In Formosa, for-mos-a the time

Posted on 19/11/2014 by hotnsticky

Departing Japan

On the way to the airport the train is fairly full, all the seats seem to have been booked. Luckily we booked ours in advance. A couple of ladies get on and go to the last two remaining seats. There is nowhere to put their big suitcases, so they wheel them into the space between the seats where your legs might usually go. They then slip off their shoes and climb onto the seat and sit cross-legged in that narrow space for the one hour, 45 minute journey to the airport. They sit and chat comfortably for the whole trip. I’m impressed. At the station, just before we left, Betty/Buffy/Katherine found a beautiful little place hidden away where there was a red stamp to celebrate our visit to Kyoto station. We have made a point of collecting all of these where ever we find them. They are really for children, but we like to amuse ourselves by collecting them when we come across them. They go into our travel journals and remind us of our visit to various places. We got one yesterday from the Museum of Oriental Ceramics, to celebrate our visit there. This one comes with its own special sheet of paper with a circular gap in the printed matter to allow for the bright red imprint. I’m childishly thrilled with this little unexpected parting gift from Kyoto. As we are leaving now, this will be our last red stamp from Japan. Except maybe the one in our passports?

We arrive at Kansai airport very early and in good time, which is lucky, because it takes over an hour at check in with Poverty Air. First the machine won’t accept us and says to go to the counter and get help. The lady at check-in is lovely and very helpful. She sorts it all out, but it takes a long time. Every detail has to be checked and re-checked. Some of the problem is about my forward ticket out of Taiwan. I only have an electronic ticket and not a paper printout. So I have to open my lap top, boot it up, and show her the confirmation email, that I have an onward travel ticket out of Taiwan, before I can get a boarding pass onto this plane to go to Taiwan. Finally we get through customs, immigration and security and find our selves in the oldest part of the old terminal, that has been given over to Poverty Air – instead of demolishing it! When we get there we find that there isn’t a departure terminal as we know it. Just a few chairs in an empty space. There is however a noodle bar that is selling ramen noodles, hamburgers, hot chips and beer. Not what I feel like early in the morning. So I give it a wide birth. There is a sign outside that shows sandwiches and coffee. I point to the sign. The man nods and hold up his hands in a cross pattern. Coffee and sandwiches are off today Luv! He walks out of the bar and picks up the sign and removes it to a small passageway beside the cafe. Coffee and sandwiches are definitely off today Luv! But Hey! This is Poverty Air, what was I expecting. I chose it of my own fee will. I’m not going to complain. The ticket price was half that of the other companies. I’m not expecting any service on the plane, but I was thinking that there might be a place to stock up before boarding. There was, but that was in the other terminal. That was then and this is now. There is no going back, so I have learnt something. Either eat something at 5.00am, even if you don’t feel like it, or wait till you get off the plane and have some lunch when you get there. I can live with that. The 400 dollar difference helps to convince me of it.

We eventually get onto the plane and while we are sitting in our seats, waiting, it sounds as if there is a man working underneath us putting the last few screws into the fuselage with a battery drill that is almost out of battery power. It whirrs and grinds slowly, on and on, ‘rhurm’, ‘rhurm’, ‘rhuuuurm’, finally grinding to a halt and stopping. I hope that he got that last piece of fuselage screwed down before the battery went flat. I’d hate to loose a vital piece of the outer coating at full altitude.

After a few hours on the plane, The Lovely and I are starting to feel a little peckish, so we decide to have a beer. The girl comes around and sells us one for $7 this is reasonably expensive for a half sized can of beer, but it’s much cheaper than the beer up at the top of that Hotel in Singapore, and we are much higher up than we were then, so it’s sounding cheap! That is if you think of it as if you are buying altitude and not beer.

We are given a ‘gift’ of a ‘free’ packet of Poverty Air peanuts and crackers loaded with salt to make us more thirsty. There isn’t much too them, they‘re all air, Poverty Air-ated! After finishing the packet with The Impoverished Lovely, I read the ingredients on the back of the pack;

Soy sauce, sugar, flour, protein hydrolate, chilli powder, bonito extract, vegetable oil, green laver? Glutinous rice, soy, almonds, almond oil, salt, MSG, peanuts, starch, cornflour, rice, high fructose corn syrup, powdered sugar, powdered chilli pepper, modified starch, seasonings, amino acids, colourings, paprika pigments, monascus?? spice extract, and wheat and soya bean products.

WARNING! May contain milk or egg products!

After reading all that list of chemicals. The last thing that I’d be worried about would be any milk or egg!

We are on a big AirBus, but the cunning accountants in conjunction with the engineers at Poverty Air have returned from Ireland after studying with Ryan Air and contrived together to reduce the space between the rows of seats to just 240 mm. My knees are touching the magazine rack of the seat in front. The solution is simple, the engineers will remove the magazine pouch. There is only a safety card in there anyway. You have to rent a magazine, if you want one. Our flight has a lot of turbulence but is otherwise uneventful. There is no charge for the turbulence! Our second free gift.

Taiwan

Katherine Hepburn and I arrive in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. I’m here to give a masterclass and a couple of presentations about my work with ‘wild’ materials, and I also have work in a show of Ikebana pots here. This is work that I posted over here ahead of us. Everything has arrived safe-n-sound and undamaged from its international postage trip. It all goes well.

While we are here in Kaohsiung we get taken to visit the studio/home of local legend Chang Quei Wei. He is famous for his oil spot tenmoku glazed tea wares. We are shown around and are invited to stay for tea. We get to use his lovely bowls.

We visit a handmade, bamboo and paper umbrella workshop. It’s a small husband and wife team, working from home. All the umbrellas are hand painted.

We stop off at the beach in the afternoon on the way home where the Divinity of The Lovely Saint Nina (Betty/Buffy/Katherine) suddenly becomes apparent. As she blesses her friend Jo.

Interestingly, the sun doesn’t set here in Taiwan. The pollution is so bad that the air quality is such that visibility is reduced to just a couple of kilometres during the time that we are here. You just can’t see anything in the distance, even office blocks across the city, fade away into grey invisibility as they recede. A range of hills doesn’t go to off into the distance, but just disappears into grey shadows and become invisible. So when the sun sets. It sets high up in the sky, about 15% above where the horizon ought to be. The sun just slowly becomes more and more orange, then dull brown as it approaches the 15 degrees level, and finally becomes invisible through the thick brown haze.

It’s there. The sky is still light and remains so for another hour until the sun finally sets over the horizon. It’s a really weird sensation to see the sun turn dull and brown and become invisible while still ‘up’.

The next morning, The Divine St. Nina The Forgetful departs for the Airport to go back home to Australia – with her passport! While I catch the high speed train from Kaohsiung up to Miaoli. To go to the Snake Kiln Centre for the final part of my trip. It’s a very fast and comfortable ride, and quite cheap. I am here to take part in an international seminar called ‘Master Meets Master’. I don’t know how come I got chosen. I don’t feel like a ‘Master’, I feel more like a Journeyman, permanently trying to complete his studies, but I’m happy to be included, as it fits in very well with our trip around Asia doing conferences, workshops, firings and some teaching. I am finally in the right place at the right time! The concept is that there will be 10 ‘Master’ potters from around the world. 5 from Asia, and 5 invited internationals. I’m here representing Australia?

We will be hosted at one of the only two remaining snake kilns in Taiwan. This one is located at Zhunan, near Miaoli. There will be time to work and make pots and then a firing in one of the many kilns here at the Centre. While the kiln is cooling there will be a conference around the theme of ‘tea’ and then an exhibition of our work. I will also be giving a Masterclass on making glazes from local materials. I am here for a few weeks in all and as The Divine St. Nina The Forgetful has departed for home. I get to share a room with Chang Quei Wei. One night it becomes apparent that he has just been made something like the equivalent of a ‘National Living Treasure’ here. He is the first living potter ever to have his work purchased by the National Imperial Museum during his life time. Quite a big achievement for him and not without some controversy either it appears. He is whisked away to do television interviews and to be filmed by a Chinese film crew for a documentary about him in China. I get the impression that his career is now made! The good news for me out of all this, is that last year when I was in Kaohsiung for the Tea Bowl exhibition, I visited him at this studio and bought one of his small oil spot tenmoku bowls. I get the impression that it has just jumped up in value quite considerably!

In the morning, I set about making some work. I choose to make my pots on the traditional floor mounted kick wheel. There is only one in the workshop and nobody else is interested in using it, so I do. It’s quite a torturous position to throw in, but it helps to create a nice quiet feeling in the pots, as they must be thrown at a very slow speed, but quite ‘quickly’ or economically of energy. The slow speed imposes a very strict set of imperatives to complete the form in the given time, or should I say with a set amount of kinetic energy. I really like the natural restrictions set by the technique and respond well to it. The rims must be finished while the wheel is almost slowing to a halt. It really makes me concentrate and the day goes past in a flash.

My thanks to Chris Prinsen for these images

It is quite hot here and not too humid, so the work dries quickly and I am able to throw my bowls and turn them on the same day. We have 4 days for making, and then the kiln will be packed and fired. I also have to locate some local rocks, find something to crush them with and make some test tiles to fire the test glazes on. It’s a big ask.

I get all my pots made in the first 2 days, so that frees me up to be able to search out some local rock that might be suitable for making stoneware glazes. There is no surviving tradition of using locally sourced ceramic materials here. There used to be, but all the information is now lost, as the old timers have died, taking all their knowledge with them. There is no longer a continuing tradition. So I am starting from scratch. The clay used to come from the site here where the kiln is, but that was a long time ago, when it was out of town, but now the town has come out to engulf the pottery and the site is now completely surrounded. On one side by towering high rise apartments and on the other 3 by huge industrial factory buildings. There is only enough room left for the pottery building and kiln sheds.

We get some granite chunks from a local sculptor, but there is some interesting gravel in the path out side the pottery. The little stones look like they may be of some interest. There is plenty of ash from the firebox of the kiln. The granite needs to be calcined in the little kiln first to weaken it, so that it will spall and be easy to crush. I also need to find something to crush it all with. I have just two days to get all this organised and completed before my masterclass. Miraculously, everything gets done – with a lot of help!

After calcining, granite just crumbles easily into its various components, Felspar, Silica and Mica

The kiln gets packed with our damp pots and there is a 24 hour preheating, up to 160oC .

This is followed by a two day firing, up to 1400 oC!

Yes, that’s what the pyrometer said!

The kiln is then held at, or between, 1350 oC and 1380 oC for another 12 hours or so, before being closed down and left to cool for a week.

The timber used is 50% huge logs collected off the beach as drift wood and 50% very thin softwood off cuts from local timber industries. This appears to be a mix of particle board, plywood and imported SE Asian fine grained softwoods used for cabinet work. A complete mix. The use of huge salt impregnated driftwood logs collected off the beach means that what we are really doing here is a woodfired saltglaze firing.

While the kiln is cooling, we go out on a trip to the East Coast and then up around the North coast, before circling back around and down, visiting various local potters and sites of interest. We visit a family that makes a range of woodfired ceramics. I’m particularly taken by the very small tea cups used here in the Taiwanese version of the tea ceremony. Their work here is so very delicate. I want to buy one of these cups, but they are not for sale.

Later, we call in at an Art School, Ceramics Dept. Where they are half way through a multi-day firing of an anagama and are very proud of the massive reduction that they are achieving, but the air is already so bad here in Taiwan, you can only see for about 2 km before everything disappears into a grey, foggy haze of photo-chemical smog. I really think that they should be looking at other ways of firing that are cleaner.

As we all must!

We call in at the local markets, always an interesting place to spend time looking. And later to a fruit factory, where they sell preserved fruit. I’m not tempted to buy anything, as this is what The Divine Miss N and I do at home each summer, but their product looks very pretty in it’s jars, so I photograph it.

In the evening we stop at a resort town where the local attraction is the hot springs. It’s a little bit unusual here, because the main attraction is getting the dead skin eaten off your feet and legs by teeming schools of tiny fish, as you dangle your legs in the warm water.

We call in on an interesting potter who has his workshop out in the countryside, in an old ramshackle building next to paddy fields. Hi name might be Wang Chun Chang? I hope that’s correct! He works in a kind of organised chaos. He‘s a really friendly guy who welcomes us all warmly into his workshop and gives us tea. He clearly has a very creative spirit and I’m touched by the untamed creativity of it all. I just couldn’t work this way. Maybe I’ve got Aspergers or something, but I need a few clean flat surfaces around me to work on. Never the less. I really warm to him, this place and the artistic, creative spirit that has created it and is so apparent everywhere – even in the chaos.

The next potter that we get to meet is a very well known, tenmoku potter. Chiang Yu-ting.

He doesn’t seem to exhibit any more. Apparently he gets enough wealthy patrons coming to him now, such that he can make a very good living from occasional sales from home. His work is very slick, very professional. The prices of his bowls are also very high. Au$15,000 each for his very best works, Au$5,000 each for good pieces and Au$1,200 for little cups. I must say that I’m impressed. The work is good and it’s great to see someone being able to make a good living from their pots – and the twenty years of research that led to them.

God only knows how much Quei Wei’s work will cost in the future, now that he is a living legend?

We return to Miaoli and I go back to my usual routine, that I have been indulging myself in. Each evening after work, I join in with the many locals who do yoga, Tai chi, walking and running around the local sports field. The running track seems to be about 500 metres all around, so I join all the others in a brisk, but steady walk around the circuit. I do about 10 or 11 circuits, which I think should be about 5 kms. but I tend to loose track of time while I’m in the zone, engaged in my own thoughts, so I do an extra circuit, just to make sure. It takes about an hour. Then I go in for a good breakfast. In the evenings a I do the same again. I feel really good after the gentle workout and I feel somehow engaged with all the others, even though I can’t speak a word to them all. We are all doing the same thing for our own reasons, individually, but all together.

I feel really energised afterwards and always sleep well.

We eventually return to the Snake Kiln Centre for the unpacking of the kiln and to set up the exhibition of our tea wares. The Gallery is huge. It’s an intimidating space for such small works. There are sufficient plinths to display all the work and by the evening it all looks very good.

The empty gallery before we start After our days work

There are a lot of other places to see and to go, but I have a lot of work booked and lined up for me to do when I get home, so I don’t hang around. I need to be back home with The Lovely, Divine, Saint Nina, The Forgetful. It is already bush fire season and she is there with Annabelle Sloujetté, who has been looking after the house and pottery in our absence. So I take my leave from Taiwan and hop on the long, roundabout, multi-stop, red-eye, flight with Poverty Air back to Sydney.

I’ll be very happy to be home again, back into my own pottery and garden. It’s been a very long journey.

Fond regards from The Lovely, Devine, Saint Nina (Betty/Buffy/Katherine) The Forgetful and her Journalist Journeyman.

More, not less, from Japan

Posted on 16/11/2014 by hotnsticky

The Oil spot potters

We are back ‘home’ in Arita, The Lovely One, The Wafer-thin, Betty Churcher look-a-like channeling Katherine Hepburn, Buffy the Mozzie-Killer, Miss Forgetful and her New Pass Port and I. All of us, find our way with the help of our local guide Miyuri San, to the home and workshop of a potting family who specialise in the making of oil spot tenmoku glazes. We are shown into the family store room where there are hundreds of oil spot glazed pots on display, all in stages of preparation for sale. This family has been here a long time. I can’t be sure exactly how long, but we are talking to the 17^th generation of the family and his mother, the wife of the 16^th generation, who have been potting on this spot. It is a very nice old range of buildings set around and creating an enclosed sort of garden courtyard with fruit trees and vegetables. The roof of the old main house is still thatched and has a lot of shibui about it. The prices are quite expensive and out of our range, the work is OK, but not especially good, so we only look and admire. I’m amazed when the matriarch leaves the room and returns with a tiny 7cm. oil spot glazed bottle, and presents it too us as a gift!

Tatsuya San

We meet a local potter, Tatsuya San, we have dinner together with Miyuri and a Canadian couple Michael and Judith, who are staying in the attached Guest house, while we are sleeping up stairs in the house’s loft or attic. It’s a good time and we laugh a lot together while preparing a huge shared meal.

Tatsuya San invites us to visit his studio and we spend a bit of time with him. We have tea and he shows us some of his pot collection. He has a very nice tea bowl that he inherited from his father. It is an old Karatsu bowl that had been broken and his father had repaired it with gold in the cracks It’s a ‘cracker’ all right, a really lovely thing. Creamy yellowish and probably oxidised. I can see in his show room that he has made a few attempts to replicate some of the qualities that are apparent on this bowl. I ask if I can buy one of them. He shakes his head, with a long explanation in a regretful tone, but one that I just can’t understand. I can pick out only very few words. I think that the dialect here is different from the ‘normal’ Japanese that I’m more accustomed too. I nod and make it clear that I understand, even though I don’t. Because I think that I do. I know that feeling of wanting to keep close at hand, test pieces that I don’t fully understand as yet. Works in progress that are infuriatingly difficult to really come to grips with. I do it, why shouldn’t he.

At least I think that this is what is happening.

We get to try some of the local porcelain body made from Amakusa stone. It is slightly plastic, but not too bad. I wedge up a lump of the stuff and it is very floppy to handle, but still hangs together. I couldn’t do this with my milled porcelain stone body. Not unless it had been laid away and aged for a few years. This clay is typically short with all the usual porcelain body characteristics. However, it is plastic enough to throw with and holds its form, but it is very sluggish on the wheel. Janine and I both have a turn at throwing with it. It’s an interesting experience, not unlike throwing my one-stone bai tunse native porcelain body after it has been aged for 5 or 6 years. The difference is that this stuff is used straight from the factory in the town with no ageing.

After we have made our work Tatsuya San demonstrates how it is really done. He’s a very good thrower and is quite used to this material. He uses a lot of different wooden profiles for throwing, as is the accepted method here. I don’t really like to use too many tools. I like the ‘feel’ the clay in my fingers, and I don’t mind the odd finger mark in the work. I’m not a ‘proper’ porcelain potter. I love the irregularity of the human touch. The imperfections of humanity expressed in my work. I’m quite imperfect, there is no point in me pretending otherwise. I feel that my work should reflect honestly who I am. What I think and what I feel. I can’t really see the point of me practicing for ten years to be able to make something almost as well as the machine can already do. I can appreciate the skill that these potters have developed, but it’s not for me. I don’t aspire to that.

I wrote about this a few years ago in an article called “Perfect is the new junk”.

http://www.hotnsticky.com.au/articles/PerfectistheNewJunk.pdf

We watch and learn as we are taken on a tour-de-force of Arita throwing skills. I like Him! He’s good and I have a real respect for him and his work. It helps that he is a really nice person to boot! As we leave the workshop I see that there are loads of blossom falling from the trees next to the driveway. i also notice that he disposes of his shards in a similar way to me.

Tatsuya San takes us for a coffee at the local ‘organic’ cafe, ‘Hatakenowa’. It is really very quiet and nice in its back-lane location, a lovely ambiance. The young lady who runs it has a very gentle demeanour. We like the feel of this place a lot. The lady tells us that she will be serving lunch here on Saturday. A full vegan lunch. We decide that we will go. We do and it is really good.

Tajima San – The Dusty Miller

The porcelain body that is used here is made locally in the town. We have gone past the factory a few times, as it is along the road to the supermarket. This one-stone porcelain body is made by Mr Tajima, an umpteenth generation porcelain clay body maker. We see piles of the various rocks dumped in the driveway from tipper trucks. These stones look so uncannily like the stone that I collect out in the bush where I live. It has all the same characteristics, even the black sooty mould look on the surface. It has the fracture planes, even the iron staining in the cracks, it’s amazing. I suddenly realise that I’m even a little bit shocked. The hairs on my arms are slightly raised and I have goose bumps. I didn’t expect to see this here.

We watch as the bobcat loads the stones into the tumbler and washer to get any ‘dirt’ off the surface of the rocks. It is then transferred to the primary jaw crusher. Both of these operations are extremely noisy and I feel that I ought to be wearing ear muffs. We are escorted inside where it is quieter, but only just, as the next operation is to go through the stamping mills, where the gravel from the jaw crusher is pulverised to dust. This is so archaic! These machines must be so old. I can see that they are really worn. They have done a lot of work in their time.

The next step in the sequence is for the powder to go into the ball mill to be ground. The ball mills are huge, almost walk-in size. It doesn’t escape my attention that there is a pallet of New Zealand China Clay, Halloysite Kaolin next to the scales besides the ball mill! There are a lot of other pallets of dry powdered materials in there too, but all the bags are labeled in Kanji, so I can’t read them. So this is how he gets a freshly crushed hard stone to be so plastic so quickly. I assume that there are bags of bentonite and felspar in there as well?

Next, the resultant mixture is put into a series of long white troughs of cloudy slip, where the slurry is treated and flocculated, passed through electro-magnets to take out any metal fragments that have been worn off the machinery that it has passed through, then into the filter-presses. The dewatered plastic body is then vacuum pugged a couple of times and finally ends up in plastic bags of what look to be about 15 or 20 kgs.

I’m told that the stone being used these days no longer comes from the local Arita stone quarry, as it is fully worked out now. There is only a small amount of the white material left and it has already been bought and stock piled by a local pottery family, who make ceramics for the Imperial Family The remaining material in the pit is all iron stained. The ‘amakusa’ stone that they are using these days comes from Amakusa Island way down in the South of Kyushu. The felspar that is being used comes from an island way out in the ocean, further to the South west. It is called ‘Chouseki’, whether this is the name of the island or the stone, I’m not too sure.

It’s been a really interesting tour for me, not least because I’m weird and like this sort of thing. Who else would get so excited about seeing a pile of stones that would make your hairs stand up on end? But because, far from being just plain interesting it’s been very educational. We can’t buy that New Zealand kaolin in Australia. We used to be able to, however, the quarry was bought by a trans-national corporation and they choose not to sell it into Australia, but there it is, freely for sale in Japan. So the secret of Japanese Arita porcelain is actually Aotearoa! The land of the Long White Cloudy slip.

What I find most interesting is that the most workable blends of my bai tunse, native porcelain stone, came from blending with a local kaolin and some felspar that I extracted by froth flotation and blended with white bentonite. This is almost exactly what I have seen today. Same material, the same problems. Worlds apart, a different language, but the same solution!

Karatsu

Today we make the pilgrimage to Kuratsu. Kuratsu is one of those words that congers up images of exotic old tea bowls and other rustic cha-do wares. It is a place with a very long history. Regrettably, the reality is somewhat different. It’s a highly developed modern town, perhaps city is more a more appropriate description. There is a vast discrepancy between the old Karatsu wares and the new city offerings. I was particularly disappointed with the work of the local Cultural Treasure, Potter’s work. It seemed lost and desperately seeking sustenance from any and all sources. There were tenmoku pots, oxidised copper alkaline blue islamic pots, Korean slipped pots, Chinese tri-colour pots, anything but local Karatsu pots. And this was the best of it! Very weird mixed up stuff. A total loss of identity, or so it seemed to me. Maybe there is an explanation, but none was offered, and I’m too thick to figure it out for myself.

nice old kiln.

I eventually found a gallery that sold some lovely, simple pots as well as all the other mixed up tourist dross. I bought a very subtle tea bowl, quite small, in the lower range of sizes, in a soft, satiny dry, pink/grey subtle mat surface, quite under fired, but in a really delicate and gentle way. It has a few soft shades of black, white and grey in small highlights in places, which I decide will be the ‘face’. The clay body is yellowish with a soft sandy texture. It is really nice to the touch, in my hands. I ask who made it and the gallery owner writes it down for me on the makers card. I ask to see more from this potter, but alas there is nothing else quite like it in stock. She tells me that this is made by a student of a well known potter and shows me his work as well. I can see the references, but prefer the students tea bowl on this occasion.

I also buy a sake cup in a similar style and shades of colour, but a lot more shiny. It’s a pity that there isn’t a softer, matter one. It turns out that this cup was made by the gallery owners son. She is delighted and quite effusive in telling us this and everyone else in the shop who will listen.

So I don’t know what Karatsu is now, but the older pots in the museums are lovely, a sort of soft, grey muted celadon style. Quite dark and dirty-looking. The body appears to be a grey, vitreous stoneware with low silica content, such that the glaze is very finely and densely crazed.

No-one seems to be doing this style anymore. The modern pots that we saw in the artists studios and the centre of town galleries were so mixed and variable that I can only think that they are desperate for recognition to the extent that they will try anything and everything to stand out and get sales. I’m most likely missing the point, as I most often am. But without the guidance and council of someone more knowledgable. I’m unable to see through the dross and confusion of all the disparate styles. Anyway, whatever the reason, I think that what I have chosen to take home is a subtle example of some lovely understated qualities. Wether or not it is ‘Karatsu’ or not doesn’t matter to me all that much. It’s beautiful. I’m satisfied with that.

Hagi

The next stop on our ceramic ‘Haje’, is Hagi. We travel by train from Karatsu to Imari, change systems and train to Arita. Change again from local rattler to an express and make our way back up to Hakata/Fukuoka. This is the main Station for Kyushu island and from here we transfer to the Shinkansen to go to Shin-Yamaguchi. It’s only a couple of stops on the Shinkansen express. Outside the Shin-Yamaguchi station we find the bus stop for the trip to Hagi. The bus goes directly over the mountains to Hagi station, on the other side. It takes an hour and a half or so. But is quicker than the local rattler train which goes all around the coast to get here and takes most of the day. We are already booked into the local ‘Royal Intelligence Hotel’ that is located directly at the station, so only a 30 metre walk with our luggage. We booked it before we left. They are expecting us when we arrive, which is nice. We aren’t hard to pick, as the only Gaijin here tonight.

After settling in to our room, we proceed to the tourist information office in the station, to find that the lady there speaks virtually no English, but is very keen to please and to be helpful. We point at the tourist brochures about Hagi-Yaki with some enthusiasm. She responds with a torrent of information that we can’t make head, nor tail of. We thank her and give up. All we want is a map of the town with the potteries and galleries that sell pottery indicated. As there is no-one here today who can translate for us we make our leave, with many domos, enhanced with a few arigatos and the occasional gozaimasu.

We are out on the side walk, deciding which direction to strike out in, when she comes after us, out into the street holding her mobile to her ear and asking us to wait, wait please. So we do and in a few minutes a man appears in a big black car. He is the owner of a very prestigious Tea Wares Gallery in the town centre. He speaks just a few words of English but has a fancy mobile phone with live Google translate. He speaks into the hand set and a moment or two, or three, later, the phone talks to us in English. But only in short sentences. So it takes a few minutes to discover who he is and that he will take us to visit a few of his stable of artists and then to his Gallery. OK, so we are off.

The car is large and expensive. Obviously there is money in Tea Bowls. The seats are huge and plush leather. There is even a small bar in the back for us with a selection of water or cold green tea. We visit a potters studio out on the edge of town. It is a small two story house with a very big shed out the back with a tantalising hint of a noborigama, just visible. But we are soon whisked into the Tearoom/Gallery where the potters wife duly prepares tea for us. We walk around the gallery and see that the prices are very high, to extremely high and a couple are coitusing high. Well for us they are. We can’t afford anything here, so we are a little bit embarrassed not to buy something, but we didn’t ask to be brought here. It’s all a bit of a misunderstanding. We are not well-heeled collectors. Eventually the master potter comes in and we are formally introduced with much ceremony and bowing, with many more domos, enhanced with lots of arigatos and plenty gozaimasus.

There is some small talk amongst themselves. I suppose that they are trying to figure us out. Mr Gallery translates through his phone and we all get a good laugh out of this. Especially as the software suddenly changes into German mode without telling us. We can’t understand any of the words in the Japanese or German part. We look very confused and at a loss to know what to say. I open with “I think that the translation sounds like it is in German” Mr Gallery looks at his handset, does a double take at the screen and looks again. Then he pushes his spectacles up onto his forehead and looks very intently at the screen again. Finally he passes the phone to me to read the text. I confirm that it looks and reads like German text as well. Well, to the best of my ability to tell. He fiddles with the phone and presses a few buttons and suddenly laughs. Yes, of course it is! How did that happen? Or words to that effect. We all laugh and the situation is greatly diffused.

We start again and all goes well this time. He asks if I am a famous potter in Australia. I tell him No. I’m not. Do I know the lady magazine publisher from Australia? I think that he means Janet Mansfield, and I say yes to that, if that is who he means. He nods, it is. She came here and visited him apparently, a few years ago.

We say that she has died recently, and he already knows this. We ask if he knows Paul Davis who worked here a couple of decades ago. He thinks about this a long time. Paul San? From Australia? In Hagi? Yes, Maybe! A long time ago. He is totally non-committal on this. I feel that there is something that is being left unsaid here, so leave it at that.

As it is obvious that we are not going to buy anything, we are politely ushered out and into the car. We end up at the gallery, where the prices are even higher. I apologize to him for not buying anything, we didn’t expect the prices to be so very high. He very patiently and carefully explains the meaning of the Tea Ceremony in Japanese society and how this is the cream of the cream of Hagi pottery on show here. There are several bowls by National Treasure potters. It is a well known fact that Hagi is number one for tea bowls in Japan, then Raku and third is Karatsu. All the others don’t rate a mention.

It’s a funny thing, but in Kyoto, Raku is well known to be number one, with Hagi second and Karatsu third. But when we were in Karatsu just recently, they told us that Karatsu was clearly the number one choice for tea bowls, with Raku being number two and Hagi only just trailing along at the rear in number three place.

Well I don’t know and I can’t say, but Kato San in Shigaraki conferred with Sagara San and they both agreed that Sen No Rikyu, the first and greatest tea master had set down the order of best tea wares as No1 Raku, No2 Hagi and No3 Karatsu. Shigaraki didn’t get a mention in their version of the story. So I believe them, because they left themselves out. The three on the list all agree on the content of the list, but each of them change the order, putting them selves first. Not a usual Japanese trait, I wouldn’t have thought.

We spend the next day just walking by ourselves around the town. It turns out that there are any number of pottery shops in and around the tourist sector of the town, we visit the castle ruins, the temples and shrines, at least 30 shops. We even buy a few small pots. Not made by famous artists, but lowly local potters with no reputation to uphold, students or beginners perhaps, but they are all very competently thrown and turned and have some nice qualities. I limit my self to paying $30 max, so this limits what I can choose from.

I don’t need an amazingly good Hagi tea bowl, because I already own one, back in Australia. I’m really here to see a few different examples of what ‘Hagi’ has to offer. The Hagi style?, the pink blush style, the white crystal style, the blue/white opalescent blush with yellow highlights, the ‘spotted dog’ style etc. I find all of these in different places and at different times throughout the day. Eventually I find a very nice and simple fairly plain white glazed bowl with a hint of a pink blush, but it is $50, so I am forced to extend my budget just a bit. I also buy a spotted dog sake cup for $10. The nicer tea bowls are $2700 or there abouts. So they stay on the shelf.

We visit the old castle ruins. The stonework is amazing. There is a very cute tea house in the grounds. It’s a lovely walk, we are out from early till very late. In fact it’s well after dark, by the time we find our way back to the hotel. We walked home via the sea shore to photograph the sun set over the water, only to find that it doesn’t set over the water, it sets over the island, but the ocean is very calm and the fading light illuminates it beautifully.

We have the same dinner in the same restaurant as last night, because we enjoyed it so much. Sashimi, sushi, tempura, miso, pickles, all the usual culprits and quite affordable. So, fortunately the food in Hagi isn’t rated the same as the pots. So we can at least afford to eat here. Because we return to the same restaurant, for the 2^nd night, they remember us and are extra attentive. We get an extra serving each of Sashimi with this meal. It’s unnecessary and greatly appreciated by us. A lovely gesture.

This place appears to be a very prosperous town. I doubt that it is a ceramic tea wares led economic recovery, maybe its because it’s a small fishing port? What ever the reason, it’s nice to see a place doing well. Even if it means that we can’t afford any of the better work here. Never mind, I don’t need the best, what I want is to see, experience, feel, taste, hear all the interesting new sensations, feelings and hopefully insights that go with a different culture, I don’t need anymore things, but I somehow seem to collect them.

From Hagi we make the return trip over the mountains and back to Shin Yamaguchi and onto the fast train to Kyoto. We arrive just after lunch time and get the same room in the Chitta inn for the same price as before. Very good value for us. We make the train trip to Nara for the afternoon. Because time is limited for us this afternoon, we don’t walk the back streets of the old town, or visit the giant Budda. We just walk the main street and arcades, where Janine buys a loose fitting summer frock, in Japanese cotton print. I buy a piece of old kimono in indigo cotton. It has been repaired in a few places, but this gives it a nice Sabi Wabi quality. I don’t want anything too perfect, because it’s just not me, and because I’ll probably want to cut it up to make patches for my shirts and pants.

Nara is a city of deep culture and very old history, but we manage to spend a shallow afternoon in frivolous shopping.

We have been in Japan for a month now and so we have been lucky enough to catch both of the Kyoto markets The first at the Toji Temple and the second at the Kitano Tenmangu Shrine

We go to the Toji markets. This is a famous market, held each month in and around the Toji Temple grounds. We try and go there each time we are in Japan, timing our visit to Kyoto to fit in with the market day. The Toji market is always held on the 21^st. of the month, regardless of the day of the week that it falls on. It’s a really great view into Kyoto life. I love to just wander around looking, smelling, tasting, hearing everything. The Lovely One finds a very nice white shirt with a few pleats that really suits her and it fits so well. I find a couple of small pieces of old ikat woven indigo cotton cloth and a couple of fragments of patched cotton kimono cloth that is beautifully woven but also has a remnant of faded pink printing in strategic places in the pattern. They are lovely and very wabi sabi.

We decide to have okonomiyaki pancake for lunch. We just can’t walk past this stall, it smells so good. It is also a great theatrical experience to watch them making it. They are great showmen and women. It’s a very hot day and they offer a place to sit under cover of shade. They even offer a cold beer to go along with it. I’m in heaven!

No! I don’t think so. I think that I ought to call it Nirvana, seeing that we are in the Buddhist temple grounds. It’s very tasty and cheap, and so immediately fresh, it all happens before your eyes, as you wait, just like the best street food always is.

As we wander more or less aimlessly along we bump into the stall of a young man who makes and sells very delicately decorated pots. We bought one of his cups a few years ago from this stall. His style is still very similar, the work has a soft feel to it and is light to the touch. He has a very sensitive approach. I remember that we liked him as well as his work the last time we met. We buy another cup. It’s small and easy to carry with us. It will also be quite light to post back to Australia. He tells us that he is opening his own gallery/shop in a few weeks, but we will already be gone by then. Maybe next trip? We take his card, just in case we can make it there sometime in the future?

www.studioenju.com

As I’m meandering between the stalls and crowds of people. This market has fallen on a Sunday today, so it is really full. I’m walking past an antiques stall. There are lots of them in this row. Suddenly I spot an old Karatsu pot, or something that looks a lot like it ought to be an old Karatsu pot. I stop and go over to pick it up to examine it more closely. The stall holder calls out to me “Karatsu – Old Karatsu”. “Cha Wan”! That is exactly what I was thinking that it might be. I take the time to look at it very carefully. It really looks the part. I’m suddenly full of avarice and greed.

I wants precious, must have precious!

The stall holder calls out to me again “Very old!”

Maybe it is! But what would I know. I’ve only ever seen things like this at a distance from behind glass in a museum. The only one that I have ever handled was at Tatsuya Sans workshop, and it was quite different. What I am seeing is an object that has the look of age, the body is pale grey, dense and pock marked with a few small, even tiny, burn-out craters where little bits of organic matter were embedded in the clay before firing. I turn it over in my hands. The whole pot is warped from falling over in the kiln during firing. It has a chip on the dented side where it has been removed from whatever it was stuck to. The glaze is a soft, dark apple green and is very finely, densely crazed. There is a pale yellowish haze on the inside, where there may have been a little bit of oxidation during the firing. There are a few little grains of setting sand or something similar embedded in the glaze inside the bottom.

On the whole I like what I’m seeing and handling. It feels good, it’s well balanced and it has that patina of age which gives it some sort of gravitas. The stall holder sees that I’m interested and points to the old browned, wooden box that comes with it and on which it was sitting, upside down. Because of the warping, it doesn’t fit evenly on it’s foot ring.

The old guy repeats, “Karatsu – Old Karatsu. Very old”!

I ask “Koray-wa nan deska” – how much is this thing here (that I’m holding)?

He answers in quick Japanese that I don’t understand. I’m not that good with number words, especially big ones, I can tell that the amount is not in the single digits that I do know! That’s not surprising. I hold out my phone with the numerical key pad. He types in 48,000. Ouch! OK. That is about Au$500 and a bit, no, a lot more over my budget than I was hoping. If I was going home tomorrow I’d think very seriously about it, but I’m not. I’m here for quite a while, and then still another month and then in Taiwan afterwards. I have to be very careful not to do silly things, so that my money will last the distance.

I sadly decline, but walk away with some regret. I shouldn’t, but I do. I can’t help it. I really want it. I feel that there is something to learn from this bowl. But I’ll never know now.

Afterwards, on reflection. I think that I should have bought it and gone without eating or something. It wouldn’t hurt my ever expanding waistline. I don’t even have a photo to reflect back on, as I had decided to travel light on that day and didn’t bring my camera with me. I’m appalled at my shameless desire and sudden need to own an object. This is not the person that I want to be. I feel that I should be above such things, but I’m not. Welcome to the human race.

Kitano Markets

5 weeks later, we go to the Kitano markets. It is very similar to Toji, all the usual suspects are there, maybe more antiques and less food stalls, probably because one street that borders the market is full of restaurants? I look in vain for the antique stall that had the lovely bowl, but it isn’t there. Miss Betty/Katherine/Buffy gets a fantastic white shirt with amazing pleating. It really suits her, She of the Driven Snow looks very pure and distinguished in it, you could even go to Church in it, Betty looks even more Churcher than ever!

Osaka

We are woken early by the temple bell. It is very deep, full and resounding. There are only 6 gongs, about one a minute. It’s a beautiful sound to wake up to. It’s quite a contrast from the smaller higher pitched bell in Arita that was rung about 20 times over ten minutes. That was also really nice and I looked forward to it each morning. One morning I woke and wondered what had happened to the bell. It didn’t ring yet. I looked at my clock and realised that I’d slept through it. I felt somehow a little bit cheated.

We spend the next day in Osaka. It’s only a short train journey away from Kyoto. We get a map of the city precinct and manage to navigate our way from the station to the Museum of Oriental Ceramics. It’s a pleasant half hour stroll. There is a special exhibition of Imari porcelain. It tells us the story, that we are already familiar with now, of the history of Arita and Imari as well as Nabashima ware. Its a good show and well done. There are some very impressive pieces on show here, most of them from their own collection, but a few have been lent for the show. We dine in the Museum cafe and go to the other section of the Museum, where the permanent collection is on show. Japanese, Korean and Chinese works. So many beautiful examples.

As there is still time left in the day, we work out that we can cross town and out into the suburbs to see a special traveling show of French Impressionist paintings. We think that we have figured it all out, changing stations and companies onto a different line and we manage to get off at the correct station. Success! We walk to the gallery building. The private gallery is on the top floor of one of the tallest buildings in town. It has a sky gallery for city-scape viewing. When we get to the Art Gallery level, it is closed today. Apparently for no particular reason, just closed to the public. There is some sort of promotional event happening, as people are coming and going but we can’t go in. So that is a total bummer, all that way for nothing.

We now have to re-navigate the subway system to return to our original starting point without having to go back the same way. We figure out the most direct route and find the station. We can’t seem to buy a ticket though, even though we ask for help. It’s blindingly obvious to everyone and well signposted in Kanji. Finally, Janine, Betty, Buffy, the Bofin figures out the sign language and how to interpret it. She leads the way and Lo. There is the ticket machine for our particular line. There are 4 different companies and lines operating out of this one station complex. It’s something of a terminal for the intersection of several lines. It all works out well and we are back into the tube system, smack in the middle of peak hour. At Osaka main terminal we change to the Kyoto line and are back ‘home’ in the dark, but we know exactly where we are going here in this part of Kyoto. We go to a local noodle bar, just 100 metres from our ryokan and have a lovely dinner of Gyoza and Kimchi with a beer – not noodles. It’s so good that we have it all a second time. Yes. It was that good!

Walking home to the ryokan we see the complete eclipse of the moon!

We pack our bags and get ready to leave for the airport very early tomorrow morning.

With fond regards from Betty and her Precious

“A Mecca called Onda” – revisited, for the first time

Posted on 12/11/2014 by hotnsticky

So here I am now in Japan, all alone. I have taken the opportunity to visit my friend in Shigaraki because it’s not that far from Singapore to Japan. Although with the cheapest Poverty Air airline tickets, they go in a round about way and take off and land at odd times. We left for Japan at 2.00 am in the morning from the old terminal. The very old terminal. Now almost ‘terminal’ and only used by paupers and back-packers. When you leave at 2.00 am, you are already knackered, never mind the cramped hard seats and no-frills service. It was quite cold over night, so I was forced to rent an acrylic ‘blanket’ , read shower curtain, for $5. I agreed, but only had Australian money or Singaporean dollars. They only accept US dollars, Malaysian Dollars, Thai Baht or Yen. Luckily I had some yen, OK. So far so good, but not in the correct denominations, unfortunately. So I have to receive my change back in Thai Baht!

To pay 5 in one currency, I handed over a 1000 note in another and get back 90 in a third? Weird. I don’t understand it. But it was only $5, so I didn’t really care at 4.00am!

I arrive not looking or feeling my best and the first thing that the very polite Japanese man wants to do at immigration, is to photograph me and take my finger prints. I knew it was a mistake to hand over the passport photo that had me looking like a criminal.

On the train from the airport, I can see that the rice harvest is in full swing, or should that be full flail? Actually it is probably in full head, as the little mini rice harvesters are very busy heading, stooking, binding, flailing and milling all along the rows. The milled and de-husked rice comes out one end in nice neat bags and the husks are all piled up in a big heap ready to burn. The straw is all over the shop, blown out in a shredded mess on the stubble. These bigger machines, I suspect, are owned by co-ops or by contractors. I can’t see a small farmer owning such a machine to just use it for two or three days a year. When I say big, I don’t mean Australian wheat harvester ‘big’. I mean very small and compact, about the size of a two-seater ‘Smart’ car, only lower and narrower. The little harvesters here are very small and compact, as are the rice paddies.

In the very small plots, and just to make it clear, a big plot might be half an acre, a small one just 100 sq. m. So where there are small paddies, there are men walking behind hand held, 2 wheeled harvester machines. This machine only bundles and stooks the rice so that it can be carried to the barn or work shed, whatever the Japanese equivalent word is, and inside this shed, there is another machine that separates the rice from the straw. The husk from the rice grain and blows the husks out a pipe into the field outside, where the pile is lit and it burns for hours if not days. Smoking continuously.

In just a couple fields I saw an old couple, something like my age – old! Working the field by hand. Dressed in baggy long pants tucked into boots, long sleeved baggy shirts, wide hat with a cloth hanging down behind to protect their necks and bending using a sickle to cut the stalks, then binding them together with another piece of straw tied in a loop and standing several of the bound sheaves together into a stook. Standing and bending backwards with hands on hips to straighten up for just a moment and then back to the work. The stooks are left to dry for another day or so. Eventually to be carried to the shed and threshed. The long straw is occasionally used to make pretty little circular, pointed haystacks. At other places it is hung up-side-down on long ‘ricks’ to air dry. I wonder what use there is for long, straight hand dried straw these days? I can’t imagine that it could be much? Whatever their purpose, it is a pretty little idyl.

This scene, or other ones very similar, must have been carried out in these paddies for thousands of years, umpteen generations beyond count. I suspect that this will be the last. No one wants to work this hard if they don’t have to. I read an article in the paper here that said that the average age of the Japanese rice farmer is 76! It’s such a contrast to Singapore and the investment banker working his calculator button pressing finger to the bone!

Because the long straw is hand cut, handled carefully and is undamaged. It is suitable for secondary use. There was once a time when nothing was wasted. Everything had a second or third use. The long, straight, hand harvested, undamaged rice straw was used to make all sorts of everyday items. It was woven, plaited or spun to make such useful things as sun hats, rain cloaks, straw sandals, straw rope and roof thatching. After these uses it was used as mulch and finally as compost. Until recently, the rice husks were used to make the porous holes in cheap local fire bricks in some Asian countries and possibly still are. After all, Janine, Warren and I were making our own fire bricks just 4 weeks before I left on this trip. I used clay, coffee grounds and some saw dust. Why coffee grounds and saw dust? Because we didn’t have any rice husks! So some of these skills are still being preserved in the most unlikely of places. Like Australia! There are still just a few thatched roofed buildings left intact here, but I believe that the cost of thatching is astronomical these days, so most are or have been covered with tin or replaced with tile roofs now.

Shigaraki – Janine Arrives

Janine will arrive in Japan today. After her long flight, via Hong Kong, she has to catch 3 trains and a bus to get here. I know she will be tired, so I catch the bus down to the station at Kibukawa and sit and wait for her, she could be some hours in arriving as there are many ways to miss a train and she has 3 connections to make. We have no way of contacting each other, as our phones don’t work here in Japan and getting a new sim card here is a bit of an ordeal – Even if you can speak Japanese fluently. Anyway, I shouldn’t be too concerned. Japan is only a small country, so we are bound to bump into each other sooner or later!

Tall white cranes

in the sandy river shallows

We are both waiting.

I arrive early and sit and wait. I’m prepared to wait till 3 or 4 pm, if necessary. If she doesn’t show up. I’ll have to come again tomorrow. However, there was no need to worry. She arrives at 10.30, half an hour earlier than I was expecting and a full hour and a half earlier than my Japanese hosts thought was possible. It’s a good thing I gave myself a couple of hours grace and was prepared to sit and await if necessary before giving up.

I can see her through the window of the train as it pulls in. She is distinctive because of her new hair cut. Just before we were about to leave on this trip, The Lovely decided to go and get her hair cut. Janine left and Betty Churcher returned. (For those of you reading this who are not Australian. Betty Churcher, was the very elegant and distinguished Director of the Australian National Art Gallery for many years and had a very distinctive look.) Since Betty has spent the last 40 hours in transit across South East Asia and has not really slept, she is now morphed into a hybrid vision of Betty Churcher disguised as Katharine Hepburn, but she can’t fool me. Her silhouette is easily spotted through the windows among the other petite Japanese ladies.

Taking Tea.

Note; the small bamboo cake knife for later on in the story.

I have a very educational week learning a lot about ‘Tea’ – Chado, and the utensils, their history, manufacture and meaning. I get to have 3 tea lessons at a tea ‘school’ in Kyoto and a long session with a tea scholar in Shigaraki. He tells me, among other things, about the weight, balance and ‘face’ of suitable bowls. How they are to be handled and why this is important. He brings out several examples to illustrate his points and gives them to me to handle. For a bowl to be considered suitable for tea, it has to have a long list of suitable criteria. There are lots of variations and ways that this set of ‘rules’ can be interpreted and in his opinion, it all comes down to personal choice. If you have a sound understanding of the way that tea is appreciated and can justify your choices, then almost any bowl can be considered a suitable candidate. It all depends on the ‘quest’ that is chosen for the theme and how you decide to make it all come together. Really, it’s a bit of an intellectual quiz for the invited guests, a test of perception and the subtleties of appreciation. It’s all very complicated and a bit of an upper middle class game for the elite at one level, but a very beautiful, minimalist experience of mindfulness on the other. I have no interest in becoming a practitioner. I haven’t got a spare 10 years to put into it. I’m a Husband, Farther and Potter first, then a gardener, green activist, teacher, kiln builder, wood worker, etc. etc. Tea comes a very late 113th on my list. I only want to learn enough to be able to understand how to make objects that are more suitable, or acceptable for use in the ceremony, if anyone should wish to use my bowls for that purpose. I have my own way of appreciating tea that suits me and my way of being who I am. Which includes my own approach to mindfulness.

We spend a day visiting some local temples. We climb the 700 steps up to the Moro Temple. I know that in Japan ‘less is more’, but after this climb, I wish that Moro was Less!

It’s an amazing view up from up there from the top of the mountain, and the giant cedars are spectacular. I can’t help but think of the incredible amount of work it must have been to carry all those huge granite blocks all the way up there to construct the stairs! It’s an awe inspiring place. It doesn’t make me want to believe in god though, only Nature. Construction was started on the temple in 608, so that’s about 1300 years, those trees have had quite a time to get growing and they look it.

Arita

We have caught the train down to Arita on the southern Island of Kyushu. It’s a long trip with a few connections and takes most of the day. There aren’t many seats on the platform, so the ‘wafer-thin’ resourceful one improvises.

We are currently ensconced in a little house in Arita in the Southern Island of Kyushu. The owners, Cory and Shin are not here just now. They live in Australia for part of the year. So we have rented their loft for a few days. Cory Taylor is a writer and won the commonwealth book prize 2 years ago, Shin is an artist interested in ceramics, hence our connection through pottery.

Arita was the heart of Japanese porcelain manufacture for about 400 years. However, it has recently gone into a bit of a slump in the past few decades, due to the cheap cost of manufacturing porcelain in China these days. It is almost impossible to compete. I am here, because it is the site of the earliest one-stone porcelain body ever produced in Japan, and was world renown for its purity and whiteness in its time The mine is almost mined out now, with only low grade iron stained material left in the site. What was once a mountain is now a big hole in the ground, with a few underground seams that seems to be all but worked out.

This place exists here because the War Lord Hideyoshi Toyotomi brought back captured potters from Korea who understood about the materials needed for pottery making and one in particular, Re Sam Pei, discovered this porcelain stone here and set up the first porcelain pottery on this site. The rest is history.

They were so very successful at making the translucent white ware that it soon became very famous, being traded all around the world. They guarded their secret very closely and put up guard towers and gates at either end of the road that led to the porcelain district and porcelain stone quarry, so that the secret of its manufacture would never be divulged. They even called the Arita porcelain wares by another name, so as to obscure the origin of the wares. Arita wares were exported from the sea port of Imari, as Imari ware. The name of Arita was never to be mentioned.

To this day, there is a custom of secrets here in Arita. The main families still keep their recipes and techniques pretty closely guarded. Everyone is looking to get an edge on the other. There was a constant theme in our conversations with the potters that we visited. How “it used to be better, but the market has dried up. Not so many people come to buy anymore”. I suggested that they might get together and form an alliance and put money up to hold a ceramic festival, “Back to Arita”, not unlike they did in Shigaraki. This was pretty much dismissed out of hand. “We are too individualistic here. The old ways of family secrecy and independence are still very much alive here.”

Oh well. There you go. Welcome to Arita!

We have been visiting various potteries and small workshops. Nearly all of them have abandoned throwing, then jigger-jolly, then the motor-head machines. It is all seems to be pressure cast these days. Not a single ram-press in sight. We found one pottery company that still had throwers working on the wheel. The ‘Gen-Emon’ Kiln. Here we watch the throwers working. They throw very thickly, as the clay is not at all plastic. Then they turn a lot of material away. This is exactly what I saw in Jing-de-Zhen a decade or so ago. But in Jing-de-Zhen, there was no OH&S, just dry clay dust flying everywhere.

Here they work very cleanly, with extractor fans pulling the dust away from them directly in front of the turned pot. They were so exacting and painstakingly fastidious about accuracy of form, the exact curve and precision with dimension. They get it perfect by turning both the out side and the inside of the pot. No residual finger marks here. They even weigh the finished dry pot to make sure that it is perfect!!

Needless to say, when we made our way to the decorating rooms, we were equally amazed at the accuracy of the decorators. Men do the roughing out of the design in pencil, then, apparently, they are the only ones to use the small fine brushes, loaded with the strong cobalt pigment, setting the design out in finished detailed outlines. Finally it is the women, who use the great big fat ‘fude’ brushes loaded with the thin watery cobalt wash. They are amazing in their skill to go around the detail design with such precision, never allowing a drip from their brush, always keeping the tip of the huge fat brush moving draining the mass of coarse hair of its precious cobalt, letting it flow effortlessly and continuously in around the lines. It looks so simple! I want one! I want that skill! But I’m not prepared to work that hard for it, so it will never be. I have too many other things that I want to do even more.

Of course when we get to go to the sales room. It’s a different story. Although I want to buy something. I can’t afford anything. Eventually I find a very, very, small, shot glass sized porcelain cup, decorated in 4 colours for $54. Two tones of cobalt, two colours of underglaze and a gold firing at the end to cap it off. It suddenly seems like a bargain. So much work, such detail. I love it. Having just seen all the steps that it has gone through to get here. Every step carried out by a wonderfully skilled craftsman or woman. It’s a joy to have as a reminder. Larger pieces, like a cup or a bowl soon escalated up in to the hundreds and then thousands of dollars. We want beautiful objects to remind us of our travels, but we also need to keep a very close cap on our budget if we are to manage our finances over the couple of months of this extended trip. So this is just right. It’s small and compact, easy to carry, shows all the techniques and is just affordable.

All the exquisite craftsmanship and amazing levels of skill that we have seen here rival those that we saw at Sevre in Paris last year. This family operation is very much smaller, but the quality achieved is just as great. I’m very impressed.

The ‘Dirt Rope Kiln’ Potters

We are very lucky to get to meet an amazing couple who run the ‘Dirt Rope’ kiln pottery, It appears that this is the literal translation of the kanji for these words. However, Kanji can have several meanings depending on context. In this case, the Kanji can be roughly translated as ‘serendipity’. This couple dig their own clay, have built their own kiln and fire with wood that they collect from re-cycled or demolished buildings. They make a hybrid cross between Shigaraki and Bizen styles work. Unglazed, rough, dark, clay with plenty of small stones, showing charcoal and ash impingement on the surface. Completely out of keeping with the whiteness and purity of this areas porcelain tradition. I don’t know how they make a living here.

They live near the top of a mountain, down a long, winding, narrow, farm road, marked with a ‘No-through-road’ sign and then a dead end! Theirs is the last house. A very beautiful little hidden away spot.

They fire a horizontal tunnel kiln, with a so-called ‘secret’ chamber at the back – that everyone knows about. I ask him if he is aware of the research of Mitchio Furutani in Iga/Shigaraki and he nods that he is. I suggest that his kiln has a few similarities. He nods. He asks me if I think that the ‘secret’ chamber is as crucially important as some claim. I say that I can’t see why it would be and that maybe it isn’t so important. The test would be to build a kiln without one and fire it to see if it really is. He takes me outside and round the corner. There stands a smaller version of his kiln with no secrets. It is brand new and hasn’t been fired yet. So we both still don’t know. The answer is still a secret, but time will tell. Their work is very affordable and we buy a tea bowl, two sake cups and a small bottle. It’s lovely work and I’m really pleased to be able to meet this couple and see their workshop and kiln.

Later in the day we acidentally meet an old man whose family has been making and decorating porcelain in this village for hundreds of years. He lives in one of the oldest wooden houses in the village. One that survived the great typhoon of the early 1900’s. His house is full of porcelain decorated by his forebears. Every draw in the many cupboards are full of precious enameled porcelain. He tells us that whenever he digs in his vegetable garden, he comes across more old pots.

He takes the time to show us the old pattern books used by his Great Grandfather.

Onta

The next day we set off on an expedition/excursion to the little pottery making village of Onta/Onda (sp?). High up in the hills of north, central Kyushu. This is a very isolated area, or was. It now has a twice a day, bus service going up the little winding road into the hills that terminates at Onta, it’s the end of the road. The mountainous area is densely forested and this becomes quite apparent as we travel up the valley. There are 3 saw mills along the road up into the hills. There is a constant appearance of rice paddies, where ever the land is flat enough, or can be made flat in steps by building levy walls and terraces. The rice is being harvested at this time.

We watch the harvest going on as the small bus slowly winds its way up the narrow valley, following the creek. The little hamlets along the way are gorgeous, set in idyllic folds in the valley floor. Where ever there is enough flat space for a house and some paddies. We finally arrive in Onta. This is where the bus service terminates. It turns around and returns to Hita station. Although we don’t speak very much Japanese, we clearly understand from the driver that he will be back a 4.30, and that this is the only bus back down the mountain today. So we had better be here at this stop by then. The bus doesn’t wait.

The potters of Onta have been working here since the 1500’s. Originally Korean immigrant potters found the clay here and started working it. Part-time potters and part-time rice farmers. They have carved out a livelihood here from this dirt. Growing vegetables, rice and using the hard shaley clay to make their pots. The tradition continues today unbroken. The village is now internationally famous for its rough, simple farmers pots in the Mingei tradition. The dark local clay coated with white slip, ‘sgraffitoed’ or ‘chattered’, then raw glazed and wood fired in one of the 10 family run, multi-chambered, climbing kilns. They were firing a 10 chambered, climbing kiln the day that we arrived.

When I say that the village is internationally famous. It must be understood that this is among the cognoscenti of the Mingei enthused ceramic world. I first heard of the village and its potters back in 1970 from the late Denis Pile, former President of The Potters Society of Australia, who had made a visit there. I was still in High School then. I read his article in the Pottery in Australia Magazine. Vol 9/1, pp. 24-27. I just wanted to go there. The time just wasn’t right till now. So here I am. Here and Now. It’s been worth the wait!

All the materials for making the wares here are obtained locally, just as they have been for centuries. The rough, irony, hard, local shale clay is pounded in one of the many water driven clay pounding mills in the village. There isn’t a place anywhere along the 300 metres of road that the village occupies, where you can’t hear the creak, groan and thud of the water mills pounding the clay endlessly. We walk around the village at our leisure, taking our time and really enjoying the quiet ambience of the scene. The lasting memory, for me, is of the tinkle and splash of fast flowing water and the repeated creak, groan and thud of the water powered clay pounding mills. It punctuates everything, our foot steps are measured by the rhythm of the water and the pounding of the mills. It’s quite eccentric and uneven, each mill works at a different pace. The huge pine logs are mounted on wooden shafts and wooden bearing blocks, some even have square shafts, which wear down to roughly curved surfaces over time. Hence the creaking and groaning. The straining of the wood against wood of the bearings. Punctuated by the odd rhythms of the thuds as the wooden hammer meets the shale. There are usually 2, 3, or 4 of these mills working in tandem, but at different frequencies. It’s unsettling and beautiful all at the same time. I love it! The glazes are made from the local clay, stones and wood ashes from the fires.

We take our time wandering, we enter each pottery as we come to it and examine the pots, then wander around into the workshop, we ask if it is OK and get a nod from the potter on the wheel, we watch him throw several bowls ‘off the hump’. He has one large lump of clay on the wheel. He has only ‘centred’ the top section, so that he can make a bowl from this amount of clay. He deftly cuts it from the lump with a string, and places it on the pot board along side him, next to the potters wheel. He is using a Korean style kick wheel, made from wood. His legs constantly kicking the fly-wheel below, while his body remains steady above. His hands quickly and skillfully swirl out another section of the clay lump into a perfectly even round ball, His hands lubricated with a little of the thick clayey water he keeps in a pottery bowl next to him on the wheel bench. This new wet rounded ‘ball’ of clay is soon spun out between his fingers into the same bowl shape as the last one, identical. It takes years of practice to get this kind of accuracy without measuring. This one is placed alongside all the others on the board. As soon as it is full, his wife? Or workshop helper, appears and whisks it away and it is replaced with another empty board, before the next bowl is lifted off the wheel. It’s a smooth system. These pot boards would normally be placed outside in the sun, but it is raining gently today. So the pots are placed outside under the cover of the overhanging roof.

His wife then goes back to her intermittent job of preparing the clay. The pulverised shaley clay powder is collected from the pounding mill and dissolved in water in a big trough. The clay liquid called slip, is then poured through a sieve to remove any unwanted organic matter and is left to settle in another pond or trough. When the clay has settled to the bottom, the clear water is scooped off the top and used again to dissolve more fresh powdered clay and the process is repeated.

The thick clay slurry in the settling pond is scooped out into clay dishes and placed on racks to air dry, After a week or so, depending on the weather and humidity levels. This clay has stiffened up sufficiently to be placed on top of a wood fired drying oven for the final de-watering stage. Another job for the wife to attend to is to keep a small fire burning in the clay drying oven. This provides a gentle amount of heat to rise up into the brickwork above where the clay is stacked, drying it out to the final plastic stage. It is so wet up here in these hills, that without this final forced drying stage, the clay would never really dry out in time and the potter would run out of stiff plastic clay.

When the clay is stiff enough, the potters wife brings each lump of clay into the pottery and simply piles it up against the wall. It isn’t wrapped in plastic or even covered. It is so humid and wet here that it won’t dry out before it gets used by the potter.

We venture into every one of the many show rooms along this tiny section of road. There are only 10 families living up here. All potters, and they have established quite a name for them selves, achieving a National Cultural Intangible Asset Award for the entire village. No one signs their pots individually. Every pot is stamped with the name of the village and all the work is anonymous.

Towards the lower end of the village, there is a small noodle shop/cafe/restaurant. Built on the bend in the river with the building counter-levered out over the stream. We enter and immediately get a pot of green tea and two cups set on our table. This is a humble, simple country noodle shop. This isn’t Kyoto. The tea is served in the iconic blue tea pot that has been made here for a very long time.

There is a menu written up on rice paper on the wall in beautiful calligraphic brush strokes. It explains everything, but the only problem is that we can’t read it. I struggle with my limited Japanese vocabulary to understand what this very charming and patient lady is offering us She is very patient, and tries several times, including a few charades. I understand ‘soba’ noodles, but can’t recognise the other words. I agree and nod, she disappears into the kitchen and soon reappears with our noodles. It is delicious. It is called something like “gobo” soba. We understand that it is some kind of root vegetable that has been deep fried and then added to the soup and noodles. Whatever it is, it is delicious.

Of course everything is served in their own pots.

We can’t help ourselves from buying half a dozen small pots. Bowls, plates, cups and a classic, pale blue, tea pot. We spend 4 ½ hours looking around and leave on the last and only bus, returning down the valley and back to the rat race of normality. We are the only two passengers on the bus.

I really loved this little village. I loved the self contained quality of it all. The self-reliant nature of the communal enterprise. Everyone in the village has a job. Everyone is employed doing something. Each at his or her own level of skill and endeavour. There is so much to do to be able to live like this. Someone has the work in the forest cutting the wood for the kiln fuel, Someone has to dig and prepare the clay, throw the pots. Make the glazes. Pack the kiln, fire it. Grow the rice and vegetables that fuels everybody. It’s a wonderful supportive system, keeping the whole community involved and employed.

If there were a place like this in Australia, I’d move there.

I am the crazy one who attempts to do all these jobs myself back home in our ordinary life. If we told anyone here what we did they’d scoff at us and call us nutters. No one can do all that and do it well. And of course they are right. I don’t do it well. We take on too much and end up being amateurs at everything that we do. I think that this is one of the things that I love about this place. The supportive nature of the community enterprise. This has been a very touching and meaningful experience for me. The pots are rough, simple, unpretentious and quite ordinary, but also quite beautiful.

Back in Arita we arrive home late and in the dark. We catch a taxi for the last 3 miles to our bed for the night. There are mosquitos in our room. They breed them really big here and they travel very fast too. It is almost impossible to catch them. I flail meaninglessly at the noise in the dark, only managing to hit myself in the head a few times. I eventually give up and offer myself up as fresh meat. I’m too tired to care or to do anything about it. But The Lovely is made of much sterner stuff. She’s had enough. She patiently waits and sets her trap. She waits until the time is ripe, and when the sound of the small chainsaw-driven tiny insect next appears in the ear drum, she springs her trap. Flipping the sheet up over her head with her arms and enveloping the annoying nightmare in the bed clothes with her. It’s huge, vicious and very tenacious. She battles with it and it is in no mood to give in and puts up a spirited defence. In fact it has the upper hand for a while, being able to function in the dark perfectly well. The commotion carries on under the bed clothes for quite some time and it’s touch and go for a while, but eventually, The Lovely re-appears, bloodied and shaken and somewhat worse for wear, but victorious!. The thing is now silent and is hopefully dead. However, The Lovely is taking no chances and proves not so lovely to the vanquished. She bites down hard on a knob of garlic and grabs a small bamboo tea ceremony cake knife and drives it down hard through its heart.

We sleep in peace for the rest of the night.

I decide that I had better keep a closer eye on this girl!

Best wishes

from the vampire-mozzie slayer and her fresh meat

Dr. Steve Harrison PhD. MA (Hons)

hotnsticky@ozemail.com.au

www.hotnsticky.com.au/old

blog; tonightmyfingerssmellofgarlic.com

http://www.wattersgallery.com/artists/HARRISON/Harrison.html

Potter, kiln surgeon, clay doctor, wood butcher and Post Modern Peasant.

Hits and Misses

Posted on 01/09/2014 by hotnsticky

We have just finishing the unpacking and cleaning of our last firing.

It was a disaster!

We have had 2 other really bad firings in our professional life together. This was the third.

On all 3 occasions, it was the failure of a silicon carbide shelf that was the root cause. We unpacked the kiln door to find that the entire front stack of kiln shelves had collapsed towards the latter part of the firing. I’m presuming, during the reduction cycle, when the flames are so thick and dense that I can’t see the pots at the front of the kiln very clearly. We had heard a sort of ‘thump’ noise at some point and we looked at each other warily, but the firing continued OK. Quite slowly, but OK. Eventually finishing a few hours later than expected.

The unpacking revealed the full extent of the collapse. It was one big, solid pile of kiln shelves, props and pots all glazed together into a huge monolithic ceramic jumble.

I started at it gently with a paint scraper and gloves, but soon moved on to the skutch hammer and cold chisel. Bit by bit, I whittled away at it until I got the first of the three kiln shelves loose from the top and lifted it out, but all it revealed was more of the same underneath.

It took me all day to unpick the full disaster. I was going gently so that if there were any good pots in the pile, I would stand some chance of saving them. There weren’t too many, but just a few. So, as disasters go, it wasn’t the end of the world and there were just a few nice things, many of them shards, to keep me interested.

I spent the next two days fettling, chipping and grinding the pieces that had some qualities worth pursuing. I even got one pot out that I thought would have been a write-off, but it came away from its molten Siamese twin – joined at the lip. I spent some time on it and I think that it is quite interesting and has some lively qualities. I have decided that it will be good for showing in an appropriate exhibition. It’s unique. So, I’m chuffed. I think that I might put sugar in it. Because, as Nina Simone pointed out. “I need a little sugar in my bowl”.

All the pieces that I hammered out from the kiln floor as shards went straight into the ball mill for polishing and eventual use as polished, coloured, glazed, ceramic gravel for the pottery driveway.

The rest of the ruined rejects I dispatched with my quality control hammer. It’s the most important tool that I own for making my pots look good. This rubble is also headed for the ball mill. One or two hits in the right place and they are reduced to spectacular shards. I’m just another hit man really. Although i think that hit men get paid better? I must admit that they look so much more interesting and better placed as coloured road gravel than they did as depressing broken pots sitting in a tin next to the kiln.

Some of the surviving pots from the pile are quite good. They still need some more work, but will clean up quite well I think.

Just while I’m in cleaning mode, ‘The Lovely One’ bought an old cupboard from a garage sale to use as an extra storage place for all our preserves. We have our various vacuum sealed jars of summer excess, stored all over the house in various places, on shelves, under the floor, under tables. The pantry cupboard in the kitchen filled up years ago. We had been looking out for some sort of ‘dresser’ to put in the front room, but nothing suitably real, honest and rustic had turned up. Janine had been out and about looking for a bargain for some time now, but what she had seen wasn’t nice and was incredibly expensive to boot. I really didn’t want to have any chip-board, or Ikea, plastic veneered ‘land fill waiting to happen’ furniture in the house, so it was starting to look like I would have to build one from scratch myself. I have enough home-milled, wood stored away and air drying to do the job. But suddenly, this lovely old thing turned up just in time for $40

It was a ‘blue metallic over silver antique wash’ of a gem when she spotted it in an old laundry out the back of a deceased estate sale. It has been coated with many layers of paint over the years. Blue, silver, yellow, cream, grey, green.

I’m thinking from the ‘government green’ lowest layer, that it might have been from a school originally? So, now it will be back in an old school again.

What-ever its origin, it’s had many owners. The doors show the signs of having had a few different locks applied to them over its history. It has even had at least one break-in, where the wood of one door has been shattered and split around the place where the lock had been, but it’s all glued back together again now. We set to work on it with heat guns, scrapers and sanders. The distressed, half-way look wasn’t too bad, but rather sticky and rough. Besides, I knew that it was made from clear grained solid timber. I checked it out, inside before I agreed to buy it. It was also very solid. We had a hell of a time lifting it onto and off the truck. It was just too heavy for the two of us to manage. Fortunately we have a wonderful neighbour called Elizabeth, who was available to give us a hand with it. We have had it in the car port for a couple of months now waiting for just this time when we could get stuck into it. It wasn’t possible while we teaching the workshops every week. Once we stared to take the paint of it, we didn’t want to leave it out in the weather for very long. So two days of intensive work from both of us and it is now in the house and being filled. The clear grained, pale timber has responded very well to a coat of tung oil, and once hardened it will get a few coats of carnauba wax to finish it off. It has become a rich golden-yellow.

It’s hard to find furniture made from clear grained, knot-free timber these days.

A while ago we visited our friend and fellow potter and were invited to view a small cupboard that his wife had spent the weekend cleaning back from many years of neglect and multiple layers of paint.

“Come and see my wife’s restored cupboard”.

We were shown a very ordinary wooden cupboard. It wasn’t very pretty, but she had sanded and polished it for hours to achieve a very fine finish. We were invited to feel the smooth silky surface of the wood. It was velvety smooth, but the wood grain wasn’t very pretty.

“So, you can see now why I call this piece of furniture her ‘vaginal cupboard”?

“It doesn’t look beautiful, but it feels terrific!”

We are hoping that our weekends work will reveal something that both looks good and feels terrific.

What it just might need until I get around to making the ‘hutch’ for the top, is an interesting piece of ceramic sculpture?

Perhaps I might have just the thing!

Fond regards from Her Hit Man and His Misses.

The Firing

Posted on 27/08/2014 by hotnsticky

I’ve been up since before dawn firing the kiln. I spent all day yesterday packing the pots in and all of the day before that cleaning out the firebox, which is a regular job with a wood fired kiln, chipping the wood ash slag off the fire bricks around the air inlet holes. The blast of air into the hot coals during firing is so intense that it melts the wood ash from the charcoal in the ash pit into a molten flowing lava of ash glaze. It has the ability to stick to the brick work like shit to a blanket. Even though I wash the bricks with alumina powder to try to create a resistant barrier. The fluid stuff finds a way through the wash and into every crack and crevice. I chisel out some new air holes. This time I try a new larger ‘mouse-hole’ cover, so much larger, that all the liquid flow from the edges should be a lot farther from the hole underneath and therefore not block up as readily. It’s worth a try.

Packing the pots into the kiln is a very slow and precise art that takes a long time to learn and even longer to perfect, if such a thing were possible. Every kiln is different and has its own personality, so I have to ‘learn’ the kiln. It’s a slow process of trial and error and in every firing I try something new, something different or altered. Some slightly different way of packing the pots into the limited space available. You wouldn’t think that there could be too many variations. But the there are. It seems never ending. Then suddenly it all makes some sense and It’s all so clear. I understand! Then, the very next firing, it’s all different again. Every little thing is important. That damn butter fly in the Amazon rainforest, flapping its wings, is so unpredictable.

I roll out about 600 little balls of clay, called wadding. These are used to support the pots in the kiln on the kiln shelves, so that they won’t stick to the shelf with all the wood ash. I use 5 or 6 on each pot as I pack it into the kiln. They have to be rolled out fresh, so that they are soft and sticky. They have to squash up and settle the pot into place and support it evenly through the firing. There is wadding and there is wadding. Each potter has his or her own recipe. It’s a witch’s brew concoction of what’s available and what’s most desirable against what will look the best after firing. I tend to go for the wadding that will leave the best marks after firing, but still be easy to remove from the sintered and sometimes runny ash glaze deposit. No product is perfect. No research is ever finished.

I’m alway testing out new clay recipes, new local rocks for glazes and different wood to fire the kiln with, then using the resulting ash to glaze the next load of pots. There are so many variables. I can’t seem to help myself from experimenting. There is always something new to try, or an older idea that once worked in an earlier kiln to up-date and try again here and now. We once had a visitor call in, who turned out to be an engineer. He watched me work for a while and asked what I was doing. I explained the series of tests that I was preparing. Trying to find a greater depth and softer surface in my new rock glaze through a series of inter linked line blends. He called in again a year later. I’d forgotten him, but he recalled what I had been doing and asked how the results turned out. I told him that I eventually got the glaze to work beautifully. He asked to see it, but I had to admit that I didn’t have any examples to show him. I’d crushed the failures and sold all the best ones at Watters Gallery. Now I was working on something else.

He was visibly shocked and did a ‘double-take,’ shaking his head. Then asked, After all that work and research, why aren’t you still using it. I explained that once you understand something really well, it looses its interest. There always has to be some new element of discovery in the work, otherwise it just becomes a job and would risk becoming boring. Anybody could do that in a factory. I want to be engaged all the time.

He Looked me straight in the eye and told me that I was nuts. As an engineer, he spent all his time solving problems, so that the process could then be put into mass production and profits were made through mass production and sales of a predictable product. I was setting my self in a position were I wouldn’t be making any money, constantly researching and prototyping, but never going into production.

I said, That’s right!. I’m not doing this to make money. I’m doing this to enjoy my life. If I can make just enough money to get by, then that is success for me. After the basic needs of life are met, then money’s only use is to buy time. Time away from having to work to earn more money. The vicious circle. Free time is creative time and no one gives it to you, you have to claim it.

I don’t want what most people want. I believe that I’m really lucky not to have the endless search for something to buy that will make my life complete. Instead, I’m happier to make all the things that I need in my life – if I can. I don’t do it well or efficiently. I spread myself too thin. And sometimes the things that I make don’t work all that well. But I can fix them, because I know how they are made. Importantly, I have a lot of fun and it’s endlessly fulfilling. Besides, the best things in life arn’t things.

So I’m back at the kiln again. I’m firing the kiln this time with all the left over wood from our firing workshops. It’s a hotch-potch mixture of all the wood that I have collected from our block over the past year. I have some pine, some acacia, she-oak, 2 types of local eucalypt, and a very rare and quite strange tree that we call ‘Cherry Ballard’, it’s a slow growing parasitic tree and is related to sandalwood. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exocarpos_cupressiformis

The wood is very dense and close grained I can’t imagine making sandals out of it, but maybe clogs? They’d be very long lasting, but rather heavy. One of these trees died after a long life down near the dam, It must have been 30 years old and only 175mm dia. It grows in small clumps in various places around our land.

I usually try to fire with just one type of wood in each firing. So as to see just what it does, how it burns. Will the kiln get to temperature easily. What will the ash effects on the pots be like, How much ember will it create and how will I be able to control the ember level without choking off the fire mouth, or alternately, not having enough ember to keep the wood on the hobs burning well. There are so many elements that go into making a firing successful and I have to think about them all, all of the time. Responding to the most obvious and pressing features, while keeping a weather eye on all other potential possibilities. 2nd guessing what is likely to be happening now and what will happen next.

When visitors come to the pottery and want to talk to me while I’m firing, they may think that I’m autistic, aspy, grumpy and dis-interested. It’s not that I can’t talk, or don’t want to talk, but I’m really just trying very hard to concentrate on what the kiln is telling me, so that the firing will turn out well. There is a lot at stake here. A months work and a lot of hopes and dreams. I need space to concentrate.

This firing, like most of my firings, started off the night before with some gentle pre-heating, as there are a number of raw pots in there and I don’t want to blow them up. I start the firing off with grape vine and fruit tree prunings as kindling, with just a few thoughts of the French peasant, Monsieur Massot.

It’s a rather strange firing. It’s a long time since I did a firing like this. Perhaps it’s the odd mix of wood, perhaps it’s the approaching storm brewing on the horizon. Maybe I have made a mistake in the packing, but I don’t think so. I was so meticulous about it all. I try very hard to get the balance right. I actually find it a real challenge. In saying that, I must say that I don’t enjoy it at all. I find it really challenging, because I don’t actually look forward to it. It’s a job that has to be done, and done really well to get to the best outcome. Which is the Xmas-like joy of unpacking all the presents that the kiln holds – when it turns out well, or otherwise, as the case may be.

This firing is not going at all well. It’s very strange. It just isn’t doing what it normally does. Having worked through all the usual possibilities and not making any definite conclusions. I start to think of all the unlikely things that it could be. I heard that they found a dead cat in the flue hole of the kiln at the Art School. It had crawled in there to die. That wasn’t nice. Had someone not noticed it, although it was hard to miss! Then it would have blocked off a lot of the draught. I believe that the potter Col Levy once had a sheep die in his kiln, in between firings. I was told that he just bricked it up and fired the kiln to cremate it. It was easier to deal with that way. Maybe these stories are apocryphal, may be not. It doesn’t matter. I’m pretty sure that there was nothing dead in my kiln, but still, one can never be too sure. I try a lot of variations in my firing technique, slowly working my way logically through all the possibilities.

Eventually I open the damper to 95% open. I usually only have it half open. I never know if my damper is half open or half closed. It depends so much on my mood. I’ve only had the damper this far open once before in all of the firings of this kiln. It seems to be going slow, almost as if I have to push it up myself, by shear force of my will. It usually goes up so easily. Suddenly there is the biggest clap of thunder I’ve heard in years. Right above our heads. Lightning must have struck very close to us here. Janine just happened to be outside at the time and runs in, white as a sheet. She is in a bit of shock. She is so startled. She was outside stacking some wood and clearing up a bit when it hit. I go outside and look around. There are no smoking dead trees nearby, so it must have been further away.

The sky has turned black, it’s a dark blue/black and has completely closed us in. I have to put the light on. fortunately the power still works, as it is running the digital temperature indicator. It doesn’t really matter too much as I always have a spare battery operated one as well, just in case. Then the rain comes.

The rain pours down and we get 40 mm in a few hours. We have all our wood indoors and under-cover, so it doesn’t matter that it’s raining. In fact now that the storm has broken, the barometer will rise a little and the kiln should fire better, and it does. We end up firing for 16.5 hours instead of the usual 14. so It’s not too bad. We wait now for the results in a few days time.

We have leather jacket with our own field mushrooms from the potato patch, in an Asian inspired sauce for dinner.

The remnants and fish bones are all boiled up to make a stock with some garden vegetables and we have an Italian inspired, Thai flavoured risotto for the next night.

Italian,Thai risotto, interesting!

With love from the shockingly lightning fast, lovely, Janine ‘Thor’ King and her fireman

Living Well – Frugally

Posted on 25/08/2014 by hotnsticky

Following on from our beautiful shoulder of lamb a couple of weeks ago. We decide to reduce the load in the fridge and have a leg this week. Two red meat meals in a month – what will become of us?
I decide to do a very slow bake. The leg is quite large and won’t fit in our baking tray. The wood fired kitchen stove only has a small oven. I have to go down to the workshop and bring up the hack saw and shorten the leg. Now it fits. I pour just a little olive oil into the pan and some sliced onions. I brown the leg all over as best I can. It’s lunch time and Janine has only just lit the wood fire in the stove. It is just getting hot enough to brown the leg. Janine prepared it by rubbing some of Geordie’s special seasoning mix well into the skin a few hours ago. I pour a cup of water into the baking tray and cover it well, then slide it into the oven. The oven thermometer, reads just 60 oC as it goes in. That’s not unusual, as we have only just lit the stove. It is going to stay in there well covered for the next 6 hours as the oven temperature slowly rises.
By 6 pm it’s 180oC and I un-cover it and let it finish un-coverd so that it will caramelise somewhat in the dry heat.
When it comes out it is crispy on top and looks succulent and juicy. It smells terrific. We really enjoy the tender, melt-in-our-mouths lean meat.
We have it with some of our new harvest broccoli.

This head of broccoli, is so big that it exceeds the size of my large chef’s knife blade.

After the long slow covered baking, the baking pan is a-wash with meaty pan juices. It hasn’t dried out at all and is swimming in marrow bone jelly and cooking fat from the leg, plus some olive oil. I slice the meat and preserve the juices. The next day, we re-heat the pan and pour off the marrow bone jelly and fat through a sieve into a jar. We chill it overnight and scrape off the cloudy opaque white fat. The clarified jelly is there calling out for us to use it in something very special.

We took our time getting through all the meat on the leg. We had our first meal hot, as a baked dinner and then a few cold cut lunches. Tonight The Lovely has used the remaining slices to make a luscious ragu. The meat is sliced up fine, with the clarified marrow-bone jelly from the jar added back into the pan and a glass vacuum-preserving jar of summer’s tomato passata, preserved from the summer excess. It cooks down into something special. ‘The Lovely’ adds some green split peas and lets it simmer.

You can’t believe that something this simple could be this tasty and wholesome. It’s just so easy, but I suspect that most families don’t bother to do it anymore. Several meals from one roast, and so tasty and flavoursome. There is hardly anything in there, a few slices of cold meat, some clarified marrow-bone jelly, all tawny/claret-red and exploding with flavour. A jar of preserved summer garden tomato purée, and a hand full of dried peas. Wow!
Just a little extra effort to clarify the roasting pan juices and hey presto! It was so worth that little extra effort. She, the Reigning Monarch of Ragu serves it with a couple of small slices of organic rye sour dough.
It’s so good, I have two helpings.

For desert there are preserved plums from the summer served with yoghurt. It’s a pleasure and a thrill to be able to eat our excess summer produce in the cold wet days of winter.

I’m so fortified that we go right back out there and make some fire bricks to replace the current door bricks on the wood kiln. The door of the kiln has to be bricked up each time that it is fired. There is a bit of effort involved in laying so many bricks each firing. There are about 140 bricks used to brick up the door of the kiln at the moment.

I have been making my own kiln shelves and props for my kiln since 1974. I made all the firebricks for this kiln by hand about ten years ago and have continued to make all my own firebricks ever since. This current kiln is the second one made from hand crafted bricks on this site. Now I decide to make some new larger format door blocks. This time in a larger block size, 150 x 150 x 230mm, equal to about 3 full bricks in one go. It will make the bricking-up of the kiln door much faster. It’s a lot of work to make fire bricks by hand, but we are not scarred of hard work and I am fully committed to being as self-reliant as possible. This is a simple example of what we do to achieve this self-reliance on a low budget and maintaining a small carbon foot print. These firebricks are not the best in the world, but they are hand-made, cost effective and have very low embedded energy. I try to do so many things, that I end up being not very good at any of them, but it gets things done frugally. I’m determined to live below my means.

Making things like this ourselves saves energy and transport costs, as nearly all firebricks on sale in Australia at the current time come from China. We are also maximising our use of recycling, as the grog and the coffee grounds are both recycled commercial waste. These bricks will be fired in the wood kiln, at the back of the stack, 20 at a time over several firings. They are made on-site from re-cycled, mostly local materials and will be fired using our own self-grown and harvested wood from our own property. All the carbon in these trees has come from the air and when burnt, will go back to the air. No additional carbon will be involved. No trans-global shipping costs bringing in product from China. It’s simple and effective. It just takes energy and commitment. We get our personal energy mostly from the vegetables that we grow in our garden. Finally, the residual ash from the fire box after the firing will be used either to make glazes or used as fertiliser in the garden to help fuel us.

I use coffee grounds and crushed firebrick grog.

All mixed in the dough mixer

We make 50 of these large blocks with the help of our dear friend Warren. We originally planned to do some orchard pruning together over the weekend, but the weather has turned quite wet and gusty, so we make bricks instead. We end up getting 6″ or 150mm of rain. It’s just what the trees need just now at this critical time of the year. It couldn’t be better for us and the trees.

We make our fire bricks from more or less equal parts of or own grog, crushed, re-cycled broken fire bricks and kaolin. I also add in a good measure of coffee grounds collected from our friend Cathy’s local cafe espresso machine used ‘shots’ tray. Cathy very kindly kept all of the used shots for me all week, so that I could collect them for my research. The coffee grounds will burn out from the fired bricks and leave little air pockets that will act as insulation. This will make the kiln more fuel-efficient. I collected the coffee grounds some years ago, dried them and stored them away, preserved as dry powder in the kiln shed. What I didn’t use back then to make all the bricks to build the new kiln, are being used now for these new bricks.

with love from the well preserved Dr. and his fresh and radiantly blooming Ms.

Responding to the Warmth

Posted on 24/08/2014 by hotnsticky

I have been back in the pottery making pots again. Now that all our winter firing workshops are finished. I have my kiln back to myself. I am throwing more pots for my own firing. As the weather warms up, pots don’t take quite so long to firm up as they were taking a couple of months ago. On a few days it is cold enough to light the pot-belly stove in the pottery. It’s nice in here with the fire going. I respond to its warmth. It’s an old, solid, cast iron thing that we have been using continuously for the past 35 years. I have given it one overhaul about ten years ago as all the joints were creeping apart. The original bolts had long since corroded away and it was more or less held together by the rust and friction. It had never had the correct flue pipe fitted for its size. The original flue outlet was designed for a 100mm. dia pipe, which was woefully too small and it always smoked, as it couldn’t get enough draught going through it to burn the capacity of the wood that it could hold.

Nothing is perfect.

I decided to take it to bits and overhaul it, by sealing a lot of the joints with a clay paste and reassembling it with new stainless steel bolts. I also increased the flue pipe size from 100 mm. to 125 mm. I make an adaptor out of some stainless steel sheet off-cut that I have that seems to be just about the right size – because I can. It’s taken me 20 years to get around to it and now in just 3 hours, it’s working just as it should, if the designers had bothered to build it and test it, to see if it worked OK, then re-designed it with the correct flue outlet. Now it works a whole lot better. Nothing is ever finished and nothing is ever perfect.

I can hear out the window that Mrs Grey Thrush is calling her mate. A beautiful chirping worble/whissle. She calls and she calls. She waits and then starts again. I walk outside to see her on a nearby branch. Her song is so lovely. Eventually her mate appears and they fly off together, in a twisting, swerving, swooping flight. So closely mimicking each other. Maybe it’s a mating ritual? It’s that time of year, spring is approaching. Maybe they are responding to the warmth?

There is a lot of activity around the bird bath. I made a leaf shape, shallow, ribbed bird bath. It is sited on a brick pillar in among some small trees and shrubs out in the garden, viewable from the kitchen window. We tried several places. This is the best place that we have tried so far. Nothing is perfect.

I can see that there is a distinct pecking order in the way that birds organise their bathing. The bigger birds simply push in and force out the smaller lighter birds. Size is everything, or so it seems. ‘Nature, red in tooth and claw’. In nature you just take what you can, if you can. If you can’t defend your stake, then you loose it. We don’t feed the birds. I don’t think that it is good for them. We have created a rich and varied environment here. The animals have to make their own living as best they can. We have an enormous number of birds living here or passing through on a regular basis, so we must be doing something right.

Like life really.

Once the larger birds have moved off, all the smaller birds come back in to the bird bath again. I see that red banded finches and eastern spine bills have no problem sharing together, or robins and wrens. There are a flock of little blue wrens, all young males I suppose. They swarm across the lawn and through the low shrubs and undergrowth, then swing around and come back again. They hang around most of the day, flitting in and out of sight. There must be 15 or 20 of them. Not a Jenny in sight today.

Over at the site of the burning pile that we lit up last week. There are a huge mass of red banded finches. They are busy all around and everywhere. For safety reasons, our burning pile is a long way from our house, over in a clearing in the bush. There are so many birds over here in the thicket of bush all around the site. I see them working over the pile of ashes. They always seem to be in around here. They are interested in the ashes. I can’t seem to see what they are eating, if anything, but they are always here. Is it the warmth? Or maybe they are after some salt from the ash? I really don’t know! Maybe they are just responding to the warmth. We all do.

The embers and ash have now cooled down and the little birds swam over the site looking for whatever it is that they look for. Masses of them dart in and out of the low undergrowth and shrubs into the clearing and out again. I always find it amusing and amazing. Always so rewarding! I love the fact that they are here in numbers these days. When we came here to this barren block 38 years ago, there weren’t any to be seen. We have planted thousands of bushes and shrubs over the years. We have stopped the clearing and let the bush grow back in places. There is so much more suitable habitat here now. Build it, and they will come!

The finches keep a certain distance, but don’t seem to mind me being in their place I don’t scare them or threaten them. I love them being here. I respond to them with warmth – they, in turn, ignore me. Nothing is perfect.

I test the ash pile to see that it is cool enough to collect. I shovel the whitest and fluffiest ash on the top of the pile into a plastic garbage bin for use as glaze material. I get about 20 kgs in there. Next I shovel up the heavier darker ash into a wheel barrow to use as fertiliser. I manage to get 3 of these wheel barrows-full from the pile. Possibly 80 to 100 kgs in all. That’s a lot of ash! It’s a good general fertiliser for vegetables, fruit trees and shrubs. There is still a lot more ash there. Abundance! I have enough for the time being. The rest, as it goes down, is mixed with roasted top-soil, dirt and some stones. Although no good for glazes, it will still be useful if I need some more for fertiliser, but it is unlikely to remain there, as it will easily blow away if we have strong winds, or wash away if we have some heavy rain. Nothing lasts.

I spread it around the garden and orchards, all around the drip line of the trees. Wood ash contains potassium and calcium amongst other things. Potassium is very good at this time of year to stimulate flowering and fruit set in fruit trees. The ash also has some unburnt charcoal, this is also very good for the soil. There are even some burnt bones in the ash pile, from old marrow-bone stock residues that I threw onto the pile, because bones attract rats to the compost and the worms don’t eat them. So burning the used bones is the best solution. If we don’t have a burning pile ready to go. I dispose of them in the firebox of the kitchen stove or sometimes in the kiln. Burnt bone is a slow release form of calcium phosphate. So in this instance we have the major plant nutrients. Potassium, Calcium and Phosphate. All we need is some nitrogen and we get this from chicken pooh.

As well as fertilising, we have been pruning and cleaning up around the garden and orchards. There is always too much to do, but we just do what we can. I have only just finished pruning the almond trees a few weeks ago and now they are out in blossom. Janine makes some very nice little almond biscuits. She has almost run out of almonds, so she substitutes half of the recipe with hazel nut meal. These tiny biscuits are delicious. Crisp and crunchy on the out side, while remaining soft and chewy on the inside.

Almond biscuits recipe;

150g sugar

1 egg

225 g ground almonds

2 teaspoons of lemon zest

vanilla paste to taste – less than 1/2 a teaspoon.

1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon – generous, maybe up to half. To your taste.

It’s probably better and easier if you take the butter out of the fridge in the morning that you plan to cook. It’s easier to use if its softer, but you already know that I’m sure.

Roll the mixture into little balls and cook them on a buttered tray at 180oC for 15 to 20 mins. Don’t over cook, or they get too hard and loose their charm.

They are so nice, coming warm and crunchy from the oven. I respond to the sweetness and the warmth.

So That’s the recipe, but on this occasion, the lady with the zest for life uses twice as much zest, because she likes it that way. She adds 2 eggs and uses half hazelnut meal/half almond meal, because that is what she has.

These little melt-in-the-mouth moments are just as yummy, if not better, so it just goes to show that the recipe is only a starting point and a guide. It’s not a must do, it’s just an idea, an idea that is worth thinking about. The rest is all experimentation. Like life.

They are so delicious – nothing lasts!

I thank her and she gives me a hug.

I respond to the warmth

Warm regards from his zesty Ms. and her fertile Mr.

Don’t get to know the farm animals too well – Geordie’s Choice

Posted on 17/08/2014 by hotnsticky

(Don’t read this letter if you’re vegan)

This months red meat meal is lamb.

As part of his work as a chef, our son Geordie, has to go out to farms and collect produce for the restaurant. Last week it was out to the farm where the biggest black truffle in Australia was dig up. The farmer didn’t need a truffle dog to find it. It was so big that he saw it bulging up out of the ground. It took him an hour and a half to expose it and dig it out very carefully. It is the largest truffle ever found Australia, weighing in a 1.2 + kgs. The world record for the biggest truffle is for one found in France weighing in at a whopping 1.3 kg.

So we still have a hundred grams to go!

Recently, Geordie was out at the farm where they source their organic lamb and got to make friends with the very carefully reared little animals. He took a shine to one in particular and asked how much it would be. They agreed a price and the next day after lunch, the abattoir van called in at the restaurant with the weeks supply as well as Geordie’s Choice.

He has done this sort of thing before. Earlier in the year it was a piglet. Since he started at this he has honed his skills. I remember he told me that the first time that he had to butcher an animal. It took him 2 hrs to break it down, section it and have it all prepared and shrink-wrapped ready for the fridge and freezer. He’s a chef, not a butcher.

This time, with more practice and better skills, he has it all in the cling-film in 20 mins. We get a call asking if we have room in our fridge/freezer. We do and he is here shortly after with his cargo. All neatly sectioned and wrapped as leg, shoulder, tender loin, spare ribs, excess bones and trimmings, etc.

The first thing that I do is to make a stock with all the excess bones, and trimmings. I use carrots and celery from the garden, plus a couple of parsnips and some spinach and mustard greens. At this time of year there is a lot less choice in the garden, so we use what we have. This is the life that we have chosen. Our winter mirepoix is augmented with sprigs of sage, sweet marjoram and thyme, all from our herb garden. Then two whole knobs of our own home grown, cleaned, plaited and hung garlic, cut cross-wise to expose the full flavour and tossed in whole, a star anise and a whole bottle of our own new vintage light red wine. I roast the bones for an hour in the oven, while I boil the mirepoix on the hot plate. I add the bones to the veggie mix and let the lot simmer together for another hour more on the wood stove.

The whole lot is left to cool overnight before I skim off the fat, remove the bones and then sieve out the herbs and vegetables. I re-heat the resulting stock the next night when we light the wood fired kitchen stove again.

I reduce the stock down from many litres down to just one. An intense concoction of garden produce flavours and hand tended, organic and carefully raised lamb, marrow-bone jelly and home made, organic shiraz red wine. I can’t think of anything else that could be much more rewarding. Eating form our own garden, cooking what we have at the time. A constantly changing menu closely tied to the season and our own hard work in the garden and orchards.

The next day we have a wonderful, long-term friend call in. We discuss our common interests in ceramics. He teaches me many things, as he always does. He is a wonderful mentor. I learn to be a little more accepting and more forgiving with each visit. I still have a lot to learn, but I’m trying. He is amazingly patient. A good friend and very caring, I admire him immensely.

I cook him a risotto of home-grown mushrooms and garden-produce for lunch. We go together down to the Pantry Field and pick some big, luscious, dark, field mushrooms. I send him home with a bag-full of them, but we save a few for the risotto. We also have some exotic fungi from the local market. They all go in together. Janine comes home from her outing and the three of us greedily consume it. It works out well and we enjoy it together. A rich full flavour, de-glazed with a slosh of our wine, moderated with some of our home made marrowbone jelly stock form Geordie’s lamb.

Risotto Recipe;

I have the choice of arborio and carnaroli rice. The arborio is open, so I use that.

I brown an onion in some local EV olive oil until softened. Stir in a cup-full of the rice and flip it around until properly coated in the oil. Then deglaze with a big ‘slosh’ of local Sauvignon Blanc, add in the sliced mushrooms and finely diced veggies. At this point I’d usually have another pan of stock boiling close by, but on this occasion, I only have just 1 litre of concentrated stock from Geordies lamb bones, so I add it in and as it firms up, I add a little more white wine. The whole lot is consistently stirred and simmered while we talk, until the rice is done.

It has a smooth flowing texture, a lovely red/brown colour, and a warm, fulfilling place in the soul for some human interaction. We really enjoy it.

So that was nice. Possibly better than I had any idea that I knew of. Life is made of such unexpected exchanges.

I am so lucky. I don’t know how lucky I am. I never know quite what is going on in my life, until it is a long time after the event. I seem to only know what has happened to me in retrospect.

We decide to have a shoulder of Geordie’s new lamb for dinner. It’s organic and it couldn’t be fresher. Rested for a couple of days. We get it out of the fridge and prepare it. We collect a few sprigs of fresh rosemary from the cuttings that we grew from bushes that John Meredith had growing in his herb garden in the 70’s. He got his rosemary cuttings from his mother’s garden in Holbrook, back in the 50’s, and from there, they came to us, via his weekender here in the village. These sprigs of rosemary have a direct family tree that goes back into medieval times, or so it seems. The Meredith family tree goes all the way back to the Kings of Wales.

These woody herbaceous bushes that we grew from the cuttings that were given to us by Merro back in the seventies were propagated out into the series of bushes that we still have growing today.

I climb up onto a kitchen chair and then make my way up onto the kitchen table and hook down one of the last plaits of garlic, still hanging up there from last October. There are only 4 plaits left, two at each end of the roof truss. We usually run out about now just a few months short of the full year. We had a good crop last year, so we will have enough to make it through the last 2 months. The garlic that is left hanging up there is a little bit tired. It has started to shoot and is somewhat dry and withered, but it still tastes like garlic when cooked, only just not as strong as it was.

We planted this years crop of a few hundred cloves, back in March, they are doing well and should be ready to lift in October or November when they start to die down.

I brown the shoulder in good local olive oil on the stove top. The Queen of Yorkshire pudding has lit the stove early, so as to get a good hot oven. She intends to cook a Yorkshire pudding with the juices from the roast and she will need a very hot oven at the end for that, so as to get it just right. We toss in some quartered onions and some of our freshly dug King Edward potatoes. The roasting pan then goes into the oven. We cook it long and slow, with the heat gently increasing as we go, so that the lamb finishes with a nice caramelised taste and the oven is hot, ready for the Yorkshire pudding to go straight in.

Yorkshire pudding, for those who don’t know, is a kind of savoury pancake that is cooked after a roast, in the same pan, using the pan juices. There is just enough time to cook it quickly while the roast rests before carving. I know some families that serve it as an entrée with gravy before the roast, but we have always had it on the plate with the meat and vegetables.

recipe;

2 table spoons full of plain flour

1/2 a cup of milk

2 eggs

This mixture, although quite simple, has to be made up at least an hour or so before it’s needed, so that all the ingredients have time to get to know each other well. An occasional whisking with a fork every now and then when passing also helps. Prepare the mix when you prepare the meat.

Remove the roast from the baking pan and drain all the juices to one end. Spoon off what fat you can from the top of the liquid. Put the pan back on top of the stove and get it cracking hot. Pour in the Yorkshire pudding mix so that it fills the pan with a thin layer. Place it back in the oven for a few minutes at full heat. It should come out all risen and fluffy with a golden crust. It looks great as it comes out of the oven, but soon collapses as it is cut up into sections and placed on the plates. It’s very fashionable these days to cook individual small Yorkshire puddings in a cake tray. Traditionally, Yorkshire pudding was a cheap way to fill a family up while getting the most out of a slim allowance of meat for the week.

When the meat has been in the oven for half its time, we add the potatoes, I go out and pick the Brussels sprouts and broccoli. They are as fresh as they can be, I rinse them and have them ready in the saucepan. When the roast comes out of the oven, the pudding goes in. The greens go on the hot plate with a little boiling water from the kettle. I steam the greens.

We enjoy our roast lamb as it falls from the bone and melts in our collective mouths, with Yorkshire pudding, fresh picked home grown Brussels sprouts and broccoli. These are hot, but still slightly firm straight off the stove top and onto the plates last thing, with our own roasted potatoes, crispy outside, but smooth and soft inside. It’s a very special treat to dine for, that we seem to be able to have quite often — sans the lamb.

It’s Geordie’s birthday coming up soon. We arrange for a few very close friends to go out to dinner. Just the 6 of us, we go to a very special multiple starred restaurant in Sydney, He has chosen it for his own party. He once worked here doing cooking demos. We have various drinks at the bar, while we wait for the seating in the restaurant proper to open. I’m the designated driver, so only water for me,

We eventually go in and are seated. The staff are attentive and helpful. This restaurant is full, even on a Wednesday evening. The prices are expensive in my opinion. Perhaps over-rated for what is on offer. $25 for a small plate of entrée. It seems a bit much to me. But I can’t deny that the place is full, mid week. However , it is the most expensive suburb in Sydney, full of millionaires. So the prices are all-right for them.

The waitress starts to tell us about the specials on the menu tonight. She lists off the dishes one at a time. She starts with the restaurant’s famous lamb dish. The signature dish of the house, slow roasted and served with your choice of side dishes, like steamed vegetables.

I don’t want to sound too much like a toffee-nosed twat, but we had that exact meal last night!

I bet that they don’t do Yorkshire pudding as a special side dish.

with love from the Queen of the hot oven and her Yorkshire Man.

Annabelle Sloujetté, the Dream Weaver

Posted on 11/08/2014 by hotnsticky

Annabelle comes to visit.

She calls in every now and then. Usually at short notice, often unexpectedly. She is buxom and gorgeous and fills the room with her personality. Always bearing gifts of focussed thoughtfulness and appropriate application. Not expensive, often hand made, and by her own fair hand at that. A beautiful creative spirit. She lets herself in. She has her own key.

We awake in the morning to find her car in the garden. She emerges late for breakfast. She arrived quite late. It was a long drive here from where-ever she has been previously. She sits down at the kitchen table and starts to tell me her meaningful dreams. How they inspire her art works and keep her endlessly entertained. She has learned over her lifetime to be able to control her dreams and make them conform to her desires and deepest wishes. I ask her how she does this, but she doesn’t know. It’s something that she can just do. It happens, just like shit happens, only in this case, in the reverse sort of way, and a much better outcome. It’s a great skill to have and she really enjoys exercising it.

It has inspired her latest series of drawings. She’s putting together a show, this time of drawings, so different from the last one of welded, re-cycled metal junk sculptures. She starts to tell me all about the drawings in detail, but stops. Gets up and loads the stove top espresso machine and then starts to tell me more. This is interrupted by her trip to the loo, but she is right back and picks up mid sentence where she was with her pet black cat sitting on her windowsill and wanting to come in or out, whichever she isn’t at the time, while her lover caresses her and adores her. There is a ‘bleeped-out,’ deleted-scene here as the coffee machine hisses and gurgles to its orgasmic conclusion and she ends her tale of fulfilment with a sigh.

Bringing the percolator over to the kitchen table, she places it down and continues. It’s a long story of her younger life on the high seas circumnavigating the Pacific in a small hand made sailing boat. After she ran away from home, over summering in Rarotonga to avoid the hurricane season. The Cook Island girls are the best hula dancers in the world apparently. With special gifts of hip rotation at high speed, mesmerising and hypnotic, if not erotic.

There is a brief interlude where the story of the wild Pacific is intertwined with her other life with a publican in an Irish pub two decades apart. The smell of burning peat and the thick black velvety Guinness and Porter, so ideally matched to the cool damp weather and an entire village of characters that flow in and out of this period of her life. The tale so involved and convoluted, that it images the wild growth of the jungle on the Pacific Island where she slept on the beach and lived for a season on fruits and by beach-fishing, where drift wood was burnt instead of peat.

There is a rapid segue into Sydney in the seventies after leaving her post with the Embassy on that hot humid archipelago with all the stuffed-up Expats and their prim and proper wives who’s only conversation was their children and what they would do when they got back to Canberra. How she loved the native children and how they laughed all the time and how everyone in the villages walked just sooo slowly. There was always plenty of time for everything, no one had any money and everyone ‘made-do’. And keeping the wild Pacific Island theme of head hunting and being sought out and ‘head-hunted’ herself by a big advertising firm in the city, which wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be. All internal turmoil and not pacific at all. But it brought her obliquely into the world of fine art, and then craftsmanship, where she settled after jumping ship in New Zealand and learned pottery making in Nelson. A beautiful time in her life where everyone was on the same page and working together in a big loosely bonded creative community. There she also learnt spinning and weaving and as she spins her tale I’m woven into the filigree of her life’s fabric.

She swears that we met, when I taught her ceramics at the National Art School in Sydney where I worked for 25 years, or was it at Mackie college, where I briefly taught trainee art teachers, but I never taught an Annabelle Sloujetté that I’m aware of, there was a girl of Dutch heritage whose parents came out after the war and settled here, but I can still remember who that was and it wasn’t Annabelle. Is Sloujetté a Dutch name? Perhaps Belgian? She knows an awful lot about good chocolate and how to work and cook with it.

However, there is something very familiar about that huge flowing mane of thick black locks, lightly tinted with henna. I’m trying to place her in my memory of over 2,000 student that flowed through the place during my time there. I was only casual, working one day a week, teaching ceramic technology. Not all the students came to my classes regularly. Mine was the least popular subject in an Art School where everyone came to be fabulously creative, and to express themselves artistically. I was asked to teach technology and set on a Friday afternoon, when the students returned from a long lunch at the pub. Not every student paid full attention. Some preferring to sit up the back and play air guitar instead of concentrating on the maths and physics of ceramic chemistry. I think that I only got the job, because nobody else wanted to teach it in that time slot.

Annabelle continues her living dream. She put herself through Art School by calling on her old skills and pulling beers in a pub, but this time without the smell of peat, just sticky nylon carpet, stale hops and cigarette smoke. She starts to tell me about the guy who lived upstairs and who was seriously weird and suddenly there are feral Greenies, Black Cats, White Witches, Blues musicians down at the cross-roads at midnight. He said that he would teach her music, but she wouldn’t have a bar of him, he was far too crotchety. His bass nature scared her, but then there’s a brief mention of a fling with a guitar maker during her time in California on the eastern leg of her Pacific odyssey and how she once met Neil Young at a party up laurel Canyon, He was funny, quite dry, and very cryptic. Then she’s off to Haight Ashbury, but doesn’t find any love there. She completely misses Woodstock because she doesn’t believe that it will be any good, and then regrets it, but not for too long.

Always a restless spirit, her story moves on to Swinging London and the Emergence of the School of the Masters of Wine, her admin duties and all the left-over tastings that she got to take home. It was the only way to keep warm in that little, expensive and very cramped bed-sit through the winter. Never seeing the sun, working indoors all day under fluoros and leaving for work and returning from it in the dark. Of being SAD and longing for something more than just a wage packet and a place to sleep. There always had to be some art. That’s what has always kept her going.

She pauses and looks around for the coffee. Apparently it’s still too hot. I’m trying to focus and maintain my attention, but I’m concerned about the coffee, I get up to fetch her a cup, which she refuses, and I miss the bit about the drawing teacher at the Slade School of Art and something that happened there, which is a pity as I really was interested. But there is no going back and her story moves on to the south of France, sunshine and Vineyards, the vendange, so much work to be had everywhere at this time, the money is very poor, but the food is fantastic.

She wants to be involved in the wine making but has no skills, she gets to see the plunging of the cap and the big old basket press at work. She works hard and they like her. The old man asks to see her hands, he can see straight away that she is a hard worker. Without much of the language, she understands that they will keep her on. Her new job is to help spread the spent ‘must’ from the early white grapes back onto the vines. The hillside is steep and the stony ground makes for difficult foot holds. She collapses into bed at the end of each day.

She has been sleeping on the ground next to her scooter, wrapped in a make-do swag, but now they warm to her and let her sleep in the old tobacco curing shed, it has no walls, but there is straw and it is much better than being outside, as the weather is starting to turn now.

She gets to see the conversion of the red ‘pomace’ into cheap spirit brandy by soaking the red spent must skins in water, adding beet sugar and re-fermenting the resulting liqueur into alcohol and then distilling it into spirit. This old farm doesn’t have its own still, so the 2^nd ferment of the ‘must’ is sent away for the distillation. When it comes back as spirit, it’s stored in two huge old wine barrels. Strictly for family use – no tax to pay here. These peasants are canny and frugal. She finishes up washing, rinsing and filling the new wine into the red/brown wine-stained wooden barrels.

She loved France, there was glorious food, handsome men and a stint in a ‘very good’ restaurant where she learnt so much, not as a cook, but as a kitchen hand. Always with an eye to improve herself and make the best of any situation, she observes everything and makes careful notes when she gets back to her little Gité where she over-winters.

From wine to food and her time Cheffing back in London, in that little restaurant where they tried so hard, but her partner drank all the profits. She explains her method of making the best soufflé in the world and now it’s time for me to get out my notebook, but there isn’t time. This international woman of mystery reappears in an artists squat in a densely urbanised city, a living space crammed with little romantic lane-ways, medieval in their narrowness, stuffed with small bars, artists studios, brothels and pimps. Everyone is making some sort living here doing what they can do. She doesn’t intend to stay long but falls in love with a certain man and this place, where everyone speaks with a lisp, just like the King. There is live music every night and dancing. She finds out that he is already married and isn’t interested in any kind of commitment and neither is she, so she’s gone.

She’s with another artist now, a tough macho guy, but he’s a hollow man. He mistreats her and he is floored for his inappropriate behaviour. She walks out on him after having held a knife to his throat and seeing all the colour drain from his face, his swarthy complexion turns absolutely white and beads of sweat start to form on his brow. He sees the anger burning in her eyes, and he knows she means it. She sees the terror in his eyes, and knows that he now really knows her, and that she does mean it. It’s a fair exchange, she’s satisfied, but he wont get another chance. She slams the door on him and dumps all his stuff out the window into the street. This is one woman not to be messed with, but she knows that he has friends and that this is his city, so she’s moving on. Fully tanked with life skills now, she knows her way around and this time, it’s time to go, NOW!

While day-labouring on a farm, she finds an old antique BMW tourer in the barn and buys it from the farmer. He doesn’t want to sell it, not to her or anyone, but she wins him over with her soufflé, or so she says. Then sets off overland to return to the Lucky Country, but the bike gets re-stolen in Italy and so she swaps to a big old Lambretta tourer, which she rides across into the middle East. She sleeps on the steps of the synagogue and wakes with a heavy Dew on her.

“I don’t believe that for a minute”….

but she doesn’t stop. She knows that she has got a laugh out of me, and that’s all that counts. I fell for it.

She smokes hashish with the border guards crossing into Afghanistan and bribes her way through Pakistan and into India by trading the last of her instant coffee and razor blades. She does things that she’s not proud of, but makes do as means must.

She always wanted to go to Tibet, but never managed to make the detour. “There’ll be another time”, but there wasn’t.

The story then slithers into The Territory and venomous snakes, cane toads, lay lines and her aunty’s secret woman’s business that I can’t know about, but it doesn’t matter, because I don’t need to know. I’m momentarily mesmerised by her aboriginal connections. Her work with them as a teacher, and how she learnt as much as she taught. Her love of their art and the strong linear motifs in their dot paintings. There is a reference to the similarities of tying ropes on the boat and the tying of fish hooks for beach fishing. The convoluted loops of this story morph into a story of Maori fish hooks and how they were traditionally tied without a hole in the bone. This story of knots and how to tie them is so amazing that I can hardly follow it. When the first white settlers arrived on the scene, The Maori learned to steal the galvanized steel staples out of the fence posts and use these as fish hooks! So adaptive and clever. She tells me of the woven fibre fish traps she saw while working in New Guinea, so simple and effective. She reels me in with a tale of cooking fresh fish on the beach over an open fire, skewered on sticks and later baking the bigger ones packed in potters clay in among the fading coals and ash.

I’m starting to think that her coffee will be way too cold if she doesn’t pour it soon. But I’m reluctant to try and slide a word in edgewise into her flowing narrative, in case it breaks the spell. I’m enjoying this torrent of language and the associated images of a rich, full life. When I look, I think that I can see some Maori influence in her amazing long black hair, so thick, dense and rich with a beautiful sheen. But Sloujetté isn’t any Maori name that I’m aware of. I think it’s Dutch? There hasn’t been any mention of a Mr Sloujetté in the story so far. I’m wondering if she really is of Pacific or Maori decent? If she has any secret hidden ‘tatoos’? But I’m too scarred to ask her to ‘Show us yer tats!’.

She just might!

She has perfected the art of removing her bra while sitting at table without adjusting any of her other clothing. She unclips it at the back and removes each shoulder strap from under her tea shirt, one at a time, while still talking, and without mentioning what she is in fact doing. Slowly, effortlessly, without drawing any attention to herself. Suddenly, the under-garment is in her lap and she sighs in relief as her marvellous breasts fall free. Later, she flips around to make a point and I have to duck, lest I loose an eye from one of those free swinging nipples under her T shirt, bouncing around like a sack full of puppies.

There was a brief episode in a Buddhist retreat and a quiet reflective mood comes over her. She reflects on her love of drawing and the inner calm of mindfulness and its relationship to good draftsmanship. There are deep connections to be followed through with, but she digresses with a few bars of her life with a jazz and blues musician and the few bars that they frequented together in their time. Drunken nights and lost days. Blue notes and a miss-placed G string.

Her story then remembers a summer of lovemaking in an apple orchard. The season is heading into summer and the giving is easy. She kneels to please him, But one swallow doesn’t make a summer. She’s living with the orchardists son in a little batch up-back. The orchardist’s bee-keeping neighbour went on to conquer the tallest summit and got a step named after him, while the tall orchardist father stayed home, because he couldn’t leave the farm, his ageing parents or even raise enough money to make the trip. Her very tall orchardist, so tall that he didn’t use a ladder to pick the fruit, most of the time, loves her for loving him and wants her to stay, She recalls all the hard work and the sore muscles, long soaking baths in a big wooden tub out in the field with an amazing view down over the valley. A wood fired, cast iron stove, fired on the prunings and apple cobblers after dinner with Edmonds agar custard. She stayed on after the summer for the harvest, but couldn’t stand the cold and cut free before the winter pruning, she leaves and follows the sun. Later, she eventually ends up walking to base camp as a right of passage. Maybe she could have gone further if the times had been different, but that was then and those were the times.

As her story rises to its conclusion, she decides that the coffee is now just the right temperature and picks up the espresso machine, flips the lid open and drinks the straight short black directly from the percolator. Then, satisfied that I’ve taken it all in, she wanders back to bed to catch up on her sleep. “To sleep, perchance to dream, and there’s the rub, for in that sleep, what dreams may come?”

When I return from work, she is gone. The spell is broken and the only reminder of her ever having been here are the scorch marks on our lawn, where she did a bit of circle work with her ute before leaving.

It’s amazing how one visitor can fill your week.

Fond regards from the ever so boring ‘stay at home Steve’

Old Slag and a Tosser

Posted on 05/08/2014 by hotnsticky

We have another weekend wood firing workshop. Another amazing group of wonderful people. Everyone so engaged and enthusiastic. I have to cut split and stack more wood. Prepare the kiln and its furniture, kiln shelves and props. Check out all the fittings and structural elements to make sure that it all goes smoothly. The fire box lid lining is on its last legs, but will last a few more firings. It takes a few hits from our enthusiastic new stokers, with well-meaning, but miss-placed logs at high temperature.

Before we can fire the kiln again, There is maintenance to do. I have to get inside the fire box of the kiln to chip out the molten ash glaze slag from the last firing. This has to be done after every firing. The ash from the firing collects in the base of the firebox and accumulates to the point that it melts into a molten slag at the high temperatures at the end of the firing. It forms flows of liquid natural ash glaze that pool into the floor bricks. This is the same natural ash glaze that decorates our pots during the wood firing and gives them their distinctive wood-fired look.

There is alway some minor repair work required after each firing . Sweeping out the dusty ash and charcoal, chipping out the slag that threatens to block off the air holes. This is normal maintenance. However, when I get inside the firebox this time I see that the last firing had such fluid ash glaze formed at the end of the firing that it has run and pooled into the very important mouse hole in the base of the ash pit. This hole is most important to keep the ember level under control during the firing. It has to work properly, otherwise I can’t control the fire as easily and everything could go pear-shaped.

On close inspection I find that the ash glaze slag has completely filled the air hole and sealed it off completely. To avoid this occurrence, I place a special little kiln shelf ‘lid’ over the hole to deflect most of the ash to the periphery of the hole and this usually works. But the combination of wood that I have used this last time has created a very fluid slag and every thing had disappeared into a grey/brown puddle of lava. I can’t even see the ‘lid’ or the hole beneath it. I work on the principal that I know that it is under there. I have to climb into the firebox base armed with a 2 kg hammer and cold chisel, a crow bar and a skutch hammer. I have protective goggles over my glasses and a dust mask as I set to work in this cramped space, hammering and chiselling as best I can without being fully able to swing the hammer properly. I bash, chip hammer and prize my way through the glassy, lava-like slag. It is brittle and smashes into jagged, conchoidal, shattered spalls. Bits fly everywhere. It’s in my hair and all through my clothes. I have to be careful not to cut my fingers trolling through the pieces, tossing them back into a bucket in the kiln chamber. I finish by sweeping up the small fragments and dust. It’s a crap job, stuffed into this small space with all the dust and sharp edges, but it has to be done and no-one else, including the kiln fairy, is likely to volunteer. I keep putting it off, hoping that the kiln fairy will do it, but no such luck there. It’s all part of being self-reliant. I often put it off till the last minute, because I just don’t enjoy it, other times I get stuck into it first thing. It all depends on my energy levels and state of mind. There is no avoiding it. It just has to be done.

Although it doesn’t look it, it’s actually all cleaned out and ready for more work.

I’m lucky and very grateful that this is the worst job that I have to put up with. It’s certainly the least glamorous job in the pottery. It’s all very well, sitting in the sun being creative and making lovely things that are visually engaging and wonderfully tactile. Unpacking the kiln is like Xmas, but no-one daydreams of all the hard graft that goes into ‘creativity’. Don’t give up your day job!

We have a -2 oC frost overnight, during the firing. It keeps us sitting up close to the kiln during the midnight to dawn shift. Our European friends will call us pathetic wimps. That isn’t cold! Minus 40 is cold. I know that, but we are in Australia, the land of heat and sunshine, draughts and heat waves and not used to the severe European cold. Minus 2, certainly felt cold enough to me. If it got colder than this on a regular basis, I’d build a different shed. One that had walls!

A quick walk around the garden reveals that the last 2 rows of very late potatoes in the garden have now had it. The frosts are coming regularly now. Not severe, but light and regular. I think that this must put an end to these spuds, but they still have a few green leaves. I don’t need the space just now, so will leave them to their own devices, till spring. I can’t see anything coming of them. However the single red Flanders Poppies growing among them seem to love it.

There are lots of pretty images in the garden of leaves tinged with white frost and ice crystals. The ground crunches under foot as I walk about. There have been several frosts like this one now. It’s good. It will finish off a lot of bugs like the fruit fly, that can over winter in milder climates. This ‘chill’ will help all the old varieties of fruit that need their winter chill to become fertile in the spring.

I walk down to the Pantry Field garden. It’s situated down at the bottom of our land, in a clearing in among the tall eucalypts. the tree cover of the tall crowns gives a modicum of protection. I have a quick look around and see that the frost hasn’t penetrated here as yet. The big potato crop is still doing just fine, no frost damage. But on closer inspection I see that a lot of the tender tops of the plants aren’t burn’t off, but completely missing. Nibbled off by our resident Eastern grey kangaroos that wander through here attracted by the grass, tree cover, undergrowth protection and the availability of 4 dams to choose from for water. No wonder that they hang around. They treat the place like they own it, and they do! They were here first. We haven’t fenced our land at the boundaries at all. It is all open for them to pass through and enjoy. What we have decided to do is to fence off the various islands of garden and orchard, to keep some possibility of getting a crop to ripen. These plants haven’t been attacked till now, so now is the time to do something about it, If I don’t, they all be gone in a week or so.

I make it a priority to extend the fencing wire up to 1.5 metres. Up until now we had got by with only rabbit proofing fencing. Wire mesh that we could step over. Now I need to make a taller fence with a walk in gate, plus an openable end to allow the tractor to be able to get in and out for tilling once a year. While thinking all this through I see that there are another crop of mushrooms coming along. I can count about twenty or more. We’ll be changing our diet slightly now and for the next few weeks to include Mushroom soup, mushroom sauces, mushroom risotto, mushroom in white sauce and eggs and bacon for that leisurely late brunch. If we can find a day that we can declare to be leisurely?

Fond regards from the old fun-gi

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