The weather is suddenly very hot like summer, but will turn cool again tomorrow, or so we are told… It’s too soon to be this hot. We are having to water the garden every evening to keep things growing well. The heat has brought out all the pollinators, they are so busy in the garden. The newly hatched ducklings are busy exploring the lawn, the asparagus is shooting up, and the artichokes are heading-up and filling out in the veggie patch, the last of the Seville oranges are fully ripe in the orangerie, marmalade is being cooked in the kitchen, the first of the new season cherry flowers have set small nascent fruit, the rye bread is out of the oven and all is well in our very special, self-created, highly-curated, fantasy world. Where we live the life that we choose, We keep mostly to ourselves, without having to deal with the complexities of local politics.
We grow all of our own vegetables, keep healthy, free-range, happy chickens, collect our own rain water, deal with our own sewage and feed ourselves organically, with wholesome food, grown, prepared and cooked respectfully and in tune with the cyclic nature of the natural world.
The bees and other pollinators are all out and being busy. I’m checking out the new avocado trees, half of these new, one year old trees, have decided to flower on their first anniversary of being planting out. Being grafted means that they have more mature wood, but producing flowers in their first year is pretty special. Our 50 year old Fuerte avocado tree is in full flower as well, so I’m hoping for a good, well pollinated crop. The old Fuerte tree has an understory of self germinated ‘wild’ borage plants that are also flowering now. Very pretty!
Close examination of the avocado flower heads reveals that there are no European honey bees interested in the avocado flowers, They are all working the borage flowers down below. The avocado flowers are being worked over by a few different pollinators. The main insect doing a majority of the work is the yellow and black striped hover fly. There are hundreds of them being very thoroughly busy. But there are also a number of other little hard working flighty characters, some so small that I can’t even really get a good glimpse of them. There is a wind blowing, so the flowers are moving about a lot. The smallest little critter is about 3mm long and blackish, so small that I can’t make out its features at all clearly. Small enough to be a native stingless bee, but I can’t be sure. We are probably too far south for that. Another pollinator is the ‘Delicate masked bee’, Very narrow in shape, with very long antennae. But there are also Leaf cutter bees, Blue banded bees, and an unidentified blue carapace small bee or beetle, too flighty to photograph clearly, plus some of what looks like blow flies.
Surprisingly, I have read somewhere that houseflies and blowflies are some the most significant pollinators of avocados according to one author. But it was all hover flies everywhere here today, even on the daisies and working the cherry tree blossom. Honey bees appear to be in decline around here now, but there are still a few. There was a time when there were so many working the bloodwood trees out on the road, that we could hear them clearly buzzing on mass from inside the house!
First thing in the morning, when I open the bedroom curtains and look out into the Chekov orchard of very large, 40 years old, mature, cherry trees, I see a collective noun of finches working the orchard. So Charming! They swarm past in a flutter of activity. Constantly on the move across the lawn and in under the trees. This manic behaviour is probably a survival mechanism, it’s hard to hit a moving target. The trees are full of blossom. It’s a wall of white/pink flowers. There are also a very happy and lively group of superb wrens, very flighty and very busy. I assume that they don’t want the nectar in the flowers. They have the wrong kind of beak for that, so they must be catching little bugs. They move so fast in a sweep of chirpy, whistely, twittering crishendo of life celebrating spring. I can’t see what it is that they are eating, but having spent the previous day looking very closely at the avocados and lots of other flowering plants in the garden, I can assume that they are eating tiny bugs. If those bugs are important pollinators? I hope that they don’t eat too many! But as it is spring and breeding season, they are probably after protein? It all passes so fast. In a moment they are all gone. Suddenly all quiet again.
Janine, Geordie and I spent half a day peeling and juicing 40 kilos of mandarins this week, for his seasonal, artisanal, pure fruit cordial business. He creates his adult cordials with what is in season locally. Mature, sophisticated flavours using a range of herbs and spices added into whatever fruit is in season to achieve an interesting and unique flavour profile. Some of the fruit comes from our orchards throughout the year, when we have enough for his needs. Our citrus grove is now almost completely harvested, but he also gets fruit donated to him by his customers. Whatever is in peak season at the time.
In the pottery, I have finished throwing more new work. I have bisqued all the previous work now, using the excess of recent sunshine. I used the big, newly refurbished, but very old, aluminium framed, electric kiln. It may be 30+ years old, but it is all new inside now, with new home-made, hand-extruded ceramic element rods and home-made electric heating element coils. It’s now the best kiln in the pottery.
I’ve started glazing, been at it for a few days now, so should be finished tomorrow. I am planning to do a wood kiln firing for the last time until after the summer heat has subsided. There is a forecast of 3 cooler and possibly rainy days next week, so that will be a perfect time to fire.
In the kitchen, I made another batch of chilli sauce. The last for this season, from the Korean chillis that I grew during the summer. This time, I decided to take the seeds out to make it quite mild, and then add some salt, sugar, garlic and vinegar, so it’s a sort of sweet chilli sauce. It’s super delicious – if I do say myself. Sweet, savoury, salty, tangy delicious. It’ll be great condement to go with cold meats like roast beef, but also useful to add to soups, sauces and stocks.
De-seed ther chillis until you get 250g of chilli, add 3 cups of vinegar, 2 cups of water, 2 cups of sugar, 2 tea spoons of salt and 6 cloves of garlic. This last item of garlic coud easily be doubled, as the garlic is hardly noticible in the finished sauce. Cook for 20 mins over moderate heat and bottle in sterilised jars.
We have been told that last northern summer was the hottest on record and our winter here in the southern hemisphere was also the hottest on record. There’s a pattern here. I need to take notice and prepare for what will most probably turn out to be a longer, hotter, drier summer. More drought and more fires?
We are pretty well prepared here for the very likely increased fire danger, having been there and done that in the past and learnt from it. However, who knows how and when it will come and under what conditions.
This week I started testing and running the various fire fighting pumps to make sure that we are all OK and prepared for any sudden and unexpected fire event. I need to know that everything is in working order after the long hiatus of non-use since last summer. Petrol goes ‘stale’ if kept too long, so I need to syphon out any old fuel from the engines and refill them with fresh petrol, then run them and switch off the fuel line while the engine is running to drain the carburettor of fuel before shutting down and leaving it ready to restart reliably in any emergency. It all takes time, but is absolutely necessary if you live in the bush like we do, situated between two densely forested National Parks
As we haven’t had the usual winter rain here, all the dams are almost empty. Not a good way to start a hot dry summer. We need the water for irrigation of the vegetable garden and the orchards, but obviously for fire fighting as well.
I use one of our 4 petrol powered fire pumps, that is not permanently installed in one position to run the wall and roof sprinklers on a specific building. One is for the house protection system. A second for the pottery and barn, and the third for the railway station and carport. All these buildings have wall mounted sprinkler systems installed and huge 30,000 or 40,000 litre water tanks connected.
Using the portable fire pump unit, I can put it in the wheel barrow and take it down to the lowest dam to pump water uphill to the middle dam, accumulating all the water together, in that dam, and then from there, up to the top dam, where the big fire fighting pump is installed. This pump runs the underground system of buried polypipes, taking water to every part of our land, where I have installed metal stand pipes along the line to connect 20mm hoses for ground based sprinkler systems.
The bottom dam is pumped almost dry, leaving just a small amount of residual water for the yabbies.
The pump is then moved up to the middle dam and repeated, pumping all of this water up to the top dam. It takes most of the day to empty each dam. approximately 6 solid hours of pumping. Refilling the fuel tank every 2 hours. It costs me $60 in fuel at these current elevated prices due to Trumps war on everyone. I’m a bit shocked at the price of fuel. I only go to the petrol station a couple of times a year these days, so it’s a shock. I’d rather run the fire pump on our own solar PV, but I’d need a very long and very thick, 3 phase, 5 core, extension lead. This would not only be extremely expensive, but too heavy to lift.
I do have a 30 metre, 5 core, 3 phase, cable to run the electric wood splitter that I rebuilt and converted from a petrol driven to electric after the fire. But this is impossible to lift. I have to drag it out bit by bit, to get the business end down to the closest wood pile next to the pottery. I wouldn’t want to have to manage anything 3 or 4 times longer and heavier. And, that wouldn’t be feasible in a fire situation.
By concentrating all our ground water reserves from 3 dams into one. It reduces the available surface area for evaporation to 1/3 , so making the stored water last longer into the summer.
Each of the individual dams had evaporated down to just half a metre depth of water. By concentrating all the dam water up into the small top dam, it is now a metre deep. This amount or water will probably last us til just after new year. After that, we will have to rely on our tank water storage.
We have two very large water tanks of 100,000 litres each, down in the bottom corner of our land at the lowest point. These collect the rain water off the roof of the barn and the pottery. We started out with just the one tank, These are two very large roofs, so quite efficient at collecting rain water and storing it. However, if it doesn’t rain for long periods, we do manage to use most of this water, like we did in the last drought. We pumped the first concrete tank down to just 200mm depth remaining before it rained again. That was a warning to me that one large tank wasn’t enough, because there had been periods earlier on when it rained for a week and that first tank had over flowed for days. So I added a second tank to catch and store that overflow water.
Over the years, under growth had built up and grown quite thick all around those two tanks. The newer 2nd tank is not concrete, but a tin tank lined with a plastic bag inside. This will be a bit vulnerable in a bush fire if there is a build-up of fuel load in front of it. So on my return from Korea. We set about clearing out all the accumulated vegetation. It was a big job over 3 days to get it all clear again. but will be safe now for a few more years.
We managed to get all this undergrowth cleared away and piled up and burnt before the fire season started, so were able to burn it all in a pile safely.
Of course any sane, rational person with an interest in fire safety around their home, would keep it all mowed and spotless with regular maintenance all year using the whipper-snipper/strimmer, and digging out the tougher bits with a mattock!. But clearly, I’m too lazy to get off my fat idle butt!
I tell myself that I will do it soon, maybe later, but just not today and then a year (or 2, or 5) passes by and there is suddenly a small forest to deal with. It’s just like cleaning out the kitchen grease trap. It doesn’t get done regularly enough, and then it’s a big issue. Welcome to being human.
The citrus season is coming to an end. I still have a few Seville oranges on the tree, so there will be at least one more batch. I have made 4 so far since my return, just enough to get us through the year ahead – almost.
For the past few years I have been using the ‘Mrs Beeton’ recipe for boiled whole fruit that was sent to me by our friends Bill and Anne. They get some of our fruit each season in return.
Of course, I can’t help my self, I have changed the recipe to remove 60% of the recommended sugar in the recipe, down from 2.7 kgs to just 1 kg. It’s sweet enough at this level. At least for me anyway. I find most jam and conserves way too sweet for my taste. It’s the easiest and consistently reliable recipe I’ve adapted to. I have added just half a packet of pectin (25 g) to make up for the missing sugar.
In the pottery, I have been making a range of domestic wares , getting ready for the end of year open studio sale. Most recently I have been making cups and saucers. So very old fashioned, but rather romantic and quaint. I make them every so often, as I really like them as a project. They require careful measurement and skill. So they are very rewarding when you get them right. I have also been making baking dishes and mixing bowls.
I have started glazing, getting ready for a wood kiln firing, before it gets too hot and late in the year. I should have got it done earlier, but was too tied-up playing catch-up on all the jobs around the orchard prior to spring and then getting the garden up to date, cleaned out, weeded and replanted with the summer crops. 3 Months away has put me behind schedule with regard to the seasons. But everything gets done eventually, usually a little bit late, but I don’t pretend to be perfect, just committed to this chaotic, wholesome, DIY, organic, post modern peasant’s, artist’s life.
In my ‘spare’ time I finally found time to finish the long awaited repair job on the disc-disintegrator rock crusher. I cleaned it and repaired it to almost going condition after the fire, but the rubber belts got melted in the fire, so it got almost finished, repainted and all greased up and ready to go – well almost, but for the missing twin drive belts. The problem was that the belts need to go around the drive shaft, but the shaft is fully enclosed in the mechanism. This means removing the shaft to slip them in. But to remove the shaft I have to push it out through the plain bronze bearings. Over the many long years of use. It’s about 100 years old. The shaft has been a bit worn into place with a slight ‘lip’ built-up, or rather worn-in, which stops its from moving laterally. So to get it moving, it needs to be hammered out. I tried this, but not wanting to break it…
I gave up at this point some time ago and thought that cleaning the grease trap sounded somewhat easier and a more attractive proposition, followed by scrub clearing and brick cleaning. I had just finished scrubbing the pavers on the south side of the pottery, all covered in slippery moss, using chlorine bleach, when I realised that I was just procrastinating. So I went back in (2 years later) and figured out how to remove that shaft. One thing leads to another, and I needed to remove the drive pulley first, but that necessitated removing the rusted on collar, which was held in place with corroded grub screws… which led to having to work out a way of releasing the embedded keyway spline, to slide the pulley off. It also required dis-assembling and removing the front metal casting of the mill to allow the space for the shaft to move outwards… The front casting bolts were rusted in place, so needed several applications of RP7 and light oil, plus some gentle heating and then tapping with a copper ‘drift’ to get them in an agreeable state of mind to start moving.
Days later, it’s all done and a going concern again.
Now, I just need to confront the last burnt out rock crusher machine. The roller crusher, which Is so very useful, and sadly missed, as I used to use it a lot in the old pottery for softish materials, like shales and pumice. Maybe I’ll get round to fixing that one when the grease trap needs cleaning again?
I have satisfied myself now that I have ‘caught-up’ with the vegetable garden and orchard work for the time being. Of course, there is always on-going maintenance to deal with, especially with spring just around the corner. A garden is a perpetual source of pleasure and bounty, If you are that way inclined? But that reward requires a lot of work. Being able to have extensive vegetable gardens and orchards, growing all of our own organic food is the reason that we live here. It’s a choice that I made 55 years ago. I haven’t looked back. However, I’m incredibly lucky to have found a fantastic partner in Janine, who holds similar values and aspirations.
I’m back from my 3 months in Korea, just in time to get the late winter work done in preparation for spring. As spring is coming earlier and earlier each decade, as we, as a species, continue to cook the earth with our carbon pollution. I find it hard to accept that the collective ‘we’ are moving so slowly on this. Obviously there is incredible push back from the big carbon energy producers, amplified by their big media puppets, but I would imagine that it would be becoming clearer by the year and by each natural disaster; droughts, fires and floods. all made worse by the extreme heating. But NO. Everybody seems quite sanguine about it all.
The Trump followers say its all fake news, and one of the people that I happen to have to deal with, says that the exact opposite is happening. ie. its getting colder every year, flying in the face of obvious reality, but he is actually ill! While most people don’t seem to give a rats. What can you do? It’s a democracy! I accept the majority decision, but decline to follow the masses. Janine and I have instead, chosen our path of self reliance, minimal consumption and a low carbon lifestyle. I keep thinking of what else I can do, but we have covered all the obvious and achievable items like going fully solar starting back almost 20 years ago, in 2007. Driving an electric car, starting back 8 years ago in 2018. Recently we changed all the window glass in our Kitchen to double glazed and vacuum sealed panes. We are net exporters of clean solar electricity to our neighbours.
On a brighter note. Various fruit tress in the orchards are flowering beautifully just now, and have been since I came back. The earliest of the plums is the most striking at the moment. It’s a red skinned and red fleshed variety, even the bark on the smaller upper branches is red. It’s called “O-Kay” plum and is really prolific. We bought it grafted onto dwarfing rootstock, so it won’t grow more than 2.5 metres high. That is, if it bothers to read its own label! And then agrees to comply! Not all trees comply with their labelling! We also have an early peach just starting to flower, as well as an early nectarine and a few almonds. They all think that it’s spring now, and are bursting into flower, even though it’s still winter.
Just a reminder to those who have fruit tress. Now (or even a month ago) is the time to spray lime sulphur, and do your pruning, before bud burst,
The early maturing varieties that we have chosen will mature and ripen before the bugs and fruit flies breed up into large numbers and spoil the fruit. We only use organic methods here, so no toxic sprays. We use a range of methods to control and limit the numbers of bugs. Starting now, we use ’DAK’ pots to lure the male fruit flies before they can mate. We use a protein based female fruit fly lure to help limit their numbers as well. We also deploy a simulated fruit based lure, marketed as ‘ecolure’ along with ‘spinosad’ soil fungus as well as garlic spray in various forms. Be aware that garlic spray can only be used after flowering is finished. Bees won’t go near flowers that have garlic spray on them. I learnt this the hard way. Everything helps, but once the weather warms up into full-on summer. The fruit fly numbers build up to the point that these efforts aren’t enough. So this year, I’ll be experimenting with using fine while nylon netting to cover the late maturing fruit, such as pears and quinces. Always trying something new.
This week I finally finished spreading the last of the bonfire ashes and sooty charcoal dust from the orchard prunings burn pile. Burning the prunings eliminates any chance of spreading diseases, or overwintering pests. The ash has nutrients in it like potassium that are good for the trees as fertiliser, the carbon enriches the soil, and the fine charcoal and helps to retain moisture. Win, win!
Only once the gardening work is done, can I get back to work in the pottery. Growing food comes first.
I started with the basics, by cleaning out the pug mill that hasn’t been used for several months while I’ve been away in Korea. Even though I seal up the various orifices with plastic, air still seems to get in and dry out some parts, so these bits get too dry and stiff to go through the pug mill vacuum screens, and block it up. I spent a morning doing this maintenance cleaning and other jobs required to get the pottery back into a working studio again. Only then could I start throwing. Everything in its own time and place, and in order.
I started by throwing the rough stoneware body that I make for wood firing. It is designed to ‘flash’ to a warm orange/red colour in the wood firing kiln. As it is quite rough in texture, having a lot of coarse fireclay in the recipe, it is very suitable for use as oven proof cookware. So I started by making baking dishes, casserole dishes, large kitchen mixing bowls with pouring spouts and rough textured mortars and pestles.
Next I started throwing some of the fine textured wood firing clay body. I made 4 pot boards of cafe latte cups, short, wide and open in form. I am using one of the measuring pointer gadgets that I have been making for sale to potters wanting to improve their skills and accuracy. I will be offering a weekend workshop on throwing skills and accuracy in the coming months. The pointer has a rubber tip, so that it will not damage the soft, delicate rim of any pot that comes too close and touches the tip.
Before I left for Korea, I read ‘Enshitification’ by Cory Doctorow. A really good read, very informative about the abuse of power exercised by the big digital marketing corporations like Amazon and Apple, and how they start out doing good for their customers, but as they gain market share, soon become too powerful and turn against their customers and start to rip them off. A real education. I don’t use Amazon at all, as it is usually more expensive than other places that I support. But now that I know how corrupt, underhanded and devious bezos is. I feel somehow pleased by my past decision. Highly recommended.
The other book that I have just finished deals with the mining and supply of exotic elements like lithium and cobalt that make the new, powerful, light weight batteries possible. Batteries that are essential in the production of all the new portable devices like power tools, phones and laptops, but also electric cars. The Congo seems to be the epicentre of this mining, and the book goes into great detail examining the corruption of the series of governments there. The Congo is potentially one of the wealthiest countries on earth. But its people are some of the poorest, because of the corruption, bribery and straight out theft of the minerals industry.
Reading this book, I felt some guilt, as I own battery powered power tools, a phone, a laptop and 2 electric cars. However, my home storage battery and my car both use Lithium/iron/phosphate technology and so avoid the use of cobalt. There is some hope on the horizon in terms of avoiding the lithium/cobalt trap. Sodium battery technology has just reached mass production level of reliability in China, with the release of the first sodium powered storage batteries and electric car by CATL in China. CATL is the largest manufacturer of lithium batteries used in electric cars. So a sodium battery breakthrough is some sort of good news. As sodium is not expensive or rare, or hard to work with, or prone to burst into flames. Sodium is readily available everywhere, so is much cheaper and its extraction and processing are less polluting. It is heavier and less energy dense than lithium, so is better suited to stationary battery storage solutions, but will be OK for small suburban run about cars, for people who don’t need so much power. This first mass produced sodium battery can be recharged 10,000 cycles and can be recharged from 10% to 98% in 6 minutes. Sounds great. However Lithium will still be the battery of choice for light weight, power hungry applications for the foreseeable future.
In the kitchen we are eating a lot of winter vegetables. In particular, finding as many ways as possible to use up the huge flush of cauliflowers. Baked, fried, steamed and gratin’d, and in soups. We have probably eaten our last black French truffle for the year. and very lovely and flavoursome it was too. Can’t wait till next year now. As we live and grow with the seasons, we have a slow rotation of vegetables on our menu as the year progresses through the seasons.
We will soon be approaching what the peasants used to call ’the hungry gap’. When the winter crops are coming to an end and the spring plantings of the summer crops is completed, but there was always a gap before the summer crops were mature.
Over the next couple of months, we will be coming to the end of the carrots, beetroots and parsnips, as well as the cauliflowers, our diet will be narrowing down to leeks, cabbage and potatoes. Radishes, lettuce and onions. The spring peas are flowering, but haven’t set yet. We have plenty of bottled tomato passata along with loads of stewed fruit in the pantry from last summer, and dried mushrooms in jars. We are in peak citrus season just now, so no shortage of vitamin ‘C’. I’m making a batch of Seville orange marmalade each week for use later in the year and the there are the first asparagus shoots coming up. So we don’t go too hungry.
I’m planting tomato seeds now and in a few weeks time I’ll be planting them out under cover of a temporary closh, made by wrapping some clear plastic around a light weight wire frame. This will be just for the first month in case of late frosts. As last year, I didn’t bother, and I lost all my early plantings to a late frost and had to start again. A lesson well learnt.
I’m really glad to be back home and doing all this focused and meaningful self-reliant work again. People say to me that my life must be such hard work, and there is a little bit of that, but only to a certain extent. However, being the ‘Artist in Residence’ was a great honour, and also fun, and even though I grew a vegetable garden and built a wood fired oven at the studio, it lacked the completeness that I have come to consider normal here in this life. So I really appreciate being back in a complete meaningful and supportive life/growing cycle here with Janine, Geordie and the chickens! Happy to be home.
I am now just over half way through my sojourn here in Korea. 5 weeks to go. How am I going?
Well, I’m only certain of two things, and that is Death and Taxes. I’m hoping that nether of them catch up with me here to spoil my stay!
Amazingly, I am just about where I would like to be in terms of my progress. I have almost finished all the throwing. From now on it will be all about drying, bisqueing, glazing and wood firing. Thankfully I don’t have to cut, split and stack all my own wood!
So far I haven’t really left my studio/flat for more than a few hours in 6 weeks. I work all day, everyday, and its starting to pay off. My making skills and my ability to see in advance what is happening to these massive lumps of spinning jelly-like, floppy, sericite paste, as it slowly degrades under the force of gravity back down towards the wheel head. I have learnt to feel what is about to happen and what I need to do in the precise moment and order to get the outcome that I want. Knowing when to stop is a key lesson. Perfection is out of my reach at this level, ‘good enough’ turns out to be the highest level of things that I can achieve at this time. But I’m OK with that. I’m just so glad to be able to be here and have this humiliating experience of failing at almost every turn. But I hope to achieve just a few elegant jars to leave behind, that I can be proud of.
Making a ‘good-enough’ Moon Jar is quite demanding for various reasons. Firstly, they are huge, needing 10, or 12 or 15 kilos of clay to make just one half. Secondly, They are made from porcelain clay that is quite floppy and non-plastic, compared to stoneware or earthenware clays. Thirdly, the shape is a very difficult one to master, even with good plastic clay. The aim is to make a very open, wide, fully rounded, bowl shape with a very small foot. This is the shape most likely to squat down and collapse if not made carefully. That is why it is made in two pieces. But even then, it’s not easy in porcelain.
So when these three elements are combined, throwing large lumps of floppy clay, into a very wide shape, but with a tiny foot, there isn’t much to hold it up. I can only offer ‘good will’ and the little bit of skill that I have to help it along.
I’m in awe of those early Korean potters here who managed this impossible feat of throwing, while working on a wooden kick wheel with absolutely no momentum, working these huge, beautiful rounded, flowing forms, while kicking with both feet, one towards, and one away, alternately, to keep the wheel moving. Keeping both feet in action while holding your hands steady in space is something akin to ballet. BUT, not just holding those hands steady, Actually applying considerable pressure to the clay the slow it right down as well.
I could have made more progress, if I’d worked alongside somebody who knew what they were doing. All I’ve got up my sleeve is what I’ve retained from watching some good Korean throwers here in Bangsan in 2018, eight years ago, during a Moon Jar conference. Not a lot was learnt, and most of it forgotten, What I’m learning here now is invaluable, as every mistake and failure is painfully burnt into my memory banks.
You really have to have your wits about you. I’m learning how to best approach this difficult task. The order of moves, the thickness of the clay in different parts at different stages of the lifting and opening of the evolving shape. If it were just a simple ‘vase’ shape, coming up off the wheel in a straight line up and out, like an inverted cone, it would stand up more easily, but two of these straight sided vase shapes won’t make a sphere. A sphere needs to have a small elegant foot ring, then opening up and out in a curve, away from the wheel head towards the horizontal, then curving around and back, upwards to the rim. An ‘ogee’ line of curve. A completely impossible shape to be self-supporting in soft, floppy non-plastic porcelain. Who was the genius who first thought of this extravagance in white porcelain?
I’ve dropped a few shapes while getting it right, but I have a better appreciation of the way to best get it done now. Added to the above is the tendency for the non-plastic porcelain clay to absorb water and dry out on the surface causing your fingers to ‘stick’ or ‘grip’ every so often. All throwers have experienced this at some point, but with small pots made from plastic clay, it is recoverable. If this happens while making a moon jar, it is the end of that pot. A stretch and wobble in the form that cannot be corrected is established and there is nothing that can be done to recover it. I’ve tried. Best not to waste any time on it. Just stop, wedge it up and start again. I’ve learnt to hold a wet sponge in my hand between my fingers, and to give a little gentle squeeze more or less continuously, to keep the surface lubricated, but only just so, to avoid any ‘sticking’, but not too much so as to saturate the surface and cause the form to go weak at the knees, resulting in slumping and collapse.
Another lesson was learning to ‘condition’ the new wooden plywood batts. Fresh batts appear to be OK, and would be for every other purpose, but not for large porcelain moon jar bowls. I lost two in a row before I realised that the fresh wood didn’t allow the clay to ’stick’ to the surface well enough. So that when I flipped the bowl over, up-side-down to place it on top of the base bowl, it just peeled off the batt onto the floor. Hard lesson, well learnt. I scrubbed the batts with clay slip and saturated the surface before using them again. success two days later. But so many little set-backs, one after the other, leading to losses is disheartening. But good life lessons in perseverance!
I have also come the the conclusion that 15 kgs is my maximum limit for lifting and flipping over large bowl forms. Any more might lead to a hernia?
I’ve also learnt to be very careful in staging my drying and stiffening technique to make the best connection between the two halves. I’ve had a few crack along the joint in drying. One from not taking enough care to get the consistency and stiffness just right at the time of joining. Too soft and the shape distorts or worse, collapses. Too dry and the pot stands up to the stress of joining and paddling, but the joint can be too dry and fail in drying. I learnt to stiffen the body of the form, particularly the lower section that will have to take all the weight, while keeping the rims soft and moist for adhesion. This is not just about drying it out, but allowing the natural tendency of clay to ’set’ as some kind of thixatropia sets up between the clay particles. Letting the form sit quietly over night aids this. So making a large jar takes time and patience.
However, if the rims are kept too soft, there is a good joint, but as the pot dries, the wetter rim part shrinks more than the rest of the pot, pulls in and the curve flattens out at the mid point of the sphere, making a flat spot. I’ve seen hints of it in a few of the old Moon Jars in Museums, but also on many contemporary moon jars. A successful join, but a compromised form.
So far I’ve made beautiful round spheres with cracks in their joints after drying, as well as well joined bowls, that didn’t crack, but with less than successful round forms, lacking elegance. They both met my hammer.
Another issue that I have had to come to terms with is picking up the joined form, which is now 20 kgs or more, leather hard, slightly soft and a little bit slippery and then turning it over, up-side-down, so as to be able to trim the foot. This kind of weight should really be a two person job. But Janine’s not here! So I have developed a way to do it on my own, slowly and carefully, but it is at the limit of my capacity now at this age. I’m not the man I once was. so I have to look after myself. Fortunately I have developed a large tummy in my advancing age, and this has turned out to be very useful in supporting the shape while I lean back and very gently manoeuvre it up-side-down with my hands. Note to self! Don’t wear a shirt with buttons!
A good Moon Jar is a complex piece of work, requiring sound throwing technique, staged drying, good timing, humidity management, correct joining and compression, careful turning and slow, even drying. And all this before we even start to think about glazing and firing! Yes, there certainly is some madness! But when it works, there is poetry!
I have made about 25 good large jars now, another dozen medium sizes and about 40 smaller jars. a couple of days ago, I had my first bisque firing with half of my work in it. I used the large trolly kiln up in the other studio area, up the hill. I booked the Museums truck to drive them up there, instead of walking up there and back 20 times carrying one jar at a time! Nothing broke or chipped on the way thankfully.
When I arrived here it was the end of winter and the fields were being ploughed getting ready for the spring planting. They have to wait until may around here to be safe from the last frost. I watched them prepare the paddies, plough them twice, to mulch in the previous crop stubble, flood them and then rotary-hoe them again a couple of times. They spend a lot of time working and reworking the walls of the field by hand with a shovel. Building up the edges above water line and then patting the surface down, compressing it with the back of the shovel. It takes hours. However, they save time elsewhere, by avoiding the back breaking work of planting out the rice seedlings. Forty years ago, I was in Japan and watched women doing this back-breaking work. These days they have very cleaver machines that they load up with trays and trays of seedlings. The machine then proceeds slowly across the paddy planting 10 seedlings every second at a spacing of 200mm, apart, doing 2 metre wide rows with each pass. It’s a beautiful thing to watch. So fast and efficient.
I’ve also watched the landscape change from brown to green as the frosted, burnt pasture responded to the warmth and light. There was a tall pasture that had over wintered here, shooting up to a flowering head. At first I assumed that it was a grain crop, but soon realised, as they mowed it down, that it was a fodder crop for making hay. I walked down the lane to get a good look at it, it turned out to be rye, which takes the cold well and is over-wintered here. The smell from the paddock was so sweet, almost sickly sweet. There was so much sugar stored up in those emerging flowering heads. Harvested before it set into grain and turned to starch. They make huge round bales and plastic coat them. I’m assuming that with some residual moisture, it must be some form of silage? Stored for next winter’s fodder?
I miss being able to harvest my own vegetables from my own garden. So much so, I planted one just outside the studio. A mixture of some seedlings to get things going quickly and some seeds in-between to fill out the space as the first plants mature and are harvested. This garden isn’t really for me, as I will be gone in 6 weeks time, before most of the produce matures. I created it for the other residents that will still be here after I leave.
I have also found time to build a wood fired pizza oven. Using a lot of broken bricks that were sitting around in small piles here and there, up around the wood kiln area. I built the oven up on top of a retaining wall, just opposite my wood kiln, so we can cook pizzas while we fire through the night. Again, this little side project isn’t really for me, but my contribution to the creative community that will be living, working and creating here for years to come into the future. At a time when a lot of the world is in so much conflict and every thing that we thought was stable is starting to come apart at the seams. I am so lucky to be an Australian, Sitting out on our own in the Pacific, we are missing out on so much of that conflict. However, when the pooh hits the propellor, nowhere is safe!
Here the Koreans are technically still at war. There are still landmine warning signs in various places around here, as there was never any really complete clean-up of the mines after the conflict ground down to a stand-off. Something they take for granted around here, but I found it quite shocking when I first encountered one of those land mine warning signs on a strand of wire, not too far from here. on something almost like some sort of old disused fence. Luckily I had my phone and its translation app to tell me to stay well away. We are only a few kms from the final DMZ line here.
As the social norms that we thought might sustain us are broken, the rule of law is degraded and there is a huge up-sweep in the far right of politics, based on miss-information, fear, lies, xenophobia, hate and miss-trust. These events can lead to some feelings of insecurity and alienation. I want to counter that, by creating things that bring people together. Every Friday, I bake bread there in my tiny studio to share with the other residents. A wholesome mixture of wholemeal and rye, that you can’t buy around here. I have also started to host a weekly pizza night in my little space. Last week we also shared a kimchi a pancake night, made by the lady next door, using my huge bag of kimchi that I was given when I arrived here, while I contributed banana pancakes with a little ice cream and cinnamon on top. I have also made rock cakes to share at morning tea and marmalade, as such a thing doesn’t exist here. I like to have a little on my homemade toast, whenever I feel a little twinge of nostalgia for home.
I want to help create a sharing, supporting community out of these individual artists. We are mostly here for a short time, so there is a constantly changing group dynamic. I replaced someone. Another person left after I was here just one month, I only met her once! Two more artists will leave at the end of this month, and I will leave and the end of next.
However ephemeral life is, I want to leave a positive trace behind – at least for a while. I want to leave this artists residency in a better, more inclusive, comfortable and fun creative state than it was when I arrived.
I have been given an old electric kiln that is 44 years old. The frame is still in OK condition, but the ceramic fibre lining has collapsed, it is all cracked, shrunken, and falling to bits. The fibre in the roof and back wall has sagged, broken up and half of it has fallen in. Most of the element rods are also cracked and broken. It looks like it has had a hell of a life. I was told that it was once in use in a school, but I don’t know where it was originally from or it’s history before that. But it ended up being last used to slump glass. We were given the kiln when it finally became unworkable and the glass artist, (a relative of Janine), retired. And, I believe, spent its last years laying on it’s back and used as a top loader.
I’ve been given lots of things that don’t work in my time here, especially since the fire. I’m used to it. People say. “Steve, your handy. I’ve got this thing that doesn’t go, but I’m sure that you will be able to fix it. You can have it!” And occasionally, I can actually fix it! I surprise myself sometimes!
Most things only need a different way of thinking to get around the huge problem of built in obsolescence. To find the creative alternative. It doesn’t have to look like new or be perfect. It just needs to work. Our pottery is full of old gear that I have rebuilt like this. In fact, there are less than half-a-dozen items that were bought ‘off the shelf’, as it were, brand new. We just don’t buy new stuff very often. Even my recently purchased ‘new’ electric car, was actually a used car, but new to me.
That is how we survived financially all these years, we rarely buy anything new. Only 2nd hand stuff, that no one else wants, or is less desirable. Second hand car, second hand house, second hand tools and equipment, we were always being offered stuff cheaply, or free, because it needed repair or just didn’t go anymore. However, If nothing turned up, I just built things from up scratch, using recycled material, or re-purposed from another job. The first two pottery studios that we built here, were made from re-cycled and scrounged materials, mostly wood. Tragically, they both burnt in fires. So no more building with wood for us. It is only this last studio that we built using a metal frame, but we spent a year scrounging sufficient old recycled corrugated iron to both clad it and line it, inside and out. Along with 2nd hand fittings and doors.
I decided to include a big arched window for the South wall of the new pottery facing the house. I wanted it to reflect the arch window that I made for the house back in the 80’s. No chance of finding something like that on the side of the road, so I welded one up out of marine grade aluminium for just a few hundred dollars. It actually turned out OK. I’ve never done that before. And can’t see myself ever needing to do it again. I never seem to get any good at anything much, as I only ever seem to do these jobs once, or maybe twice, but a couple of decades apart, just after I’ve forgotten how to do it.
The first thing that I did to get this old freebie kiln on the mend, was to make some new element mounting rods. As far as I’m aware, no one makes these ceramic kiln rods anymore in Australia. They are not hard to make, just time consuming. But I guess that you do need to know what you are doing. And in this case I just happen to know just enough to to it. That is to say, that I have had a go at home made kiln furniture/home made refractories about 50 years ago.
I needed to get these rods made early, as the only kiln that I now own that can fit in 650mm long ceramic element rods, is the big wood fired kiln. I can only fire the wood kiln in the cooler months, avoiding summer for obvious reasons. So I needed these rods made back in March, last year, so as to be dried out and ready to fire in May/June. As I was planning to do the rebuild of the electric kiln over this last summer break. I got a lot done, but it has taken me a long time. Principally because I don’t really like doing kiln work. I’m over it!
I mixed up a small batch of 10kgs of refractory clay body suitable for use as element rods. I used some old refractory ‘Puggoon’ kaolin, along with 3 sizes of high alumina grog. For years, I used to make all our wadding for the big wood fired kiln out of ‘Puggoon’ high alumina kaolin from Gulgong. I still have one big jute sack of it left in the barn. This special High Alumina wadding (HA) that I made up, after firing to stoneware, wasn’t just rubbish to be thrown out, but instead, I had created very useful, high value, HA grog. Converting what would normally be any one else’s waste product into a valuable asset worth over $6,000 per tonne.
I can also crush a very good quality HA fire brick down to dust in the rock crusher to make excellent grog.
This is not just re-use, re-cycle, but rather up-scale and value-add as well! Over a year, it’s amazing how much wadding/grog you can accumulate. A very long time ago, way back in the 70’s. Janine and I managed to buy 12,000 mixed fire bricks for a few hundred dollars, from a metal bath tub enameling factory that was being de-commissioned. This meant that we were able to build a very large 3 chamber wood fired climbing kiln. The biggest problem we faced at that time was that kiln shelves were so incredibly expensive. Without kiln shelves we couldn’t fire the kiln, so I taught myself how to make our own kiln shelves and props. Most of which, I still have! I developed a reliable recipe using crude ‘Puggoon’ HA Kaolin 50%, mixed with our own home made HA grog 50%. Our own crushed wadding and fire brick grog gave us a range of sizes straight from the crusher, coarse, medium and fine, It proved to be a good blend of sized aggregate. I learnt this technique when Janine and I worked with Harry and May Davis in New Zealand way back in the early 70’s.
My recipes and pictures of me making the kiln shelves and props were all illustrated in the book ‘Handbook for Australian Potters’ published in the early 80’s. Pages, 206 to 212. Below, I’m shown in my youth, in these images, taken by Janine, of me making kiln shelves, fearlessly declaring my independence and learning to be self-reliant. I’m a lot older and fatter now, but nothing else has changed. I’m still enthusiastically practicing self reliance!
These home-made kiln shelves weren’t very good. But they worked, and were good enough to get us going and in business, because we certainly didn’t have the money to buy enough of them to fill such a big kiln. So I taught myself how to make refractories way back then out of necessity. Now I’m financially secure enough to afford to buy element rods, but as a Nation, we don’t make anything in Australia anymore. Such items may be available from China? But I know how to make my own, So I do.
The refractory clay and grog mixture is so non-plastic and short, that it doesn’t hold together much at all. The clay is naturally short, crumbly and non-plastic, and when mixed 50/50% with fine grog it is, not too surprisingly, totally short, crumbly, floppy and useless. A bit like working with sand castles. I can’t extrude the rods vertically, they just snap off under their own weight. I have to extrude them down an inclined stainless steel ‘V’ shaped ramp, lubricated with a little used engine oil brushed on to it to ‘lube’ the process. The clay has to be pushed down the ramp to keep it compressed and avoid hair line cracks. If it can slide easily, it will distort, stretch, weaken and break. The thick engine oil, allows the clay to slide, but is sufficiently viscous to stop it from sliding easily. I use the thin stainless steel ‘V’ angle slide to carry the soft rods to the drying table.
Once dry, the rods have to be carefully carried and placed in the kiln very gently. The clay body is so ‘short’ that they snap so easily. It has NO dry strength. NONE! I broke a couple packing them, even taking care. Once fired to stoneware, they are more resilient. The final strength is achieved when they are used in the kiln. Each firing to stoneware, helps to develop the matrix of primary mullite crystals in the body that gives it high temperature strength and thermal shock resistance.
Now, with the element rods in stock, I recovered 2 rolls of ceramic fibre that went through the fire, (completely unaffected, but just a bit blackened, and now without their cardboard boxes), a box of 2nd hand refractory insulating bricks, slightly burnt, blackened and box-less, and a box of recycled and charred ceramic anchors, that also survived the fire. I only needed to buy some new stainless steel bolts to hold the anchors in place.
The largest expense in rebuilding an old kiln like this is my labour, so I’m saving a lot of money there. The other big expense is the cost of the bulk Kanthal wire, so that I can wind up a new set of electrical heating elements on the lathe. I have done all the calculations and decided to design the new elements to use the best grade Kanthal A1 resistance wire, and run the whole thing at very low ’watts per sq. millimetre’ rating. This requires using more of the most expensive wire, but gives a set of elements that will last a very long time and make the kiln more or less maintenance free. The wholesale cost to me to purchase the bulk wire is close to $900! Before spending time to wind them on the lathe and form them into hairpin element units.
I once had a phone call from a kiln maintenance guy who’s job was to go around the Schools, Colleges and Art Schools servicing pottery kilns. He told me that he had been doing this job for over a decade and had seen my kilns sitting there in the various kiln rooms, and he had never been asked to look at them. Constantly working on other kilns in those facilities. Apparently, my kilns had never needed any servicing.
It’s pretty unheard of for a pottery kiln like that to go for 10 years, fired 2 or 3 times a week, and not need any elements replacing or other work. He asked me directly, “What are you doing?” “How come they last so long?” I was pleased to hear that he was so impressed. I told him that I simply used the best material available and plenty of it, and did the best good job that I could. I don’t want to be going out doing maintenance. I want the things to last forever. There was one brand of kiln that had the reputation for having a certain degree of built in obsolescence. Those were his bread and butter, he told me. He loved the fact that they were rubbish,
I built around 300 kilns in my time over the 50 years. When I started my kiln building business decades ago, and rang the ‘Kanthal’ wire distributor, to order their best quality A1 high temperature wire. I often got the message that they would have to order it in, “as no one uses that wire in Australia very much, so we don’t carry very much in stock!” I’d have to wait up to 2 months for the next shipment. It opened my eyes to the fact that other kilns being made here at that time, didn’t have the best grade of wire in their elements, possibly ensuring a certain degree of ongoing maintenance calls into the future?
I don’t actually like doing kiln work. I did it out of necessity. It was one of the ways that we found to earn the extra money that we needed to pay off the mortgage. Making pots was so much more fun, but financially unreliable. However, although I didn’t enjoy the kiln work. I found ways to make it more mentally challenging, by always looking to do things a different, or better way. I developed all my own designs. Got both a gas license and an electrical license to keep it all legal. Taught myself how to weld both stainless steel and aluminium, using a sophisticated solid state, AC/DC, pulse, TIG welder, and do all the sheet metal, as well as the electronics and learnt CAD design software. There was always something challenging to learn to keep it ‘alive’ and interesting. So although it wasn’t my first choice, it was better than all the other alternatives. Like packing the shelves at the supermarket, being a delivery driver, or becoming a full time ceramics teacher. I was happy to just go into town one day a week to teach my special subjects at the Art School. I really enjoyed that. But it was only one day a week. I could cope with the driving once a week. I couldn’t see myself doing it every day. It was a 2 to 3 hour trip each way. A waste of my life if I was to do it full time. I couldn’t bear the thought!
So we found half a dozen creative ways to cobble together a risky, uneven, slightly stressful, but fully committed and involved creative life. It turned out that we ‘got away with it’! We managed to get through life without ever having to get a ‘real’ job! I was never on the dole either! Completely independent. Most of the other potters that we knew had a partner who had a full time job to smooth out the economics. But we were one of only a few couples, who survived working together with no one earning a safe ’salary’. We were both fully involved in this erratic, ceramic based, artistic engagement with self reliance and creative mini-capitalism. It taxed our inner resources both physically and intellectually, but was ultimately very rewarding in exact proportion to the effort that we put into it! I’ve never been motivated by the desire for money in itself. It’s necessary for a basic level of comfort, but after that it consumes people. Someone once told me that money is like manure. It has a great fertilizing effect when spread evenly, but stinks when it’s piled up in great heaps!
So all this life experience has now come in handy in the refurbishment of this ‘free’ kiln that was destined for the tip. Is anything ever really free?
I laid the kiln over onto it’s back, so that I could take out the broken and collapsing roof fibre and replace it, without the whole brittle ceramic fibre roof collapsing down on me. I only replaced the hot face and the 1st of the damaged back-up layers of fibre. However, I changed the overall layout of the ceramic anchors to triple the number. It was the lack of sufficient anchors that lead to the roof sagging and collapsing. Next, I stood the kiln up and added another hot face layer of 1400oC ceramic fibre on top of the shattered and spalling existing back wall. Best not to muck around with old fibre where possible, so I just covered it with a new layer. I also added double the number of ceramic anchors to support it. Plus, the extra 25mm of hot face fibre that I added will make the wall more thermally efficient.
I made a set of tools to do the fibre work. I made a special little plunger out of fruit tree pruning wood, to hold the stainless steel bolts in place while being installed. Its a gorgeous little home made improvisation to make a fiddly job a lot easier. I took the trouble to make a tapered mortise joint to hold it together. Sweet! No one knows it exists, just me. I know how beautiful such an unimportant tool like this can be. I enjoy the fact that it exists, that’s enough.
I added another layer of fibre to the floor, but didn’t touch the side walls, as they are intact, and well supported by the element rod support brackets. They will last for a while yet. 3 of the element rod support hooks are broken off. As these where custom made, and are no longer available, rather than go back to basics and make a new set from scratch. I will make 3 small support blocks to hold the rods in-situ in those spots.
I was lucky that we found a few old re-cycled ceramic anchors in the ashes and rubble after the fire. Janine and our friend Trudie hunted around for them at some point when I was fully occupied doing something else during the chaos. She knew that they had a value and might come in handy in the future. Now 6 years later, they have. Thank you Janine and Trudie ! Some are chipped and have a bit broken from the rim, but still perfectly functional, if used with care.
I have wound the new heating elements on my old lathe. I bought it 4th hand. It was at one time in use at the naval shipyards in Sydney harbour – a very long time ago. It was actually made in Melbourne by McPhersons, most probably in the 50’s or 60’s? So it’s as old as me!. That’s old! But very solid and reliable. (it, – not me!)
The next job was to renew the door seal, to create a secure tight fit during firing to protect the metal around the door frame. Once that is done I will use the oxy torch to form the heating element coils into ‘hair-pins’, I get them red hot , so that they become pliable, then I can bend them over and double them up into ‘hair-pins’. I can then fit them into the kiln on the ceramic rods, with both terminal ends sticking out the back of the kiln where they can be linked up to make full circuits.
New door lining and door seal installed
Forming the ‘hair-pin’ heating elements from the straight coils.
Heating and bending the rear element ‘tails’ into paired ‘loops’, so that I can link them together to make heating circuits of pre-calculated ampage and resistance to give precise heating of the kiln.
I have all the stainless bolts that I need, but I realised that I didn’t have enough of the correct stainless steel washers to do the connections. So I made some! As you do!
I’ve cobbled together this refurbished electric kiln for a little bit over $1100 for parts only. It is a bit less than 400 litres with a packing space of 320 litres, or 12 cu. ft. in the old units. I’ve upped the power from 16 to 20 amps x 3 phase, and used the very best quality Kanthal A1 element wire.
I have seen new kilns of this size for sale online for over $20,000. Quite a saving. This is how we survive, by the generosity of others, to whom I am eternally grateful, plus some good luck and a lot of scrounging.
I consider myself so lucky to be given this ‘free’ kiln. I have had to dig deep into my past skills and recover them from memory. I haven’t made kiln elements since before the fire, maybe 8 years ago, when I retired from building electric kilns. I am very lucky that my ancient old lathe survived the fire! Lucky, because it was in the old barn that burnt in the fire. Fortunately, because I stayed to defend, I was there and able to put most of the fire out, and control it to some extent, so that only half of the barn burnt. I said lucky, because the lathe could have been in the other half. What I lost was a lot of dried ceramic materials in paper ply bags.
I can’t remember the last time that I made kiln elements. But it’s all coming back to me, bit by bit, as I think about what the next step is. Luckily, I haven’t made any drastic mistakes!
My last job was to link up the element tails at the back of the kiln with stainless steel bolts and washers to complete the circuits. That done, I was able to pug it in and give it a run. My ‘tong’ tester revealed that I made a very slight error in my calcs, as the ampage on each circuit turns out to be 21 amps rather than the 20 that I had calculated. No problem. The kiln will be 4% more powerful.
This kiln isn’t beautiful. It just has to work! And as of now it does. Time will tell. I have had this ruin for a couple of years now. I didn’t do anything with it for the first year and a half, as I didn’t really need it. However, Now that I’m keen to make big, round, fat, pots inspired by Moon Jars. I need a larger kiln. This kiln has a 600 x 600 floor, and 750mm high. So plenty of scope to make a larger, fat, round jars.
I’ve out grown the small 450mm x 450mm. cubed electric kiln that Len Smith gave me to help me get re-started. I have been using it for the past few years and it works just OK, but is worn out and struggles to get to cone 8. I have purchased new element wire for that kiln, but I haven’t got round to making the new elements yet. I had to re-wire the old lathe after the fire burnt out the barn, so I’m working on lots of projects all at once. But now that I have the lathe back in working order. I can proceed on to the next job, which is Lens old kiln.
Nothing is ever finished, nothing lasts and nothing is perfect.
Nothing is affordable, nothing stays new, and nothing does exactly what you were promised that it would in the add!
I’ve been making of big round jars influenced by Korean ‘Moon Jars’. I’ve been fascinated by them for years, ever since I traveled and studied in Korea when I got to see them up close in the National Museum and also in potters workshops. I tried my hand at making my own version when I came back and have dabbled in making something inspired by them since.
Recently I taught a couple of workshops on the techniques that are used to create big round jars. After the workshops were over, I kept on going.
In the workshops, I made it easier and more achievable for everyone involved, by setting the starting point at 1.5 kgs. Nearly everyone enrolled in the workshops could manage this weight of clay. A lot of nice pots were made, but nothing too big. The more advanced throwers, were encouraged to progress in 1 kg increments, some reaching up to 4 or 5 kgs. Excellent! So encouraging for everyone in the room there to see that develop. However, we all progressed at our own rate.
After the workshops were over, I kept on practising. I worked my way up from 4 kgs to 5, 6 and 7, then 8 kgs. over a week or two. I could feel my skill level, confidence and success rate increasing and as I focussed on the end point of the big, open, wide bowl, that becomes 1/2 of the finished big round form. I made over 40 of these multi-kilo half-pot bowl forms and then a day later, I flipped one bowl over onto the other half, and assembled a (hopefully) beautiful sphere shape. As this is the technique used by the ancient potters. Finally turning a small foot to give the form lift and elegance. Some of my attempts were more successful than others. A few were pretty good, but not sufficiently elegant enough. but that is what keeps me trying.
I’ve sold most of last years jars, so I’ve been keeping on with this now for another 5 weeks and made good progress. Well, as far as I’m concerned, I have. Others may differ! I haven’t ever been, and never will be, a ‘gun’ thrower. I never wanted to be. However, when I was younger and stronger, I did make large jars for a few years, and taught big pot throwing workshops, but these were mostly always in terracotta, using the coil and throw technique, a very different technique and medium. Those pots were all garden pots. That technique was ideal for someone like me who needed to take my time. To work slowly and intuitively. I’m never quite sure what I’m doing and if I’m making progress. I need time to absorb and evaluate. It doesn’t come naturally to me. I struggle. I’m not a performer. I hate the lime light. I need to make my mistakes in private. Learn from them and try again. I wish I was talented or gifted like some of my peers. But I’m not and I’ve come to be OK with that. I’m a slogger, who battles on and learns slowly through my misadventures. Slow learner! But I get there.
I did eventually make a stoneware, vitreous, water tank for the house, that is still in use today. 40 years old and it hasn’t rusted out like all the other old tin tanks!
Other than that, I’ve always made small delicate porcelain bowls and other domestic wares. But now, after a decade and 8 visits to Korea, and much thought and study. I have, at this late stage in my life, become interested in the ancient cultural pottery form of the traditional Moon Jar. So exquisite, so impressive, so big, yet subtle. Fat, round, fecund and feminine. I love them. I love the poetry inherent in the form. They are so romantic and impossible! But also scary! Such a challenge.
Who could have imagined making the impossible? A huge, possibly 18 to 20 kilo jar, out of the most difficult and unpromising non-plastic material like fine white porcelain? Someone hundreds of years ago. Not only that. But they threw those impossible forms on a wooden kick wheel with very little momentum! This is the work of Masters.
Moon Jars weren’t called Moon Jars way back in time when they were made. The name is a recent addition. Originally, they were simply called ‘big white jars’. They were made exclusively for the Emperor and his entourage. They are said to embody the main elements of Joseon Dynasty Confucian philosophy, frugality, austerity and purity. I can identify with the first two.
They were eye wateringly expensive in their time. The clay was mined in and around the tiny village of Bangsan, way up in the mountains. A remote place, hundreds of kilometres away from Seoul. Where the only activity was growing rice and vegetables along the river flats – that is until the porcelain stone was discovered.
Information board from the Yanggu Porcelain Museum.
Over time, an industry developed in mining, processing, testing and then shipping the pure ‘sericite’ stone, all the way to Seoul. There was no direct road route. So in the wet season, the clay was shipped down the river, on a very long, circuitous route, around and around, from one river to another, and eventually across the country, to Seoul. In the dry season, it was carried by porters overland, which was more expensive and took even longer. It made the production of ‘Court’ porcelain very exclusive, highly desirable and very expensive. Such pots were not for the general population. Not even merchant use. This was the realm of royalty, it’s privileges and excesses.
Records show that the clay, actually weathered sericite stone, for the making of white porcelain in Korea has been mined for the past 650 years, since 1371 in the one location. This unique porcelain stone was mined in an area/county called ‘Yanggu’. Right in the centre of Korea, and not too far from the current DMZ. Luckily for me. It is located on the southern side of the border. Who knows what is on the other side of the hill? Other than land mines! I have come across notices on fences up there, written in Korean, that when translated using my phone app. Read ‘Beware of land mines’. Do not cross!
I’ve visited this place many times over the past decade. Collected geological samples. Had them analysed, studied and compared the stones with others from different sites in Korea and also from sites in other countries. China, Japan, Cornwall and Australia. I have collected over a dozen different porcelain stones over the years, from 5 different countries. I’ve examined them, worked with them, ground them up and made porcelain bodies from them. Thrown them and turned them. Eventually, when I had achieved some success in this epic 15 years struggle to understand ’sericite’, I had a major exhibition of this Artistic Research in Watters Gallery back in 2017, that show was 15 years in the making, and some of those special, unique, pieces of my hand made, single stone, ground porcelain ended up in the New South Wales Art Gallery collection as well as in the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney. I’m really thrilled about that!
Korean sericite stones. 3 jars constructed from broken shards, collected from the old pottery studio ashes after the fire.
Image from the Powerhouse Museum collection.
I’m thinking that I might keep on making these big round jars for some time. Until I’m satisfied that I really understand them. Eventually, if I’m lucky, I may end up with enough good ones to get an exhibition together. I love the form. It’s so full, round and generous. The Koreans revere them. Every potter there has a go at it. It’s a perennial project in Ceramic Art School courses. Some students continue on and make a name for themselves as Moon jar makers. There are a lot of very beautiful pots out there made by younger highly skilled, competent makers. I was lucky to spend a week watching Mr Chul Shin making his version of Moon Jars. Mr Chul has a very distinctive studio in the icheon Pottery village.
He told me through an interpreter, that it was not until he had made a thousand that he became confident.
These jars have become Korean cultural icons. It wasn’t always so, When Bernard Leach visited Korea in the early part of last century, he found one for sale in a bric-a-brac shop for a few hundred won. Today they sell for 4.5 million US dollars. His bargain purchase jar is now housed these days in the British Museum. But spent most of it’s life in Britain in the home of Lucie Rie on loan from Leach, until her death.
My artist friend Anne was in the British Museum yesterday and sent me some images back. I have been there twice to see this jar myself over the years, but it wasn’t until I started to get seriously interested in them and started to try and understand them and make them that I wanted to learn more. I have looked at Anne’s images quite closely now and can see so much more that I hadn’t taken in, in my previous visits there. Images by Anne Spencer.
Isn’t it interesting how we travel through life in a kind of blur, not really taking in all that we see. Just impressions. It takes intense scrutiny to really see with intent. I know that I can only spend a couple of hours in any gallery or museum, before I start to develop Museum blindness or fatigue. I need to go out and sit outside. Go for a coffee or have lunch, then I can go back in and look for another hour. Then that’s it. If I stay longer, I’ve learnt that I’m just wasting my time. I need a couple of days or more, to really see the parts of a museum that really interest me. To really take it in! Maybe it’s just me? My limited ability to really see and understand? My acuity and skills of perception are apparently stuck in first gear.
I learnt more from Anne’s photos this morning than I did in my previous 2 visits to London to see the actual jar. The difference being that I am now totally involved in trying to really ’see’ them completely, to understand them, as I try to make something of my own, that has that unique special quality. My insights have expanded exponentially. This is directly related to my attempts to re-created the fullness of the form on the wheel – and failing, then doing it all over again. Slowly burning in those necessary synapse connections and pathways.
I have to admit that I really still don’t quite know what it is that I need to know. I haven’t quite ‘got it’ yet. Maybe another 40 ‘halves’ will get me closer. Half a tonne of clay may not be enough. I’m feeling more and more like I will need another half tonne and another 40 goes to really get to grips with it?
Looking closely at Anne’s Images, I can now see more of the subtleties that I missed before. I’m taken particularly with the rough texture of the body, the inclusions of organics that have burnt out. The subtle crazing where the glaze is just a bit thicker. I can also make out the slight differences in the atmospheric body and glaze colour development across the pot due to differences in the firing. I’m suspecting at this stage that this pot was possibly fired in an oxidising atmosphere early on in the firing, then going through a period of neutral atmosphere, eventually ending up in a reducing atmosphere towards the end of the firing. That’s my guess. Based on my knowledge of how ancient multi-chamber kilns were often fired.
I’ll only know once I’ve given it a go with my own clay and kiln, then I can re-asses and maybe try something else. And for what really? Just the academic reward of figuring some thing so esoteric out to a level of my own satisfaction. If I ever get a show together. I’m prepared to witness people walking past them and not taking much of it in. Just as I have done all my life up until now!
I’m fully aware that studying just one pot will not tell me enough. I need to see as many as I can to make a more balanced judgement. So far I’ve seen 3 in real life. not enough. There are about 20 or so of them out there, but they are all spread all over the world. The one I saw in the Yanggu Museum two years ago was more reduced, with the glaze showing a pale limpid celadon where it was thicker around the rim. Unfortunately, the only photo I could get was under a very yellow artificial light, so the jar looks rather blond.
However, in the end it doesn’t really matter how many I can see and study. What is most important, is that I can make something that I’m happy with and which represents my relationship with the this iconic piece of pottery. It’s hard to define the ‘feeling’ of a pot. Its neigh impossible to recreate that ‘feeling’ in ceramics. Principally because it is so ephemeral, so always changing with the light and with my moods. Always varied and different. It’s not the destination any more really, it’s all about the journey. This is the madness, looking for poetry in a ceramic form.
I’m also very aware that it is important not to make some sort of poor copy, or worse, a pastiche. I need to develop my own Australian version of this big round fat form. I’m working on that. Janine and I have been treating the surface of these full, round forms with black and white slips, then carving through them sgraffito style, to create our own version of the form. Something that relates to the original and shows it some respect and honour, but is in essence some thing of mine too. At the moment, I’m making them all black with black slip, then carving back to relieve a pale moon in the night sky. A moon within the moon jar form. Working in reverse like this came to me as I pondered the fact that we are here in the opposite hemisphere, up-side down and with the seasons reversed. So a reversal of the aesthetic seemed appropriate. I might call the show “a view from below”, or maybe not?
‘Howling at the Moon’ – Jar. A self portrait!
‘Autumn Moon’ – Jar. A jar for this season right now.
We are working collaboratively on some of the forms, and others I’m finishing on my own. I am certainly doing all the throwing of these recent forms. It’s a great journey and we have no idea where it is all going, and that’s good. I like that.
Nothing is ever finished, nothing is perfect and nothing lasts.
We have just completed the 2nd Moon Jar Making workshop, with the 3rd and last for this year going ahead next weekend. Great progress was made learning to throw and assemble the shapes that go to create a traditional, fully rounded, spherical shape pot on the potters wheel.
This morning our first job is to deal with a lot of fruit that has been falling off the trees during this last weekend of very hot weather.
Janine dealt with the peaches and I decided to juice the pears.
Summer is a busy time in the orchards and garden. Inadvertently, we grow more than we can eat in real time. so we cook, preserve, stew and bottle the excess, but also share the largess with the students that come to the workshops and give more away to our friends and neighbors.
I have a few people on my waiting list wanting to do a tool making workshop. If I can get two more takers, then it will go ahead on the 14th of March. Please reply if you are interested. Otherwise it will roll over to next year.
Tomorrow, I’ll be making clay again, as these last couple of workshops and the one already booked out for next weekend, will pretty much exhaust most of my remaining stock of aged plastic clay.
One thing flows into another at this busy time of year. I went up to Sydney and bought a pallet of raw materials to enable me to keep making clay into the coming year. There is $1,000 worth of clay body material on that pallet. By the time that I’ve processed it, paying my self a very modest wage, my clay costs $2.50 per kilo. If I were to add on some sort of margin to allow for running a business, insurance, wear and tear, electricity etc. Then the clay would cost $4.00 a kilo. $40.00 for a 10kg bag. Which is more or less what you pay at the craft shop.
It seems like such a lot of money, but this is the reality of modern life and business. Things keep going up all the time. Janine and I live mostly in a fantasy world of our own creation. Being so self sufficient and self reliant here, it’s easy to loose track of the price of things. The once a year purchase of materials, like this, apart from being shocked by the price, it is also a lesson in international trade and the actions of multi-national corporations’ cut throat policies.
Ceramic materials that were once readily available locally, have nearly all been bought-out and closed down, with imported similar materials brought in to replace them, always from the 3rd world. I have to keep testing the new stuff to make sure what it is that I’m getting. You can’t just expect to do a simple substitution in your old recipe. I try very hard to use Australian raw materials for my workshop clay body. I buy in clays from Victoria, Southern NSW and Queensland to get a reliable consistent mix that is sufficiently plastic for wheel work. Regrettably, the fantastic plastic secondary kaolins from Gulgong are no longer mined. They are still there under the ground. But the sites are all locked up and then imported, very much more expensive materials are offered in their place. I used to buy the Gulgong kaolins at $400 a tonne. Now I’m asked to pay $100 for a 25 kg bag of the American kaolin that is the new substituted material. I don’t buy it. That’s a 10 times increase in price.
After tomorrows clay making session. I will have made up, mixed and twice pugged 2,000 kilos (2 tonnes) of clay in the past 12 months – and then given most of it away! Because I don’t charge for clay at my workshops, but I’m thinking that I might have to start. Maybe – First bag free, then $20 per pack after that?
I go into town once a week to do some shopping, mostly to buy protein. Usually milk, fish, tofu and then sometimes either chicken or pork. Always organic and free range where that is an option. It is the most expensive part of any meal, but we buy very little of it. Everything else we manage to do for our selves. We make do with what we can grow. This leads to a bit of monotony at times, so I put a bit of effort into varying our meals. At this time of year, every meal is a variation on ratatouille. Tomatoes, egg plant, capsicum, zucchini, broccoli and celery. I have to mix it up a bit, one night with tomato, the next without, sometimes with tofu, another night with mushrooms. Always with fresh garden herbs, which at this time of year nearly always includes either sweet basil or pesto, but I keep it varied, sometimes with a Thai basil, coriander, lemon grass and lime juice with fish sauce. Another time with Middle Eastern spices. The next with an East Asian flavour of oyster sauce, fresh ginger, always with loads of garlic and alternately fried off good olive oil or sesame oil.
There is always something going on here. We seem to be able to keep ourselves busy.
I’m keen to pass on some of the skills that I have learnt over my life. There is more or less nil ceramic technical skills content being taught in the few remaining ceramic courses being offered here these days. It’s all part of the lobotomisation of education, combined with the enshitification of everything else.
We offer a brief, small, quiet experience of information/skills transfer in a creative environment. It’s a beautiful learning space, well lit and airy. I like to tell myself that the staff are alright too!
Nothing is ever finished, nothing is perfect and nothing lasts.
I have a cancellation in the 3rd Moon Jar Workshop on the 31st Jan/1st Feb. If you are interested in the spot. Please contact me. $300 all clay provided.
I have been making use of the empty workshop for the last week, and have been making Moon Jars for myself. I love them to bits. They are so round and fat and gorgeous. I get such a good feeling as they come together and appear on the wheel as I assemble them, then adjust the form.
The trick is to make the correct shape bowl form to begin with. Practice makes perfect. I’m still learning, and enjoying every minute of it. I’m not a master thrower, more of a hard working slogger. I keep at it until I get something that I can live with.
Of course not everyone of my jars work out the way that I hope and imagine. The pug mill is my best quality control tool. Clay is endlessly recyclable until it is fired. So I practice ’non-attachment’. If it isn’t up to scratch, then it gets pugged. It’s much better to have a number of attempts to get the pre-curser bowl forms right. than to persevere with something that isn’t going to reward you at the end.
I’ll be there to assist and guide you as you experiment and learn.
We have just completed our four day summer school, learning some of the techniques involved in the making of Korean Moon Jars. We made moon jars at the time of the full moon! Inspiration.
Moon Jars aren’t easy.
To make these big, round, full shapes, we practiced making the spherical forms in two pieces, which is the most common technique used in Korea for this difficult shape. There are a few virtuoso throwers who can make such a shape in one piece on the wheel, but very few. I’m certainly not one of them. All the workshops that I attended in Korea over the years, all made their Moon Jar forms in two pieces. Even the 14th generation, National Treasure, Moon Jar master, whose workshop I visited, had a throwing room full of thrown 1/2 pieces – bowl forms – stiffening up, ready for assembly the next day.
So I decided to teach this two part technique. We started with 1 kg to 1.5kg, then added another kilo each day, ending up with 4 kg. The object wasn’t to make full size Moon Jars. The purpose was to learn the technique of throwing and joining fat round forms. Repetition is very important in learning. We practised ’non-attachment’, if the pot wasn’t going well, then it is best to put the clay back through the pug mill and start another one. Some of these students came here last year to learn to make tall joined forms, so were familiar with the workshop and one of the joining techniques.
There are at least 3 common ways to construct the joint when assembling the 2 bowl-shaped halves used to make a Moon Jar. Each with its own level of difficulty. The easiest to throw and assemble is the flat top joint. We studied this in last years Summer School here, where we threw and assembled complex forms in 2, 3 or even 4 pieces. We were working fast and wet, so the flat top joint works very well. The two surfaces meld into each other perfectly. It also allows for some sloppiness in the measuring and sizing. The two pieces can be easily massaged into shape and it is a great way to learn a lot quickly. However, It works best on the more vertical forms.
That said, it is the technique taught in Korea’s prestige ceramic university ‘Dangook’ university. I have watched the technique of the master thrower – Professor of Moon Jar making – teaching a throwing class using this technique. As long as you get everything level, concentric and perfectly aligned, it is the easiest to master. He made the two half-pots one day and assembled them the next. So that they were slightly stiffened. He used thick throwing slip slurry on the joint.
The next level of difficulty is the tongue and groove ‘V’ joint, where the rims of the two halves are thrown with a ‘V’ shaped hollow in the base section rim. The female part?, and the other half, the top section, is thrown with a ‘V’ shaped pointed top on the rim. The male part? These two complimentary sections fit together perfectly(hopefully), and marry up to make a very sturdy joint. But! Only if they are well formed and accurately measured. The ‘top hat’ technique is used to join the two bowl forms. The base is firmly secured to the wheel head, then the other half is picked up by the batt on which it was thrown and quickly inverted and placed on the bottom half. Remember not to cut the top half bowl off its batt until it is inverted and placed on the lower half!
Taking the time to measure accurately is of the essence. It is also necessary to ensure that both ‘bowls’ are perfectly round. If they are thrown with a slightly oval kink in them, then a single measurement of one place on the diameter won’t be accurate. This joint requires patience and accuracy in the measuring. However, If you find that there is a slight difference in the two diameters when placing them together, as long as it is only minor – 5 to 8 mm.. You can cut off the top batt and place your hand inside the top bowl, then gently massage the ‘positive’ rim into the ’negative’ groove until it fits exactly. This will ensure a sound fit and secure joint, but may result in a slight wobble in the overall form. Probably not terminal though.
The beauty of this technique is that you can ’stiffen’ the bottom section by heating it a little. But make sure to measure it first. Then you can invert the top section straight away and continue throwing. This means that the form is still ‘fluid’ and can be reshaped slightly to make sure that you have a unified overall form. It is quite forgiving, but only up to a point. Don’t over do it, or you’ll loose the lot. Apart from being unattached to the pots that you are making, the other lesson of the week is to know when to stop.
The most difficult joining technique involves throwing the rim of each half with a 45o degree complimentary bevel on the rim of each bowl, such that they fit together perfectly. The great difficulty comes when inverting the top half and placing it onto the bottom half. Unless the pots are perfectly round, and exactly measured. They wont fit and there is no way to recover them. Also. If you miss match them slightly, there is a risk that the top half will slide down over the edge of the base. There is nothing ‘flat’ to rest on. Nothing to stop it sliding. The 45 degree surfaces slide past each other freely. Only the perfect accuracy of the fit will hold it in place. I saw this technique demonstrated by a master Moon Jar maker from Incheon, near Seoul. He also made both halves the day before and let them stiffen beforehand, then used thick slip in the joint. With the two stiffened version of this technique, both halves must be thrown to the exact shape that you require to make the full round form complete once married together. There is no possibility of ‘correcting’ the form on the wheel once assembled.
The great virtue of using 2 stiffened forms like this, is that they hold their full, round, ballon-like shape well without collapsing. So you must know exactly what you are doing right from he start. As I pointed out at the beginning of this letter, Moon Jars aren’t easy. But as you start to ‘get’ the form right, and it all starts to come together for you. They are really rewarding.
It doesn’t matter which way that you do it, as long as it sticks together and doesn’t split apart when finishing off the throwing, cracking during drying, or dunting in the firing.
The bottom half is thrown with an more vigorous and upward inflection to the curve, while the top half is a fully rounded form. It takes practice to get the balance right.
Once the pot is assembled, the foot section of the top bowl is opened up and the joint is pinched together with fingers from inside and out. If necessary, the joint can be compressed from the outside using a ‘paddle’ against a solid little round ‘anvil’ block (see previous post on tool making) on the inside to counter the pressure and compress the joint. The final action is to throw the rim up from the shoulder using the excess of clay that was in the base of the bowl.
On the second day of the workshop, we had a massive storm with loads of thunder and lightning, followed by some intense rain. Then in the afternoon, we had the most beautiful double rainbow!
Moon Jar with full Moon
Moon Jar with Southern Cross
I will be offering another Moon Jar making workshop in the coming year, so if you are interested, drop us a line. The next workshop will be on the weekend of the last day of Jan and the first day of Feb.
Well, Xmas is over, we survived the shopping madness by staying home and escaped the last minute rush to purchase more food than anyone could possibly consume. Janine and I stayed well out of it. We watered the garden and picked fresh vegetables made salads and tofu stir-frys. A very nice quiet time in all. I had no intension of going into town to check out the Boxing Day sales. I fact, instead, we had a lovely, small, family meal with our son and daughter-in-law, and took it very quietly. We shared a very nice bottle of wine with lunch. I cooked a somewhat rich potato dauphinois incorporating our potato and fennel, plus a tub of sour cream and garden herbs, which turned out very well.
I simmered the herbs in a little bit of milk to draw out the flavours, then layered the finely sliced fennel and potatoes with sour cream and poured the strained milk over and through it all. I finished the dish with a camembert cheese placed on top to melt through the dish. As if the tub of sour cream wasn’t quite enough, and topped it off the some grated 36 month aged cheddar. I was happy with it and no one complained.
On the subject of potatoes, we have had a visit from a new and unusual bug into the veggie garden. Some sort of elongated, grey, shield bug. They group in pairs around the tender top shoots and suck the living daylights out of the growing tips of the potato plants. I haven’t seen these little critters before, so I had to look them up. They turn out to be a South East Asian ‘sweet-potato’ bug. Also known to be found in the North of South America and the Southern parts of North America. How they got here I have no idea. I can only surmise that with global heating, they are able to colonise newly warming fresh territories? So hello and hopefully good bye!
I’m sure that the garden shop will have any number of toxic sprays for them. However, they are quite susceptible to being squashed by hand! No poisons required, it’s highly selective, and no toxic residue is left behind. This organic ‘natural’ treatment seems to be working. I have noticed quite a few lady bugs on the potato leaves at this time also. Possibly they ere eating the minuscule shied beetle eggs? That would be nice if there was a local predator that could breed up to counter the new pest? Could life be so simple?
Someone once said that every complex problem has at least a dozen simple solutions – and they are all wrong! There is nothing quite so effective, accurate and environmentally friendly as well trained fingers. Time consuming, but 100% effective.
We have ended the year by making clay to prepare ourselves for the coming year. I even sat down and threw a pot straight away to test out the plasticity of this new mix. It was beautiful! It will be even better after a couple of months in the cool, dark, clay store to age a little.
As we are hosting a 4 day summer school in the coming week, I cleaned out the pottery and transformed it back from a sales room for the Xmas sale and back into a throwing room. I took the opportunity to really clean down the benches and wheel tops, then gave them a coat of tung oil to protect the wood for another year. All this wood was milled on-site here from trees that we grew ourselves. I want to honour this timber and look after it. It’s just one small, but integral part of our 50 year history/legacy of living and thriving here.
All the timber now looks rich and glorious! While I was in wood working mode, I made a pile of paddles and wooden ‘anvils’. To be used in the coming workshop for forming and securing the joints of large pots. I made everything from off-cuts and prunings of trees in the garden and orchards, including apple, pear, cedar, juniper, pine and banksia.
Making beautiful pottery tools from timber that you have grown yourself is a very rewarding activity. I suspect that this is a special privilege available only to older potters, as you need to plan for it at least 40 years in advance! The old saying comes to mind – When is the best time to plant a tree? Answer, 20 years ago! We have earned these beautiful tools in more ways than one.
Every morning I wake up, I am gifted another 24 hours to enjoy the sunshine, fresh air, the people round me, the garden and the chance to be engaged in creative activity I really value this opportunity, and strive to make the most of it. In contrast, every morning I don’t wake to find that I am gifted $$$. A lot of people who chase money all their life, find that they have no time. In some ways, I am fantastically wealthy. I have never chased money, instead I have time. Time to be engaged in my creative life. I really value this meaningful and fully engaged life.
We recently hosted a tool making weekend, and taught other potters this evocative and rewarding skill. Beautifully hand crafted tools that you have made yourself embody extra meaning into the work that you make, if for no other reason than just from the emotional energy that you generate from the enjoyment of the activity of the handling and making. However, there could be more to it.
In the pacific islands, there is a potent energy that they call ‘mana’. Not the christian goodies (manna) that drop from heaven, but a highly potent spiritual energy that is embodied in special objects at the time of their making, by unique and powerful individuals, or bestowed into objects by force of will by that unique, potent and powerful individual. It may be an object like a club, or spear, but also in jewellery and other personal objects. Such objects are highly prized and valued. The ‘mana’ is embodied in the object, and once they are passed on, that special energy is perceived and valued by the subsequent owners. I can understand this numinous like feeling embodied in beautifully crafted objects. Perhaps they can pass on something of the spirit of the maker? I like to think so.
Have a safe, creative, fertile, prosperous and rewarding New Year!
Nothing is ever finished, nothing is ever perfect and nothing lasts.
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