Water and wisteria

Since discovering hanakotoba (Japanese language of flowers), I've been curious about what the significance of wisteria is in Japan. It was in bloom growing wild in the mountains when I visited Nara and Kyoto, and was the token flower of a shinto shrine I visited. I'd never seen it growing wild before, and it took my breath away! Every now and then you'd see a tree draped in purple among all the green in the steep sided forests where the vine had climbed through all the branches. Unfortunately we drove past all this too quickly for me to manage to get a decent photo, but here are some shots I got from the shrine!.

A shrine maiden with wisteria hair ornament. The hexagonal box says  omikuji, which  is a kind of Japanese fortune telling

Wisteria and brass (I think?) lanterns hung on the shrine building. The lanterns were everywhere, as if the shrine was a glorified Christmas tree, and they were all different, some broken and tarnished, others bright gold and brand new. It must look incredible when they are all lit.

Anyway, I just found this website talking about the symbolism of wisteria:
http://www.whats-your-sign.com/wisteria-meaning.html

It's really interesting. The site talks about the Japanese story of a wisteria maiden, a lady holding a branch of wisteria in a painting who falls in love with a man. She becomes so besotted that she steps out of the painting to capture his heart, but her attempts are futile and her love remains unrequited. Rejected, she steps back into the lonely world of the painting with her wisteria. The symbolism here not only talks about lost love, but the endurance of the heart in the face of rejection as well, as the weeping blossoms bloom from an incredibly durable vine. It strikes a chord with me, as I strongly believe that no matter how impossible or hard things are, there is always hope while you believe in it. This is true of art, tradition and culture too. However irrelevant or lost they may seem to have become, if one person finds something meaningful in them, then they will endure. This can clearly be seen in the case of Egyptian hieroglyphs, a written language lost and indecipherable until the finding of the Rosetta stone thousands of years later.

There are other meanings to wisteria too:

• "Honor
• Memory
• Patience
• Endurance
• Longevity
• Exploration
• Creative expansion
• Releasing burdens
• The duality of love
• Victory over hardship"

"Shin Buddhism also views the wisteria meaning is as a symbol of prayer, or thoughtful reverence for the same reason. The branches and blossoms seem to lower their head in gentle supplication. These vine gestures naturally bring to mind our need for peace, quiet, and time to honor the divine essence (of our own understanding)."

This fits in with the meditative qualities of tea drinking and the tea ceremony - exactly the ideas I want to convey with my pieces.

"Flora records indicate wisteria has been known to live up to 100 years or more, and so here it picks up its symbolism of longevity and immortality. European families mark the ages of generations passing with the growth of this vine, and so it makes sense the vine embodies an essence of immortality (as fathers and grandfathers tell their sons of stolen kisses beneath the same wisteria that grew during the day of their great grandfathers)."

This suits the idea of tradition, a thing that endures and stays the same through the ages. I also like things that speak of the past yet continue to maintain a thing of the present. That is the wonderful thing about Japan, the modern and the ancient exist and carry on side by side, alive and full of vitality. Most old things in England are in decline, being replaced or have become museums.

"Most interestingly, is the wisteria pattern of growth. Like most vines (and ivys), wisteria expansive tendrils grow out in a spiraling motion. The meaning of spirals deal with expansion of consciousness. Spirals also point to our awareness as the inner-most center. This awareness spans outward in a spiraling motion to indicate our influence on the outside world. In this manner, vines and ivys also remind us of our interconnectedness with everything on every level."

Meditation and reflection. Also, spirals represent creative energy, and tend to creep into my work when left to myself, so I think they are a reflection of me and my thought processes on quite a deep level. I like the flow and movement of them, and the energy that suggests.

Which leads me on to: water and flow.

A woodblock print of the whirlpool at Naruto in Japan - I have a copy of this pinned to my kitchen door in  the form of a calendar page! The energy and lines are really expressive.

The same whirlpool today!

Naruto against it's modern backdrop. The power and movement the deep texture of the water suggests is captivating. I'd love to see this one day, it's such an incredible and mysterious force of nature, and it doesn't seem to eat tourist boats alive contrary to stereotypes :)

Water and flowing movement are a huge part of working with clay, yet I have barely scratched the surface when exploring them. They are also a major part of the general backdrop of Japan - Japan is a collection of islands that relies on the sea after all. The general feeling I got from Japanese ceramics was that it always worked with the flow and nature of clay to achieve it's shape and beauty. It never fought it in an obsessive fight for perfection and a ridiculous level of extravagance, desperate to push the "boundaries" like so much Western ceramics seems to, and like I felt I do looking at all that amazing work. I felt stupid and pretentious.

SO

Continuing what I started in Japan, I am now starting to experiment much more with really thick liquid clay, finger marks and textures, inspired by the movement of water, wind, and clay on the wheel. I'm creating bowls in moulds by gunking the slip in, spreading it around, dragging my fingers through, and pulling up spikes or throwing droplets into the surface. I'm also throwing bowls, teapots and flasks and allowing the motion of the wheel to pull thick slip off my fingers onto the surface of the clay in spirals and amazing textures. It's actually amazingly releasing and relaxing working in this way, the act of making feels more meditative and I feel more creative. It has a similar feel to hakeme, except that uses a rice straw brush instead, but the contemplation, and then the simple sweeping strokes are just the same. I love the effects - they are much bolder and clearer than my previous techniques achieved. Photos soon!

Tokoname, virtual teapots, and writing in Japanese

Hello again!

A fair bit has happened over the past few days, so I'll try and start at the beginning.

Well, I've been busy trying to investigate new teapot designs and decoration since I came back from Japan in October (but more about that in a later post). There was so much amazing stuff out there, and I spent two weeks surrounded by ceramic artists from all over the world, so I've gone on a bit of a tangent since I returned so that I can try out all the things I saw. One of the things that stuck in my mind the most was watching Magdalene Odundo work. I learnt about her in my first year of university when we were taught about smoke firing and burnishing pots, and it always struck me that despite using the coiling method, her pots always looked perfectly symmetrical and round, as if they'd been cast or something. When I actually saw her working, it was nothing like that!!! Her clay was just as rough surfaced and lumpy as everyone elses. What she does, is smooth and shape the surface once the pot has stiffened by paddling it with a piece of wood, before she finishes by polishing the piece with tumbled pebbles.

Magdalene Odundo making a coil pot at the ISCAEE conference at Tokyo Gedai University

She uses this paddling method a lot. While we were doing a group project out there, she showed our group how if you made an enclosed bubble, you could then pat it into shape to your hearts content, knowing the air pressure inside would stop the pot collapsing. Chris Archer (lecturer at an American University) was doing this too, but with thrown bubbles. I guess the fact that we were making bricks for the project also inspired me, as my latest teapots I'm making are square, using this technique. 

My spiral brick in the wall made in the group project

The wall under construction and completed :)

I've already made one small teapot this way, and the last few days I've been trying to construct another, larger one. It feels very much like trying to shape a partially deflated football! On the plus side, I can cut the lid straight from the teapot body for a perfect fit. However, one thing I have discovered is that it is not easy to make a big enclosed thrown shape, and that they do not like to be tall shapes. So, thus far, the teapots have been very unlike my usual style and are short and squat! Size and shape will have to be worked on next. 

My first square teapot

...

After that I did some more work on the computer aided design software we're meant to be learning. It had all started out so well, with me playing around with the features and getting some cool looking simple objects, so I was excited to have another go this week. I thought, why not create a mould or two I could use to make batches to sell? Then I remembered that I have in fact hated CAD software since college :P

This time, I tried to make a teapot on the screen, but this being unfamiliar "solidworks" software, and not "prodesktop", I don't know how to use it, and failed when trying to trim the excess spout that appeared on the inside of the pot. Most frustrating. Why don't they make it possible to create new sketches on one plane like sensible people (wait, am I actually calling prodesktop sensible?)? That way I could make a separate cutting profile to mirror the profile of the inside of the pot. Leastways, it has now annoyed me to the extent that I won't let it go till it obeys me! Next plan of campaign: don't try and rotate a hollow profile for the pot, rotate a solid profile, and shell the entire solid teapot afterwards. I will not be defeated by a computer!

...

By Friday, I had Japanese class and we were taught some new kanji (characters adopted from the Chinese language). To my amusement and delight, the kanji character meaning craft, is also the same as the katakana (the japanese writing system used for foreign words) character used at the start of my name. Art is officially a part of my identity!

My name in Japanese is Emirii. That character shaped like a capital I at the top is the katakana for E, and the kanji for  craft.

It makes me wonder if there are lots of cases like this? I know that some kanji characters are built from other smaller ones, but are there lots of double entendres in the Japanese language? Sensei pointed out that the character for cheap is a roof over a woman. If you keep your wife at home, then she won't be on a shopping spree!

The kanji meaning cheap

It would be interesting to find out if I can build something creative around this idea.

...

After Japanese class, I got back, and finally got the email I'd been waiting for. Okuda Tomoko san, a potter from Tokoname in Japan, had written to update me on what was happening. I met her at Hatfield Art in Clay, and she offered to let me go and be her assistant for a few months in Japan. However, there had been a problem and it was no longer certain I would be able to go. Thankfully for everyone involved, it turns out that everything should be ok, and the situation should be able to be resolved very soon (I really hope so!). This means I can book the plane tickets! I can't wait.

Traditional Japanese oribe glaze on a bowl made by
Tomoko san. It is a copper glaze and has a beautiful
subtle crazed luster all across its surface.

Tomoko san makes light shades and oribe pieces (you can see some of them here: http://www.artinaction.org.uk/artist-630/Tomoko-Okuda), and has her own shop in Tokoname, a famous pottery town near Nagoya. I would be helping her in her studio, mixing clay and whatever she needed, and in return she is going to teach me about Japanese pottery techniques. This is going to be the most amazing work and cultural experience ever! She has been saying that her mother will enjoy talking to me because I can speak Japanese (so I've been studying hard!) and that she will show me some Japanese life as well. I am hoping to arrive in time to see the hanami, the cherry blossom viewing festival. It is a concept utterly alien in England, yet such a famous and huge event in Japan, going out to see the flowers and celebrate their beauty under the trees with a big party! I think that despite the big futuristic cities, they still live in a greater harmony with nature than Westerners do.

I don't know much about Tokoname yet, but it's very old, and there seems to be a great scope of different styles of pottery there, unlike other pottery towns I've heard of, such as Bizen. I haven't yet been able to find out what Tokoname's trademark is (Bizen's is to wrap rice straw around the pots and fire it incredibly high, giving a kind of red streaked, incredibly hard pottery). As well as Tomoko's work, I love some of the teapots I've seen being produced there. Some have gorgeous patterns painted up the side, like this momiji (maple leaf) design by Houji, similar to what I want to achieve. You can see a bit of the variety here at http://www.yuuki-cha.com/japanese-teapots?zenid=4bcb03e3c9b4060d45459ec1fdca1515 .

I think one reason why I want to learn Japanese pottery is the natural effects they achieve in the clay. There is such a depth of texture and colour that the pieces look incredibly tactile, and the pieces have a kind of understated grace and elegance. It's hard to explain how it makes me feel exactly, but peaceful,  happy, and strangely at home definitely comes into it. If I think about it too much, there is almost a bittersweet melancholy to it, as if they remind me there is something precious I have lost. 

...

Finally, this weekend I made some haircombs with a few of the crochet flowers I made previously. They're meant to be a kind of mix up of the current English fashion for crochet flowers and the traditional Japanese fabric flower decorations that went with kimono. I'm really pleased with how vibrant they look in small groups! I'd wanted to see what it would be like to make a matching accessory to go with the teapot cover I'd already made, and start building up a kind of range. Being relatively quick and easy to make, they won't cost so much, so hopefully I can sell several to people not wanting to spend big amounts of money. I'm not too sure about the combs, as though they're traditional Japanese hair accessories, I don't think many people necessarily know how to wear them as they're not very common here (I couldn't figure out how to get them to sit in my hair either). So, I'm also looking at hair elastics and pins as well, so people can use them as corsages. A lot of people wear crochet flowers on hats at the moment. These combs I'll probably donate to the third year undergraduates to raise money to take them to New Designers in London, and see how people react to them at the sale. 

Anyway, I guess that's everything up until now! Until next time :)

Hyper Japan

I have just discovered that the big Japanese culture event I'm planning to go to in February is going to have Japanese ceramics there too! I can't wait!

http://hyperjapan.co.uk/2012-spring/culture/580-doki.html

The event is called Hyper Japan, and I found its website online a few days ago. I thought it was pretty unusual, as I've only ever seen museum exhibitions of traditional stuff or comic/anime expos being organised before, nothing really about the rest of the Japanese culture. However, here they seem to have everything all mixed up together! Food, sake, kimono, cosplay, street fashion, books, films, manga, music, traditional crafts......

So maybe the overall effect is something like this:

:P

However, I could never hope to do such an extravaganza of sensory overload justice with a few mere photographs. J-culture has to be seen to be believed.

I've been on some of the exhibitors websites now, and among other things, they have some gorgeous kanzaki, or hair ornaments. I've been thinking for a little while it might be nice to have a go at making a hair comb or pin the the crochet flowers I'm making. Crochet corsages are pretty popular here at the moment, and giving them an oriental twist might spice them up a bit! >: 3

Matching teapot and hair accessory anyone?

For those interested, this is Hyper Japan's website: http://hyperjapan.co.uk/ , and it's on for three days, the 24th, 25th and 26th February at Earl's Court in London