then the main course of cold, handmade noodles with an adjunct of warm soup to follow. There are some condiments of grated daikon radish, finely chopped green onions and wasabi, with a small separate dish of pink salt. Finally, there is a desert of sweetened buckwheat paste. It’s all terribly yummy. All this for Y800. That’s less than $10.

We exchange gifts, I have brought him a jar of Australian honey and he gives me one of his pots.

His advertising says that you can eat your handmade soba noodle lunch from his hand-made porcelain-stone, soba cup/bowl and them buy the cup. I do just that. It’s a warm autumn day and just right for cold soba.

from Steve in Arita, enjoying the food, porcelain-stone cold soba

Izumiyama and the Shira Jiki

Posted on 11/09/2015 by hotnsticky

I’m working in a workshop in Arita, in Kyushu. I’m trying to learn something about working with single stone porcelain. The potters of Arita in Japan have been making porcelain ‘jiki’ pots out of this single crushed stone from the izumiyama mountain quarry for four hundred years and they have developed a technique or two in that time. I’m keen to learn just a fraction of that knowledge in the very brief 5 weeks that I have here.

Arita is famous for being the first place in Japan where porcelain stone was discovered and white porcelain was subsequently made here. This place has a very long history. The first porcelain being made here in 1616. Since then the industry has had it’s highs and lows. We are currently in a low. Just like everywhere else in the world, the industry here is facing steep competition from China. Only a couple of decades ago, there were 300 studios here in this little town. Now there are only 100 and falling steadily. No country or industry can compete with the low cost-base of China. The best hope that they have is to engage with people like me, cultural tourists. I’m prepared to pay for the experience of working here in this amazing place, with this unique material that they have here. Merging traditional porcelain manufacture with paid workshop access for artists could be the difference between financial survival in the future. This town needs more accommodation and restaurants, if it is to encourage more longer-stay cultural tourism. Something more than the usual casual day-visit for shopping.

I don’t think that they really understand how rare and amazing this stuff really is on a global scale. So don’t fully understand its true value and what they have to offer. It’s just so normal for them here, after so many centuries. They don’t realise the special nature of what they have. It’s bred by familiarity! As all the workshops seem to be struggling financially, People like me could be the cash cows of the future, or at least part of the fiscal solution.

In the early 1600’s, the great Japanese Warlord Hideoshi invaded Korean. He captured potters and repatriated them to Japan. Rendition! It sounds familiar? A potter, named Ri Sampei, he was actually a part time potter and part time vegetable grower (farmer). Sounds familiar. He was captured and brought to this place. He soon discovered the special porcelain stone in the mountain of Izumiyama just outside of the village of Arita. He recognised it for what it was and began to make the first white porcelain in Japan, called Shira Jiki. The rest is history.

First day, I start with a clean wheel and pot boards, + a few lumps of porcelain clay.

So I’ve come to this place to experience the special southern Japanese porcelain techniques that have been developed here. This stuff is amazing, sufficiently plastic to throw well enough, so that you don’t really think that you are throwing with a ground up piece of stone. It is quite strong and stands up well on the wheel. Not vigorous, but sufficiently robust to make reasonable forms easily. For me anyway.

It is miles away from what I’m used to. The hard rock that I grind up at Home is a solid, non-plastic affair. I know from my reading that this stone here, is highly weathered. In a form known to geologists as ‘hydrothermal weathering’, where hot steam has passed through fissures in the parent rock, reducing what was formerly hard granite, to a soft crumbly type of soft white mica called Sericite. Sericite is both slightly plastic, throwable and highly fluxed at the same time. Plus, it is very low in iron oxide. A very unusual combination of characteristics. Only a few places in the world have materials like this at hand.

I find that the clay is used so soft here in this workshop, that I can’t separate my pots from the wheel-head using a conventional cutting string and lifting technique that I’m used to. I find that I have to use so much force to allow air in under the pot to lift it, that it distorts the bowl. I take a moment to make myself an extra thick, double twisted, multi-stranded, cutting string. The texture that it creates as it passes through the ultra-fine porcelain clay allows air to penetrate, so breaking the vacuum seal and allowing the pot to be easily removed from the wheel head.

I settle in for a few of weeks of intensive work. We work together, side by side.

I’m, in the workshop of Tsutsui Tatsuya. He is very experienced, having spent 40 years in this workshop. Purpose built, up on the hill overlooking Arita’s U-Tan district. I spend half a day throwing my pots and then spend a week turning them, and so it goes for the rest of my time here. I soon fill my shelves and then I’m looking for more storage space in the overhead racks, above the wheels.

The turning here is a different story to what I’m used to. It takes me back to my student days working for the Japanese Potter Shiga Shigeo. He was trained in the porcelain techniques of Kyoto and worked for the ‘Nation Treasure’ potter Tomimoto in Kyoto, another porcelain centre of excellence in Japan. Here they turn not just outside, but inside as well. I’m not used to that. I have tried in the past to get my form just about right on the wheel, so that there would be as little turning as possible. Here they all seem to use the ‘nobebere’ profile stick to throw the forms. Another thing that I’m not used to. But I’m here to learn and to experiment.

This work requires you to be both meticulous in detail and therefore precise in your hand-eye co-ordination, I’m not too sure if I’m up to it, but I give it my best, roughing out on the next day and turning down to form on the third, then the precise thinning and finishing when it is bone dry on the next, or any time after really. It doesn’t matter once it is fully dried out. I get to use my new tungsten-carbide-tipped turning tools for the job. I’ve colour-coded them. I need to get out more!

made by Steve in Arita

First pot finished, 89 to go.

A gecko comes to visit me while I’m turning.

Today Tatsuya made us a cup of matcha for afternoon tea break. It was amazing. He offered me his father’s Karatsu tea bowl and chose to use the bowl that I had recently given him as a gift, for himself. The tea looked really good in them. We both reached for our cameras at the same time. We laughed! So funny!. We were both thinking that we ought to record the special image of this very particular event on our cameras.

It’s a modern world, in this ancient place. So full of history, you can taste it!

The perfect juxtaposition of then and now.

fond regards from Old Steve in the New Arita, Japan

Yes Way! – A Walk Along the old Tombai Walls

Posted on 09/09/2015 by hotnsticky

I decide to take a walk up to the old Izumiyama Quarry and visit the Folklore Museum that is situated just by its entrance. The upper part of the Kami-Arita street isn’t that interesting as most of the galleries and shops peter out towards the top of the hill and I’ve walked that way plenty of times. So I decide to detour off the beaten track and take a walk along the little stream and stroll what was once the old main street through the town. It winds and meanders its narrow way between the workshops, gardens and backyards, as it follows the course of the stream and its natural contours. There are several detours and by-passes, little bridges that take the walkway along the opposite side of the stream for a while, for no apparent reason.

These criss-crossings of the stream had their reasons in the deep past, but today just seem strange and quaint in a world of hi-tech engineering and straight lines conceived on paper and then engineered into reality, regardless of the local contours and conditions on the ground.

I really like the lovely, ancient, quality of the neighbourhood. A lot of this area still has the old brick walls laid with mud called ‘Tombai’ walls. Tombai is the local dialect word for firebrick as a lot of the walls along this old road have been built from recycled

firebricks recovered from demolished kilns over the centuries. Their mottled surfaces variably shiny glazed, blistered and pock-marked from their years of productive work in the ancient wood fired kilns.

This old main road was little more than a walking track for people with baskets and hand carts and was so windy and convoluted that it was eventually replaced with a new road, capable of carrying traffic in the modern world. The old road remained because it wasn’t just a thoroughfare, but a vital constituent of the local economy, because all along the little stream, there were situated huge, water powered, timber stamp mills, called ‘Karausu-ato’ These mills were used for crushing the local porcelain stone that was the life blood of the local economy. At it’s peak, there were over two hundred and seventy of these water driven pounding mills, creaking, groaning and thumping their way through the day and night. siphoning water from the stream slightly higher up and directing it along leats to the mills, then discharging it back into the main flow to be used again lower down. In this way, the local economy was directly linked to the weather and rain fall patterns. There are no longer any working water-powered stamp mills operating along this stream. They have all been replaced by electrically driven machines. There are two of these mills preserved in the locality as educational tourists attractions. However, water powered clay crusher mills just like these are still in use in the pottery village of Onda, in the north of Kyushu.

see <“A Mecca called Onda” – revisited, for the first time Posted on 12/11/2014>

Not only are there no longer any water-powered stamp mills still working in Arita, but potters don’t do their own milling or clay prep at all anymore. That all finished a long time ago, with the specialisation of labour and business efficiencies. Just as all the pots are no longer thrown on foot powered, wooden, kick wheels, so all the clay for the potters of Arita is now made in just two large mechanised factories and one very small, husband and wife, family business.

It looks like I’m the anachronism. One of the last guys standing who chooses to try and do everything for himself, from digging the stone, through crushing and grinding the minerals, then ageing the clay and then finally throwing the pots on an antiquated, wooden, foot powered, kick wheel. Then firing the pots in a wood fired kiln, that I built myself with my own hand made bricks and fired with wood that I cut and split myself.

When the people here ask me how I work and I tell them. They shake their heads in disbelief. One looked gob-smacked and just said “No Way”!

I reply “Yes way”!

The Temple Bell

Posted on 06/09/2015 by hotnsticky

Every morning at dawn, the temple bell rings. It makes its first gong at 6.00am and then about every 35 seconds until ten past. The next strike comes just as the last one has died away. It is a very gentle way to be reminded that the day is about to begin.

Luckily for me, I live some distance from the temple. if I lived right next to the giant bell, I might have a very different opinion. I lay in bed and ponder just where this temple is. There a so many temples and shrines around here. Everywhere in fact. The streets and lanes are crowded with them. I have some idea of the direction of the sound. But sounds are funny things, so influenced by the surrounding buildings and the hill, that I’m not too sure if i’m hearing the sound directly or as it bounces off another building.

Today, I wake just as the dawn in breaking and the new pale light illuminates the shoji screens of my room. It’s 5.30 am. A while before the bell is due to ring this morning. I decide to go out into the street and listen more closely to determine where the sound is coming from.

I’m up, washed and dressed. If I move fast, I will be able to find to source of the bell. It’s not that important, but I’m inquisitive. My instinct is that it will be coming from the higher temple, above the train line, up on the hill. but my ears have been telling me each morning that it is emanating from the opposite direction. I’m never really sure when I hear the first gong, but once I’m awake they enter my consciousness and become real.

I start by heading to where I feel that it has been coming from in the past. I have 15 minutes to find it before the monk starts his morning task. I walk down the street, I pass a gap between two buildings, there is a little lane way. I can see straight away that it leads up to some temple buildings. I walk up the lane as quietly as possible. I don’t want to disturb the Monk in his daily rituals, he might be meditating?

When I get up there, there is no-one to be seen. The temple is beautifully kept. It has a raked gravel garden with some large stones. I still have several minutes before the first sound is due to ring. I take a moment to look around the garden and courtyard where the bell house is situated. We are quite well elevated here, above the buildings in the street. The sound would carry well from here. It’s not as hight as the other temple up on the hill, but high enough.

Only a minute to go and there is no sign of anyone around. Suddenly the sound of a bell sounds out. It isn’t this bell at all. I was completely fooled. I could have sworn that the sounds were coming from the direction of this temple. I head off down the lane and out into the street. It must be the hight temple then.

I head off in that direction, up the street, then up the side street towards the temple. Just then it strikes again. I’m completely wrong! What’s happening? The sound is coming

from the other end of the street now, back where I just came from. I turn and hurry back with as much dignity as I can muster, as I rush down the street, back past my place and further down the hill towards the sound. I want to get there before the monk or priest finishes his work. I only have 10 minutes max. to find it. Of course, I could always try again tomorrow morning, but I’m up now and on the job.

The sound is definitely coming from here. I walk up the lane and there it is, right in front of me. As I approach, the bell strikes again. Actually, that is wrong. The bell sounds as the log that is suspended on 4 chains swings back and strikes the bell, producing that marvellous resounding gong sound. I can’t see the monk in underneath the supporting structure, so I walk around the garden wall to

where I can see the bell house most clearly. There is no-one there! As I watch, the log swings back and strikes the bell again. It is an automated system, run mechanically. I have to say that I’m just a bit shocked and disappointed, for some reason, I was sure that there would be a person here doing some sort of ritual daily devotion.

So now I know, or at least I think that I do, but what do we ever really know? There are two temples and two bells. The first strike seems to come from up on high, then all the subsequent rings are from the lower one.

I’m sufficiently satisfied with this explanation to go home and prepare my breakfast of unsweetened natural yoghurt and fruit. The day has begun. No time to dally. There are porcelain bowls to be turned using my new hi-tech, tungsten carbide tipped kanna turning tools. If I have no problem adopting this brand-new technology for my work to make my life easier, then why shouldn’t a monk do the same?

Oka-No-Mi-Yaki

Posted on 04/09/2015 by hotnsticky

I’ve just finished working on my stretchy stick, ‘nobebera’, and now the mossies are driving me inside. It’s time for dinner and I have most of the makings of an okonomiyaki pancake on hand, but I’m going to make an Oka version.

Okonomiyaki is an interesting compound word, that has come to mean ‘pancake’ in common parlance, but if you break it down, okonomi can mean ‘your choice’, and yaki can mean ‘cooked’. So it has come to mean that you can make a pancake out of what ever you want to put in it.

I like that kind of recipe. I don’t have all the things that usually go into an okonomiyaki, but it’s my choice, so I will use what I have. Plenty of vegetables, held together with a bit of egg.

Okonomiyaki, can also mean ‘a stupid thing, of, my, pottery’. This could be a term used to describe my meagre efforts on the potters wheel here in Arita, so I have an affinity.

It’s quick, it’s fresh and it’s reasonably healthy. What more can you ask? I don’t have some of the normal essentials here in my tiny kitchen. I haven’t bought any mayonnaise and I don’t have any Japanese ‘tonkatsu’, BBQ style sauce, or any nagaimo, long yam root, but as the name implies, it’s my choice so I have what I want.

What I really like about this is that, apart from being really tasty, it is a one pan meal, so just right for my tiny kitchen, and so little washing up!

This could be enough for 2 helpings, but I manage to eat it all. I even have some bonito flakes to put on top. I love the way that they quiver around in excitement at the thought of being eaten! They know that they are delicious.

Itadakimas.

from Steve in Arita

Te sukuri nobebera

Posted on 04/09/2015 by hotnsticky

The hand made stretchy stick!

Following on from my visit to the maker of Kanna turning tools and other wooden pottery tools. This afternoon, I have just found the time to make my commitment to my new hand-made stretchy stick. An implement used here for throwing the inside of open forms. This particular one is specifically made for throwing and opening up bowl forms, stretching them out, as it were. So why would I want one? 🙂

It was impressed upon me at the time of purchase that this tool is a partnership for life. A tool made of superior, old, well seasoned, azalea wood, that will last my whole lifetime if looked after, but it needs to be customised to my hand and my feel for the clay, then adjusted for my technique and the specific bowls that I am making. I will probably end up needing several of these tools in various subtlely different iterations. I may make some of my own once I have got used to this one, and if I find that it can be accommodated to my own preferences for throwing. I have plenty of fruit tree pruning wood at home, some in reasonably large enough cross-section to be useful for this application. I also have some very old, well seasoned, red grained, eucalyptus. That might be good to experiment with?

This afternoon I went to the hardware shop and had a sort of conversation, if you can call charades with funny noises a conversation? I don’t have sufficient vocabulary for this situation and they didn’t have much English, but together we managed to laugh our way through all the options until we arrived at the objective which was sand paper. If I were at home, I have all this stuff on tap in the workshop, but here every little job, becomes a much larger exercise in communication and perseverance, as well as good will and humour.

I ended up buying two sheets of sand paper. No. 60# and 240# mesh, to sand my new nobebera, This tool looks like a shoe-horn sort of shape.

I spent 2 hours working on it, so that it would fit my hand better, and now it’s looking and feeling pretty special and a lot more comfortable. Smooth as glass. This old seasoned azalea wood is really tough and hard to work. I wasn’t expecting it to take 2 hours, but it did, and it isn’t finished yet.

After I was reasonably happy with the fit and contour, I wet it and let it dry to rise the grain. Then sanded it all over again with the fine grade paper, to get it very smooth, so that the raised wood grain won’t leave streaky scratch lines inside the bowl during throwing.

I need to throw with it for a few hours to get a better feel for what else I need to do to get the best out of it. Once it was mostly right, or as right as I can imagine to begin with, all the roughness sanded off and the tip smoothed out, made silky smooth and with an even curve. I gave it a thin rub over with some olive oil to finish it off ready for some work. It looks and feels good. When you buy these tools from the maker, they are only roughly shaped and need a lot of finishing to bring them up to your personal preference for the precise shape and finish.

Tatsuya san took me to the maker’s workshop last week and chose what he thought was the best one for me. He also drew on it with a pencil, to indicate what he thought should be the correct finished shape.

It was $50 bucks and not even finished!

Tatsuya demonstrated using his when we were there at his place this time last year and he threw for us. He has had his for the 40 years that he has been a potter. His are nicely wabi,sabi now and well-worn in. The azalea wood is very hard to sand. I can tell that it will be a good, hard-working tool with a long life.

Thank you Tatsuya. I am grateful!

Best wishes from Steve in the very special porcelain town of Arita

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