Monday, February 23, 2004
Lord Of the Rings Pottery, by Mirek Smisek
Lord Of the Rings Pottery, by Mirek Smisek
I enjoyed seeing Mirek Smisek's pottery today, when I saw Return of the King.
Article found here: http://lordoftherings.net
Mirek Smisek, Ceramics, on his role in creating the pottery used in the Trilogy.
Peter Jackson made a lot of inquires around New Zealand about the type of pottery potters make there. I think he came to the conclusion of bringing me on because I embody more of the traditional type of a potter and I like to rely on inspiration from pots that were made in the past. New as well, but definitely as it relates to classic pottery. Somehow he discovered this about my work and he approached me. From there it was a go... a green light.
Before I started making the pots, I re-read the books again to get a fresh approach to everything I was going to make. I wanted to really relate to the stories in the book. To me, it was terribly important to make a genuine contribution to The Lord of the Rings.
When I read the book, it related to me in the historical sense...the medieval times with respect to the weapons the people used and the places they lived. It sort of tied up these medieval times and that was more or less how I related my work to it.
What you might call intuition governed my process. Intuition and a mix of and blending of different ideas into one. There is nothing specific I can say, but out of the blending of several ideas I focused them, the whole thing, into one particular pattern. Some of the strange bottles and one or two of the medieval jugs from England inspired me because they are ideally suited for it. But I think I had a major contribution in the designing of seventy percent of the collection.
We rarely ever counted the collection. I think there are about seven hundred pieces in the collection and I was working on it for 8 months. I was most of the time on my own. My wife, Carmella, probably made five percent of the pots. She helped me with the simple forms.
It was an amazing project and I was very much devoted to it. I dropped everything else, to the dismay of some of my people, but when they knew what I was doing it for, they were quite happy!
Mirek Smisek on creating the pottery used on set in the Prancing Pony.
For the Prancing Pony set, I created quite a few tankards, probably ten different species you might say. Goblets, jugs, wine bottles and bowls, literally the whole range of what might used in people's lives.
I had to make, in most cases, two sizes and they had to look the same. In some instances I had to make three sizes because the size of the people - dwarves, normal and giant. That was a bit of a challenge because they all had to look the same.
I think the most unique one was when I was designing goblets and as well, the jugs. So I put my mind into the classical form and used them in both cases. There is uniqueness in the form, the glazing method and the design. There was a mixture of glazes over a something on the form and it would create what you would call triple effect in the glaze.
I used traditional clay made in New Zealand and it was my own mixture. It came from notion and it was ideally suited because it has a perfect texture for that type of pottery.
I used natural pigments. I used Iron Oxide, which was already mixed into the clay. Then I used a raw Manganese and Copper and all in what you call a 'prime stage' of oxidizing. And that is what I used in the mixing of the glazes. That was another exciting and challenging part.
Article below by Mirek Smisek friend. Can be found here:
http://www.holocaust.com.au/mm/n_milos.htm
Milos Stefanek, >b. 1922, Decin, Bohemia, Czech Republic. Immigrated to Australia 1948.<
“I was 17 when Germany occupied Czechoslovakia and my friend Mirek Smisek was two years younger. We declared our own war against the Nazis. We distributed patriotic poems under people’s front doors, we threw rocks through the windows of the Gestapo headquarters in Lysa, we cut the field-telephone wires of the Germans.
Milos & Mirek arriving in Sydney, 1948 Milos & Mirek today
They sent us to a forced labour factory in Ternitz, Austria. That was our great opportunity to escape into Switzerland and, hopefully, into England. We planned to cross on foot and we spent a whole night in the snow, at times knee-deep, trying to cross through the Alps. But just before dawn, we were arrested by German border guards.
We were in prison for three months, being interrogated by the Gestapo. Then we were transported to a prison camp called Kislau. Kislau was the worst camp ever; we thought that if we survived this we could survive anything. It was full of Germans - social democrats, communists, anti-Nazis; some of them had been there for 10 years. We were issued shoes with wooden soles that were impossible to bend and straps that cut into your feet; we were sent out to weed the fields, walking like robots.
For the evening meal we used to get five little potatoes in their jackets - no butter, no nothing. One day, Mirek said to me: ‘Isn’t it your birthday today?’ I realised it was my 21st birthday, so later on during the meal I took two of these potatoes and hid them in my pockets. I thought, ‘We will celebrate when we get back into the dormitory, we will have a little party and eat one each.’ That evening Mirek came into the dormitory and announced, ‘Well, it’s your birthday - we will have a party,’ and he pulled out of his pocket two potatoes.
Now, we were right on the line of survival - to save one potato, in a situation where your life might depend on half a potato, you are really sacrificing your life. That was an act of incredible friendship by Mirek. So we swapped our potatoes, and ate them in celebration of a wonderful 21st birthday.”
After surviving his imprisonment in Nazi labour camps, Milos and his friend Mirek returned home, only to flee communism and emigrate to Australia in 1948. Today Milos is a retired hydrographer, living in Sydney with his wife Judy. Mirek is a potter, living in New Zealand.
This is an excerpt from an article written by Richard Guilliat which first appeared in The Sydney Morning Herald’s Good Weekend magazine on November 6, 1999. Milos Stefanek’s autobiography will be published shortly. To read a expanded version of his story online, visit www.kuringgai.net/peace.htm
I enjoyed seeing Mirek Smisek's pottery today, when I saw Return of the King.
Article found here: http://lordoftherings.net
Mirek Smisek, Ceramics, on his role in creating the pottery used in the Trilogy.
Peter Jackson made a lot of inquires around New Zealand about the type of pottery potters make there. I think he came to the conclusion of bringing me on because I embody more of the traditional type of a potter and I like to rely on inspiration from pots that were made in the past. New as well, but definitely as it relates to classic pottery. Somehow he discovered this about my work and he approached me. From there it was a go... a green light.
Before I started making the pots, I re-read the books again to get a fresh approach to everything I was going to make. I wanted to really relate to the stories in the book. To me, it was terribly important to make a genuine contribution to The Lord of the Rings.
When I read the book, it related to me in the historical sense...the medieval times with respect to the weapons the people used and the places they lived. It sort of tied up these medieval times and that was more or less how I related my work to it.
What you might call intuition governed my process. Intuition and a mix of and blending of different ideas into one. There is nothing specific I can say, but out of the blending of several ideas I focused them, the whole thing, into one particular pattern. Some of the strange bottles and one or two of the medieval jugs from England inspired me because they are ideally suited for it. But I think I had a major contribution in the designing of seventy percent of the collection.
We rarely ever counted the collection. I think there are about seven hundred pieces in the collection and I was working on it for 8 months. I was most of the time on my own. My wife, Carmella, probably made five percent of the pots. She helped me with the simple forms.It was an amazing project and I was very much devoted to it. I dropped everything else, to the dismay of some of my people, but when they knew what I was doing it for, they were quite happy!
Mirek Smisek on creating the pottery used on set in the Prancing Pony.
For the Prancing Pony set, I created quite a few tankards, probably ten different species you might say. Goblets, jugs, wine bottles and bowls, literally the whole range of what might used in people's lives.
I had to make, in most cases, two sizes and they had to look the same. In some instances I had to make three sizes because the size of the people - dwarves, normal and giant. That was a bit of a challenge because they all had to look the same.
I think the most unique one was when I was designing goblets and as well, the jugs. So I put my mind into the classical form and used them in both cases. There is uniqueness in the form, the glazing method and the design. There was a mixture of glazes over a something on the form and it would create what you would call triple effect in the glaze.I used traditional clay made in New Zealand and it was my own mixture. It came from notion and it was ideally suited because it has a perfect texture for that type of pottery.
I used natural pigments. I used Iron Oxide, which was already mixed into the clay. Then I used a raw Manganese and Copper and all in what you call a 'prime stage' of oxidizing. And that is what I used in the mixing of the glazes. That was another exciting and challenging part.
Article below by Mirek Smisek friend. Can be found here:
http://www.holocaust.com.au/mm/n_milos.htm
Milos Stefanek, >b. 1922, Decin, Bohemia, Czech Republic. Immigrated to Australia 1948.<
“I was 17 when Germany occupied Czechoslovakia and my friend Mirek Smisek was two years younger. We declared our own war against the Nazis. We distributed patriotic poems under people’s front doors, we threw rocks through the windows of the Gestapo headquarters in Lysa, we cut the field-telephone wires of the Germans.
Milos & Mirek arriving in Sydney, 1948 Milos & Mirek today
They sent us to a forced labour factory in Ternitz, Austria. That was our great opportunity to escape into Switzerland and, hopefully, into England. We planned to cross on foot and we spent a whole night in the snow, at times knee-deep, trying to cross through the Alps. But just before dawn, we were arrested by German border guards.
We were in prison for three months, being interrogated by the Gestapo. Then we were transported to a prison camp called Kislau. Kislau was the worst camp ever; we thought that if we survived this we could survive anything. It was full of Germans - social democrats, communists, anti-Nazis; some of them had been there for 10 years. We were issued shoes with wooden soles that were impossible to bend and straps that cut into your feet; we were sent out to weed the fields, walking like robots.
For the evening meal we used to get five little potatoes in their jackets - no butter, no nothing. One day, Mirek said to me: ‘Isn’t it your birthday today?’ I realised it was my 21st birthday, so later on during the meal I took two of these potatoes and hid them in my pockets. I thought, ‘We will celebrate when we get back into the dormitory, we will have a little party and eat one each.’ That evening Mirek came into the dormitory and announced, ‘Well, it’s your birthday - we will have a party,’ and he pulled out of his pocket two potatoes.
Now, we were right on the line of survival - to save one potato, in a situation where your life might depend on half a potato, you are really sacrificing your life. That was an act of incredible friendship by Mirek. So we swapped our potatoes, and ate them in celebration of a wonderful 21st birthday.”
After surviving his imprisonment in Nazi labour camps, Milos and his friend Mirek returned home, only to flee communism and emigrate to Australia in 1948. Today Milos is a retired hydrographer, living in Sydney with his wife Judy. Mirek is a potter, living in New Zealand.
This is an excerpt from an article written by Richard Guilliat which first appeared in The Sydney Morning Herald’s Good Weekend magazine on November 6, 1999. Milos Stefanek’s autobiography will be published shortly. To read a expanded version of his story online, visit www.kuringgai.net/peace.htm
Sunday, February 22, 2004
Wednesday, February 18, 2004
Sunday, February 15, 2004
Friday, February 13, 2004
A Japanese philosopher's art of seeing
Elizabeth Heilman Brooke IHT
Thursday, November 20, 2003
TOKYO There is a quiet refuge here that celebrates the handiwork of nobodies. Yes, here in the land of stunning repositories for designer handbags and name-brand masterpieces, two traditional Japanese-style buildings of stone and wood and tile dare to display the everyday production of "unknown" craftsmen.
On a recent evening, people knelt, people stood, people lined the walls of the main exhibition hall of the Mingeikan, the Japan Folk Crafts Museum. There were designers, potters, architects, art dealers, even the U.S. ambassador to Japan, Howard Baker, and his wife, Nancy Kassebaum Baker, a former senator.
Watching from the walls, gasping, grinning, frowning wooden masks also witnessed a rarely performed "intangible treasure," Kagura, sacred dance to the gods.
In honor of the exhibit, "Sacred Masks of Kyushu," on view until Dec. 20, Shinto priests and local villagers in white robes and tall black bamboo hats chanted songs and prayers, gracefully whirled and twirled, hopped and flapped their gaping sleeves to the music of flute, bells and drums. One dancer appeared in a green bug-eyed mask of red. The mask was charged with emotion. It was frightening, haunting. No eminent mask maker made it. It was not a designer mask. Why all the rapt attention?
Even in our digital age of instant imaging, robotic manufacturing, fashion as art and art as fashion, people remain enchanted by the simple challenge to see. Soetsu Yanagi, a Japanese philosopher and scholar, who founded the Mingeikan and the folk art movement, first began to study the definition of beauty in the early 1900's. Amid criticism, he passionately upheld that an eternal beauty extends beyond the individual artist.
With the many sensory intrusions of daily 21st-century living, it is hardly surprising that an appreciation for a timeless, "natural, healthy beauty," as first described by Yanagi, lives on at the Mingeikan and an ever-expanding network of similar collections. Established in 1936, the Mingeikan today remains an inspiration for potters, papermakers, photographers, fiber artists, designers and tourists interested in exploring an unexpected presentation of Japanese aesthetics. The fashion designer Issey Miyake is a great admirer of the Mingeikan. He has said he receives inspiration for his designs from mingei.
Yanagi and his friends Kanjiro Kawai and Shoji Hamada, both potters, coined the expression "mingei" in 1925. It is an abbreviation of "minshuteki kogei," which Yanagi also came up with, to mean "people's art." As he defines it, "utensils" that fall into this category are "functional objects of daily life" made by "anonymous craftspeople."
Yanagi's words impressed Warren MacKenzie, an American ceramist, who, at nearly 80, describes himself as a "potter, still making utilitarian pots."
MacKenzie first heard Yanagi's philosophy in 1952, when Yanagi, along with Hamada and the English potter Bernard Leach, toured the United States lecturing about and demonstrating the unique beauty of anonymous crafts. MacKenzie had studied under Leach in St. Ives, Cornwall, in England.
"My late wife and I had attended the Chicago Art Institute and been able to visit Chicago's many fine museums, particular the Field Museum of Natural History," MacKenzie said in a telephone interview from his studio in Stillwater, Minnesota. "Everywhere we went we noticed that across history the pots we most liked, were all the pots people used in their everyday lives."
When MacKenzie heard these far-off scholars speak about rejecting the industrialized world, prizing the everyday, the inexpensive, the anonymous, he felt his own ideas had been validated. He said that the first time he saw the Mingeikan's collection, "it was like nirvana."
Yanagi wanted the Mingeikan to stand for "the arts of the people, returned to the people." He, Hamada and Kawai traveled throughout Japan collecting objects that represented "country crafts of the Japanese people" bamboo pieces, textiles, pottery, woodwork, metalwork, lacquerware and dolls. In a 1954 essay published in English in his book "The Unknown Craftsman: A Japanese Insight into Beauty" Yanagi explained his intent:
"A visit will convince any open mind of the great beauty that the simple and ordinary men and women of the countrysides of Japan put into the work of their hands, despite a long history of war, earthquake and fire. There was little freedom in old Japanese society, the hand of the samurai was very oppressive, but out of the life of the mass of the people these fresh flowers bloomed."
Since those first years, the museum's collection has grown to more than 17,000 pieces. Situated in Meguro, a residential neighborhood where Yanagi once lived, the museum buildings stand on opposite sides of the street. One is a 200-year-old gatehouse transplanted from Hamada's village. In 2002 the Mingeikan completed a structural renovation, but rain is already leaking through the roof of the historic gatehouse.
The museum is desperately seeking to plug a financing shortfall of nearly ･50 million, or about $460,000, and could also use an additional ･80 million to repair Yanagi's former residence and open it to the public. A nonprofit organization, the Mingeikan's primary source of income is its ･1,000 entrance fee.
Each year the Mingeikan organizes four exhibitions. By organizing events like the dance performance or a lecture on the Korean court artist Yi Am, the museum hopes to "attract a new audience that spans across generations, nationality, gender and professions."
Yanagi first came to appreciate the delightful freedom and imperfection of village crafts in 1914 in Korea, then a Japanese colony. One room of the Mingeikan is, therefore, always dedicated to Korea's Yi dynasty. An enormous rust-red kimchi pot sits in the center of the second-floor room. In glass cases there are "suiteki," water dippers for calligraphy, rice bowls, sake and incense containers.
Korean bitterness over the colonial period is still strong and it is striking that, in the midst of a world war, a Japanese Buddhist scholar visited Korea and not only lauded the works of Korean commoners, but then founded a museum, the Korean People's Craft Museum, in Seoul in 1924. A great deal of what Yanagi preserved is now in the basement of Seoul's National Museum of Korea.
The mingei movement has spread throughout Japan. There are 12 smaller mingeikan in various Japanese prefectures.
Yanagi had been a follower of William Blake and Walt Whitman, and, in turn, the mingei philosophy has for decades extended its reach. For example, Leach, who is often described as the father of British earthenware pottery, had never worked as a professional potter until he met Yanagi.
An exhibition called "The Beauty of English Slipware" will be on display at the Tokyo Mingeikan from Jan. 7 to March 28, and Korean Yi dynasty wares will be on view from June 1 to Aug. 8.
"Mingei of Japan, the Legacy of its Founders: Soetsu Yanagi, Shoji Hamada and Kanjiro Kawai" is on show at the Mingei International Museum in San Diego, which was opened by Martha Longenecker in 1978. On Dec. 6, Mingei International will open a satellite museum in Escondido, California.
A potter and art professor, Longenecker, like MacKenzie, met Yanagi during his international tour. She said that experience "changed my life." She chose the Japanese word mingei for her museum, because "it is the only word in any language that describes the art of the people, that is, the unfragmented expression of body, mind and spirit."
The works on display at the Tokyo Mingeikan have very little labeling, and Longenecker explained: "Yanagi used few labels, because the moment you have labels the mind takes over. He taught us the art of seeing. The art itself is the powerful universal language."
Elizabeth Heilman Brooke is a writer based in Tokyo.
International Herald Tribune
Elizabeth Heilman Brooke IHT
Thursday, November 20, 2003
TOKYO There is a quiet refuge here that celebrates the handiwork of nobodies. Yes, here in the land of stunning repositories for designer handbags and name-brand masterpieces, two traditional Japanese-style buildings of stone and wood and tile dare to display the everyday production of "unknown" craftsmen.
On a recent evening, people knelt, people stood, people lined the walls of the main exhibition hall of the Mingeikan, the Japan Folk Crafts Museum. There were designers, potters, architects, art dealers, even the U.S. ambassador to Japan, Howard Baker, and his wife, Nancy Kassebaum Baker, a former senator.
Watching from the walls, gasping, grinning, frowning wooden masks also witnessed a rarely performed "intangible treasure," Kagura, sacred dance to the gods.
In honor of the exhibit, "Sacred Masks of Kyushu," on view until Dec. 20, Shinto priests and local villagers in white robes and tall black bamboo hats chanted songs and prayers, gracefully whirled and twirled, hopped and flapped their gaping sleeves to the music of flute, bells and drums. One dancer appeared in a green bug-eyed mask of red. The mask was charged with emotion. It was frightening, haunting. No eminent mask maker made it. It was not a designer mask. Why all the rapt attention?
Even in our digital age of instant imaging, robotic manufacturing, fashion as art and art as fashion, people remain enchanted by the simple challenge to see. Soetsu Yanagi, a Japanese philosopher and scholar, who founded the Mingeikan and the folk art movement, first began to study the definition of beauty in the early 1900's. Amid criticism, he passionately upheld that an eternal beauty extends beyond the individual artist.
With the many sensory intrusions of daily 21st-century living, it is hardly surprising that an appreciation for a timeless, "natural, healthy beauty," as first described by Yanagi, lives on at the Mingeikan and an ever-expanding network of similar collections. Established in 1936, the Mingeikan today remains an inspiration for potters, papermakers, photographers, fiber artists, designers and tourists interested in exploring an unexpected presentation of Japanese aesthetics. The fashion designer Issey Miyake is a great admirer of the Mingeikan. He has said he receives inspiration for his designs from mingei.
Yanagi and his friends Kanjiro Kawai and Shoji Hamada, both potters, coined the expression "mingei" in 1925. It is an abbreviation of "minshuteki kogei," which Yanagi also came up with, to mean "people's art." As he defines it, "utensils" that fall into this category are "functional objects of daily life" made by "anonymous craftspeople."
Yanagi's words impressed Warren MacKenzie, an American ceramist, who, at nearly 80, describes himself as a "potter, still making utilitarian pots."
MacKenzie first heard Yanagi's philosophy in 1952, when Yanagi, along with Hamada and the English potter Bernard Leach, toured the United States lecturing about and demonstrating the unique beauty of anonymous crafts. MacKenzie had studied under Leach in St. Ives, Cornwall, in England.
"My late wife and I had attended the Chicago Art Institute and been able to visit Chicago's many fine museums, particular the Field Museum of Natural History," MacKenzie said in a telephone interview from his studio in Stillwater, Minnesota. "Everywhere we went we noticed that across history the pots we most liked, were all the pots people used in their everyday lives."
When MacKenzie heard these far-off scholars speak about rejecting the industrialized world, prizing the everyday, the inexpensive, the anonymous, he felt his own ideas had been validated. He said that the first time he saw the Mingeikan's collection, "it was like nirvana."
Yanagi wanted the Mingeikan to stand for "the arts of the people, returned to the people." He, Hamada and Kawai traveled throughout Japan collecting objects that represented "country crafts of the Japanese people" bamboo pieces, textiles, pottery, woodwork, metalwork, lacquerware and dolls. In a 1954 essay published in English in his book "The Unknown Craftsman: A Japanese Insight into Beauty" Yanagi explained his intent:
"A visit will convince any open mind of the great beauty that the simple and ordinary men and women of the countrysides of Japan put into the work of their hands, despite a long history of war, earthquake and fire. There was little freedom in old Japanese society, the hand of the samurai was very oppressive, but out of the life of the mass of the people these fresh flowers bloomed."
Since those first years, the museum's collection has grown to more than 17,000 pieces. Situated in Meguro, a residential neighborhood where Yanagi once lived, the museum buildings stand on opposite sides of the street. One is a 200-year-old gatehouse transplanted from Hamada's village. In 2002 the Mingeikan completed a structural renovation, but rain is already leaking through the roof of the historic gatehouse.
The museum is desperately seeking to plug a financing shortfall of nearly ･50 million, or about $460,000, and could also use an additional ･80 million to repair Yanagi's former residence and open it to the public. A nonprofit organization, the Mingeikan's primary source of income is its ･1,000 entrance fee.
Each year the Mingeikan organizes four exhibitions. By organizing events like the dance performance or a lecture on the Korean court artist Yi Am, the museum hopes to "attract a new audience that spans across generations, nationality, gender and professions."
Yanagi first came to appreciate the delightful freedom and imperfection of village crafts in 1914 in Korea, then a Japanese colony. One room of the Mingeikan is, therefore, always dedicated to Korea's Yi dynasty. An enormous rust-red kimchi pot sits in the center of the second-floor room. In glass cases there are "suiteki," water dippers for calligraphy, rice bowls, sake and incense containers.
Korean bitterness over the colonial period is still strong and it is striking that, in the midst of a world war, a Japanese Buddhist scholar visited Korea and not only lauded the works of Korean commoners, but then founded a museum, the Korean People's Craft Museum, in Seoul in 1924. A great deal of what Yanagi preserved is now in the basement of Seoul's National Museum of Korea.
The mingei movement has spread throughout Japan. There are 12 smaller mingeikan in various Japanese prefectures.
Yanagi had been a follower of William Blake and Walt Whitman, and, in turn, the mingei philosophy has for decades extended its reach. For example, Leach, who is often described as the father of British earthenware pottery, had never worked as a professional potter until he met Yanagi.
An exhibition called "The Beauty of English Slipware" will be on display at the Tokyo Mingeikan from Jan. 7 to March 28, and Korean Yi dynasty wares will be on view from June 1 to Aug. 8.
"Mingei of Japan, the Legacy of its Founders: Soetsu Yanagi, Shoji Hamada and Kanjiro Kawai" is on show at the Mingei International Museum in San Diego, which was opened by Martha Longenecker in 1978. On Dec. 6, Mingei International will open a satellite museum in Escondido, California.
A potter and art professor, Longenecker, like MacKenzie, met Yanagi during his international tour. She said that experience "changed my life." She chose the Japanese word mingei for her museum, because "it is the only word in any language that describes the art of the people, that is, the unfragmented expression of body, mind and spirit."
The works on display at the Tokyo Mingeikan have very little labeling, and Longenecker explained: "Yanagi used few labels, because the moment you have labels the mind takes over. He taught us the art of seeing. The art itself is the powerful universal language."
Elizabeth Heilman Brooke is a writer based in Tokyo.
International Herald Tribune
Oakwood Gallery Web-Site, Magazine: "A Potter's Outlook BERNARD LEACH hen it was first suggested to me in 1921 to write a personal statement with regard to my own work, I resented the idea, feeling that a potter's business was to get on with his job, and leave writing to those who make a profession of it. I was then fresh to the conditions of English Craftsmanship"
Oakwood Gallery Web-Site, Magazine: "The Influence of Korea upon Bernard Leach and Shoji Hamada An illustrated transcript of a presentation by potter Phil Rogers given at a symposium on Bernard Leach held on November 11th 2003 at Chesterfield Library, England."
Thursday, February 12, 2004
Tuesday, February 10, 2004
Monday, February 09, 2004
Japanese Roots
By
Jared Diamond
full article here:
Relating to the Rich Life of Hunter/Gatherers
The prejudice that islanders are supposed to learn from superior continentals wasn't the sole reason that
record-breaking Japanese pottery caused such a shock. In addition, those first Japanese potters were clearly hunter-gatherers, which also violated established views. Usually only sedentary societies own pottery: what nomad wants to carry heavy, fragile pots, as well as weapons and the baby, whenever time comes to shift camps. Most sedentary societies elsewhere in the world arose only with the adoption of agriculture. But the Japanese environment is so productive that people could settle down and make pottery while still living by hunting and gathering. Pottery helped those Japanese hunter-gatherers exploit their environment rich food resources more than 10,000 years before intensive agriculture reached Japan.
Much ancient Japanese pottery was decorated by rolling or pressing a cord on soft clay. Because the Japanese word for cord marking is jomon, the term Jomon is applied to the pottery itself, to the ancient Japanese people who made it, and to that whole period in Japanese prehistory beginning with the invention of pottery and ending only 10,000 years later. The earliest Jomon pottery, of 12,700 years ago, comes from Kyushu, the southernmost Japanese island. Thereafter, pottery spread north, reaching the vicinity of modern Tokyo around 9,500 years ago and the northernmost island of Hokkaido by 7,000 years ago. Pottery's northward spread followed that of deciduous forest rich in nuts, suggesting that the climate-related food explosion was what permitted sedentary living.
How did Jomon people make their living? We have abundant evidence from the garbage they left behind at hundreds of thousands of excavated archeological sites all over Japan. They apparently enjoyed a well-balanced diet, one that modern nutritionists would applaud.
One major food category was nuts, especially chestnuts and walnuts, plus horse chestnuts and acorns leached or boiled free of their bitter poisons. Nuts could be harvested in autumn in prodigious quantities, then stored for the winter in underground pits up to six feet deep and six feet wide. Other plant foods included berries, fruits, seeds, leaves, shoots, bulbs, and roots. In all, archeologists sifting through Jomon garbage have identified 64 species of edible plants.
Then as now, Japan's inhabitants were among the world's leading consumers of seafood. They harpooned tuna in the open ocean, killed seals on the beaches, and exploited seasonal runs of salmon in the rivers. They drove dolphins into shallow water and clubbed or speared them, just as Japanese hunters do today. They netted diverse fish, captured them in weirs, and caught them on fishhooks carved from deer antlers. They gathered shellfish, crabs, and seaweed in the intertidal zone or dove for them. (Jomon skeletons show a high incidence of abnormal bone growth in the ears, often observed in divers today.) Among land animals hunted, wild boar and deer were the most common prey. They were caught in pit traps, shot with bows and arrows, and run down with dogs.
The most debated question about Jomon subsistence concerns the possible contribution of agriculture. Many Jomon sites contain remains of edible plants that are native to Japan as wild species but also grown as crops today, including the adzuki bean and green gram bean. The remains from Jomon times do not clearly show features distinguishing the crops from their wild ancestors, so we do not know whether these plants were gathered in the wild or grown intentionally. Sites also have debris of edible or useful plant species not native to Japan, such as hemp, which must have been introduced from the Asian mainland. Around 1000 b.c., toward the end of the Jomon period, a few grains of rice, barley, and millet, the staple cereals of East Asia, began to appear. All these tantalizing clues make it likely that Jomon people were starting to practice some slash-and-burn agriculture, but evidently in a casual way that made only a minor contribution to their diet.
Archeologists studying Jomon hunter-gatherers have found not only hard-to-carry pottery (including pieces up to three feet tall) but also heavy stone tools, remains of substantial houses that show signs of repair, big village sites of 50 or more dwellings, and cemeteries' still further evidence that the Jomon people were sedentary rather than nomadic. Their stay-at-home lifestyle was made possible by the diversity of resource-rich habitats available within a short distance of one central site: inland forests, rivers, seashores, bays, and open oceans. Jomon people lived at some of the highest population densities ever estimated for hunter-gatherers, especially in central and northern Japan, with their nut-rich forests, salmon runs, and productive seas. The estimate of the total population of Jomon Japan at its peak is 250,000 trivial, of course, compared with today, but impressive for hunter-gatherers.
With all this stress on what Jomon people did have, we need to be clear as well about what they didn 't have. Their lives were very different from those of contemporary societies only a few hundred miles away in mainland China and Korea. Jomon people had no intensive agriculture. Apart from dogs (and perhaps pigs), they had no domestic animals. They had no metal tools, no writing, no weaving, and little social stratification into chiefs and commoners. Regional variation in pottery styles suggests little progress toward political centralization and unification.
Despite its distinctiveness even in East Asia at that time, Jomon Japan was not completely isolated. Pottery, obsidian, and fishhooks testify to some Jomon trade with Korea, Russia, and Okinawa 's does the arrival of Asian mainland crops. Compared with later eras, though, that limited trade with the outside world had little influence on Jomon society. Jomon Japan was a miniature conservative universe that changed surprisingly little over 10,000 years.
To place Jomon Japan in a contemporary perspective, let us remind ourselves of what human societies were like on the Asian mainland in 400 b.c., just as the Jomon lifestyle was about to come to an end. China consisted of kingdoms with rich elites and poor commoners; the people lived in walled towns, and the country was on the verge of political unification and would soon become the world 's largest empire. Beginning around 6500 b.c., China had developed intensive agriculture based on millet in the north and rice in the south; it had domestic pigs, chickens, and water buffalo. The Chinese had had writing for at least 900 years, metal tools for at least 1,500 years, and had just invented the world 's first cast iron. Those developments were also spreading to Korea, which itself had had agriculture for several thousand years (including rice since at least 2100 b.c.) and metal since 1000 b.c.
With all these developments going on for thousands of years just across the Korea Strait from Japan, it might seem astonishing that in 400 b.c. Japan was still occupied by people who had some trade with Korea but remained preliterate stone-tool-using hunter-gatherers. Throughout human history, centralized states with metal weapons and armies supported by dense agricultural populations have consistently swept away sparser populations of hunter-gatherers. How did Jomon Japan survive so long?
To understand the answer to this paradox, we have to remember that until 400 b.c., the Korea Strait separated not rich farmers from poor hunter-gatherers, but poor farmers from rich hunter-gatherers. China itself and Jomon Japan were probably not in direct contact. Instead Japan 's trade contacts, such as they were, involved Korea. But rice had been domesticated in warm southern China and spread only slowly northward to much cooler Korea, because it took a long time to develop cold-resistant strains of rice. Early rice agriculture in Korea used dry-field methods rather than irrigated paddies and was not particularly productive. Hence early Korean agriculture could not compete with Jomon hunting and gathering. Jomon people themselves would have seen no advantage in adopting Korean agriculture, insofar as they were aware of its existence, and poor Korean farmers had no advantages that would let them force their way into Japan. As we shall see, the advantages finally reversed suddenly and dramatically.
full article here:
By
Jared Diamond
full article here:
Relating to the Rich Life of Hunter/Gatherers
The prejudice that islanders are supposed to learn from superior continentals wasn't the sole reason that
record-breaking Japanese pottery caused such a shock. In addition, those first Japanese potters were clearly hunter-gatherers, which also violated established views. Usually only sedentary societies own pottery: what nomad wants to carry heavy, fragile pots, as well as weapons and the baby, whenever time comes to shift camps. Most sedentary societies elsewhere in the world arose only with the adoption of agriculture. But the Japanese environment is so productive that people could settle down and make pottery while still living by hunting and gathering. Pottery helped those Japanese hunter-gatherers exploit their environment rich food resources more than 10,000 years before intensive agriculture reached Japan.
Much ancient Japanese pottery was decorated by rolling or pressing a cord on soft clay. Because the Japanese word for cord marking is jomon, the term Jomon is applied to the pottery itself, to the ancient Japanese people who made it, and to that whole period in Japanese prehistory beginning with the invention of pottery and ending only 10,000 years later. The earliest Jomon pottery, of 12,700 years ago, comes from Kyushu, the southernmost Japanese island. Thereafter, pottery spread north, reaching the vicinity of modern Tokyo around 9,500 years ago and the northernmost island of Hokkaido by 7,000 years ago. Pottery's northward spread followed that of deciduous forest rich in nuts, suggesting that the climate-related food explosion was what permitted sedentary living.
How did Jomon people make their living? We have abundant evidence from the garbage they left behind at hundreds of thousands of excavated archeological sites all over Japan. They apparently enjoyed a well-balanced diet, one that modern nutritionists would applaud.
One major food category was nuts, especially chestnuts and walnuts, plus horse chestnuts and acorns leached or boiled free of their bitter poisons. Nuts could be harvested in autumn in prodigious quantities, then stored for the winter in underground pits up to six feet deep and six feet wide. Other plant foods included berries, fruits, seeds, leaves, shoots, bulbs, and roots. In all, archeologists sifting through Jomon garbage have identified 64 species of edible plants.
Then as now, Japan's inhabitants were among the world's leading consumers of seafood. They harpooned tuna in the open ocean, killed seals on the beaches, and exploited seasonal runs of salmon in the rivers. They drove dolphins into shallow water and clubbed or speared them, just as Japanese hunters do today. They netted diverse fish, captured them in weirs, and caught them on fishhooks carved from deer antlers. They gathered shellfish, crabs, and seaweed in the intertidal zone or dove for them. (Jomon skeletons show a high incidence of abnormal bone growth in the ears, often observed in divers today.) Among land animals hunted, wild boar and deer were the most common prey. They were caught in pit traps, shot with bows and arrows, and run down with dogs.
The most debated question about Jomon subsistence concerns the possible contribution of agriculture. Many Jomon sites contain remains of edible plants that are native to Japan as wild species but also grown as crops today, including the adzuki bean and green gram bean. The remains from Jomon times do not clearly show features distinguishing the crops from their wild ancestors, so we do not know whether these plants were gathered in the wild or grown intentionally. Sites also have debris of edible or useful plant species not native to Japan, such as hemp, which must have been introduced from the Asian mainland. Around 1000 b.c., toward the end of the Jomon period, a few grains of rice, barley, and millet, the staple cereals of East Asia, began to appear. All these tantalizing clues make it likely that Jomon people were starting to practice some slash-and-burn agriculture, but evidently in a casual way that made only a minor contribution to their diet.
Archeologists studying Jomon hunter-gatherers have found not only hard-to-carry pottery (including pieces up to three feet tall) but also heavy stone tools, remains of substantial houses that show signs of repair, big village sites of 50 or more dwellings, and cemeteries' still further evidence that the Jomon people were sedentary rather than nomadic. Their stay-at-home lifestyle was made possible by the diversity of resource-rich habitats available within a short distance of one central site: inland forests, rivers, seashores, bays, and open oceans. Jomon people lived at some of the highest population densities ever estimated for hunter-gatherers, especially in central and northern Japan, with their nut-rich forests, salmon runs, and productive seas. The estimate of the total population of Jomon Japan at its peak is 250,000 trivial, of course, compared with today, but impressive for hunter-gatherers.
With all this stress on what Jomon people did have, we need to be clear as well about what they didn 't have. Their lives were very different from those of contemporary societies only a few hundred miles away in mainland China and Korea. Jomon people had no intensive agriculture. Apart from dogs (and perhaps pigs), they had no domestic animals. They had no metal tools, no writing, no weaving, and little social stratification into chiefs and commoners. Regional variation in pottery styles suggests little progress toward political centralization and unification.
Despite its distinctiveness even in East Asia at that time, Jomon Japan was not completely isolated. Pottery, obsidian, and fishhooks testify to some Jomon trade with Korea, Russia, and Okinawa 's does the arrival of Asian mainland crops. Compared with later eras, though, that limited trade with the outside world had little influence on Jomon society. Jomon Japan was a miniature conservative universe that changed surprisingly little over 10,000 years.
To place Jomon Japan in a contemporary perspective, let us remind ourselves of what human societies were like on the Asian mainland in 400 b.c., just as the Jomon lifestyle was about to come to an end. China consisted of kingdoms with rich elites and poor commoners; the people lived in walled towns, and the country was on the verge of political unification and would soon become the world 's largest empire. Beginning around 6500 b.c., China had developed intensive agriculture based on millet in the north and rice in the south; it had domestic pigs, chickens, and water buffalo. The Chinese had had writing for at least 900 years, metal tools for at least 1,500 years, and had just invented the world 's first cast iron. Those developments were also spreading to Korea, which itself had had agriculture for several thousand years (including rice since at least 2100 b.c.) and metal since 1000 b.c.
With all these developments going on for thousands of years just across the Korea Strait from Japan, it might seem astonishing that in 400 b.c. Japan was still occupied by people who had some trade with Korea but remained preliterate stone-tool-using hunter-gatherers. Throughout human history, centralized states with metal weapons and armies supported by dense agricultural populations have consistently swept away sparser populations of hunter-gatherers. How did Jomon Japan survive so long?
To understand the answer to this paradox, we have to remember that until 400 b.c., the Korea Strait separated not rich farmers from poor hunter-gatherers, but poor farmers from rich hunter-gatherers. China itself and Jomon Japan were probably not in direct contact. Instead Japan 's trade contacts, such as they were, involved Korea. But rice had been domesticated in warm southern China and spread only slowly northward to much cooler Korea, because it took a long time to develop cold-resistant strains of rice. Early rice agriculture in Korea used dry-field methods rather than irrigated paddies and was not particularly productive. Hence early Korean agriculture could not compete with Jomon hunting and gathering. Jomon people themselves would have seen no advantage in adopting Korean agriculture, insofar as they were aware of its existence, and poor Korean farmers had no advantages that would let them force their way into Japan. As we shall see, the advantages finally reversed suddenly and dramatically.
full article here:
Saturday, February 07, 2004
Good for a thousand years: veteran potter David Leach believes art is about transcendental values...
For A Change, April-May, 2001, by Mary Lean, Anastasia Stepanove
When David Leach examines a pot fresh out of the kiln, he looks for one thing above all else: does it convey life?
Ninety in May, Leach has been making pots for 71 years: and he certainly conveys life himself. He may be diffident about his achievements, but not about his convictions. `Breadth, strength and honesty can all be expressed in the thing you make,' he says. `Art to me needs to be inspirational: to lift.'
If William Morris was the great-grandfather of the British arts and crafts movement, David's father, Bernard Leach, was its grandfather. He went to Japan in 1909 as a two-dimensional painter and etcher, was captivated by the three-dimensional art of ceramics and returned 11 years later with a Japanese potter, Shoji Hamada, to set up his own studio. The Leach Pottery in St Ives, Cornwall, reinvented pottery in the UK, and trained or inspired the leading British potters of the 20th century.
David, born in Japan in 1911, was Bernard's eldest son. Over coffee in his home at the foot of Dartmoor in the West of England, he describes three milestones in his career: his choice, aged 19, to work with his father; his first encounter with the Oxford Group (later known as MRA) in 1934; and his decision in 1955 to leave St Ives and launch out on his own.
David's choice of career was a surprise to his father, who had expected him to go into medicine. `That fizzled out because I was not clever enough to get a scholarship to university and because my father was an impecunious artist who couldn't possibly afford to send me there without one.' At the same time he had begun to recognize that his father `was about something which was unique and potentially universal'--and that he needed help in achieving it.
By this time the Leach Pottery was employing several people, and producing a range of pottery ware. `Like most artists, my father wasn't the most practical of men to run a business. I could see all sorts of technical, business and organizational areas where I might learn and help him.'
Apart from periods away for training and war service, David stayed at St Ives for 25 years, running the pottery under his father's artistic direction. Together they would identify gaps in their range, work out how to fill them, and then David would make the prototypes from his own and Bernard's designs. Later David selected the students or apprentices best able to produce the pots. `I was a sort of filter of our original ideas to that which was reproducable by the team.'
In 1934, somewhat to his father's horror, David Leach embarked on a three-year course at the North Stafford Technical College in Stoke on Trent, the centre of Britain's mass-produced pottery industry. While hand potters throw each pot individually, industrial processes devised in the 18th century use moulds to produce large quantities of identical crockery. `We studio potters don't take very much line from Josiah Wedgwood,' he says. So it wasn't for artistic guidance he went to Stoke, but for training on such highly technical subjects as firing methods and kilns, and the composition of clays and glazes. He still makes up his own glazes and pigments.
It was in Stoke that Leach encountered the Oxford Group, through his brother, Michael, who had come home for the summer from Cambridge having `undergone a change: we all thought for the better'. David made contact with Oxford Group enthusiasts in Stoke, and accepted an invitation to a `house party' conference in Harrogate. `It hit me between the eyes'--to such an extent that he returned the next weekend with two or three friends.
For Leach, the measure of spiritual growth, as of art, is `life'. Just as one can recognize quality in a work of art, he says, one can recognize inner change in a person--the transformation from `a life that didn't have life to a life that becomes full of life'. He sees MRA, with its stress on listening for God's direction, on moral values and on putting faith into action in the community, as `the most effective way of focussing my Christian life'. Taking part in MRA events has provided some of the `most inspirational moments' of his 89 years.
Not, he is quick to stress, that trying to live out his values has been easy. `It's been a battle: it's sometimes successful and it's sometimes not. There's been a tussle between the vocational life as a so-called creative artist and the direct demands of living out what is common to us all on a more general moral level, whether we call ourselves artists or roadsweepers.' Sometimes he has agonized over whether to give up potting, so as to devote his whole time to MRA campaigns; thankfully for posterity he has held to his vocation.
In an interview with a former student, Gary Hatcher, in 1992, Leach describes his deeper inspiration as coming `from a quietness' and a `basic belief' in God. `I go along with this, believe in it, practise it and find through this that I attain slightly higher levels of intelligence and application of creative forces. This comes through in the rightness and integration in a piece of work.'
The third turning point came in 1955, when Leach left his father's pottery to set up on his own at Lowerdown Cross in Bovey Tracey, Devon. `By then my father was getting old and was writing little pamphlets saying "my days are numbered and I want my son, David, to carry on the pottery". I got cold feet: I had become proficient enough in the things I went to the pottery to help my father over--training, technology, marketing--but that wasn't artistic creation. My father presupposed this was naturally there: I wasn't that confident.'
To find out what he could do, Leach felt that he had to get out from `under my father's seeing eye and rather strong domination'. `He was a good teacher, very clear about what he thought was good and bad, and he didn't mind telling you. For many years after I came here I went on producing very similar pots to those I made, under my father's direction, at St Ives, and then because of the separation I began to develop my own expression.' Looking back, he is inclined to regret that he left it so late.
David and his wife, Elizabeth, have been married 63 years and their three sons all trained with him at Lowerdown Pottery. The eldest, John, now has a pottery and international reputation of his own, at Muchelney in Somerset, while Jeremy and Simon both combine potting with other interests. None of David's seven grandchildren have taken up the family vocation, though John's eldest son, Ben, is a sculptor. There are eight great-grandchildren.
Like his father before him, David has trained a generation of potters, and lectured and given workshops all over the world. He received an OBE in 1987. The Devon Guild of Craftsmen, based half a mile from his pottery, is an abiding enthusiasm. The guild was founded in 1955, with the aim of becoming the `best craft guild' in England, and today has 220 members, drawn from the whole southwest of England. Selection is rigorous: `if we pass three or four applicants out of 20 we're lucky,' he says.
Leach is disturbed by the `strong disrespect for tradition' and the overemphasis on `rather inward-looking self-expression' he sees in much of art today. `Art schools are not so interested in the acquisition of skills as in drawing out the student's creative capacity and ideas, which are sometimes very immature and quite unskillfully performed. I think it is important to learn the skills first, then you have the facility to do what you have in your mind successfully. The modern generation wants to take short cuts to self-expression.'
He has little time for the `shock tactics' of such modern stars as Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin with their bisected sheep and unmade beds. `If you ask some modern artists what they're trying to convey, they will nearly always say it's up to you, make of it what you will. I think that is an abdication of responsibility. The communication between maker and viewer is not good, because the work is not founded on these basic feelings we share.
`There's too much novelty-seeking. Novelty is here today and gone tomorrow. If my pot is good I want it to be good for me, good for the people who see it and good for a thousand years.'
And if, for David Leach, art is about conveying life, this is not an exclusive preserve. `We tend to wrap artists up into sculptors, painters, poets, musicians.... Eric Gill said, "An artist is not a special sort of man, every man is a special sort of artist".'
Like his father before him, David has trained a generation of potters, and lectured and given workshops all over the world. He received an OBE in 1987. The Devon Guild of Craftsmen, based half a mile from his pottery, is an abiding enthusiasm. The guild was founded in 1955, with the aim of becoming the `best craft guild' in England, and today has 220 members, drawn from the whole southwest of England. Selection is rigorous: `if we pass three or four applicants out of 20 we're lucky,' he says.
Leach is disturbed by the `strong disrespect for tradition' and the overemphasis on `rather inward-looking self-expression' he sees in much of art today. `Art schools are not so interested in the acquisition of skills as in drawing out the student's creative capacity and ideas, which are sometimes very immature and quite unskillfully performed. I think it is important to learn the skills first, then you have the facility to do what you have in your mind successfully. The modern generation wants to take short cuts to self-expression.'
He has little time for the `shock tactics' of such modern stars as Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin with their bisected sheep and unmade beds. `If you ask some modern artists what they're trying to convey, they will nearly always say it's up to you, make of it what you will. I think that is an abdication of responsibility. The communication between maker and viewer is not good, because the work is not founded on these basic feelings we share.
`There's too much novelty-seeking. Novelty is here today and gone tomorrow. If my pot is good I want it to be good for me, good for the people who see it and good for a thousand years.'
And if, for David Leach, art is about conveying life, this is not an exclusive preserve. `We tend to wrap artists up into sculptors, painters, poets, musicians.... Eric Gill said, "An artist is not a special sort of man, every man is a special sort of artist".'
COPYRIGHT 2001 For A Change
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group
For A Change, April-May, 2001, by Mary Lean, Anastasia Stepanove
When David Leach examines a pot fresh out of the kiln, he looks for one thing above all else: does it convey life?
Ninety in May, Leach has been making pots for 71 years: and he certainly conveys life himself. He may be diffident about his achievements, but not about his convictions. `Breadth, strength and honesty can all be expressed in the thing you make,' he says. `Art to me needs to be inspirational: to lift.'
If William Morris was the great-grandfather of the British arts and crafts movement, David's father, Bernard Leach, was its grandfather. He went to Japan in 1909 as a two-dimensional painter and etcher, was captivated by the three-dimensional art of ceramics and returned 11 years later with a Japanese potter, Shoji Hamada, to set up his own studio. The Leach Pottery in St Ives, Cornwall, reinvented pottery in the UK, and trained or inspired the leading British potters of the 20th century.
David, born in Japan in 1911, was Bernard's eldest son. Over coffee in his home at the foot of Dartmoor in the West of England, he describes three milestones in his career: his choice, aged 19, to work with his father; his first encounter with the Oxford Group (later known as MRA) in 1934; and his decision in 1955 to leave St Ives and launch out on his own.
David's choice of career was a surprise to his father, who had expected him to go into medicine. `That fizzled out because I was not clever enough to get a scholarship to university and because my father was an impecunious artist who couldn't possibly afford to send me there without one.' At the same time he had begun to recognize that his father `was about something which was unique and potentially universal'--and that he needed help in achieving it.
By this time the Leach Pottery was employing several people, and producing a range of pottery ware. `Like most artists, my father wasn't the most practical of men to run a business. I could see all sorts of technical, business and organizational areas where I might learn and help him.'
Apart from periods away for training and war service, David stayed at St Ives for 25 years, running the pottery under his father's artistic direction. Together they would identify gaps in their range, work out how to fill them, and then David would make the prototypes from his own and Bernard's designs. Later David selected the students or apprentices best able to produce the pots. `I was a sort of filter of our original ideas to that which was reproducable by the team.'
In 1934, somewhat to his father's horror, David Leach embarked on a three-year course at the North Stafford Technical College in Stoke on Trent, the centre of Britain's mass-produced pottery industry. While hand potters throw each pot individually, industrial processes devised in the 18th century use moulds to produce large quantities of identical crockery. `We studio potters don't take very much line from Josiah Wedgwood,' he says. So it wasn't for artistic guidance he went to Stoke, but for training on such highly technical subjects as firing methods and kilns, and the composition of clays and glazes. He still makes up his own glazes and pigments.
It was in Stoke that Leach encountered the Oxford Group, through his brother, Michael, who had come home for the summer from Cambridge having `undergone a change: we all thought for the better'. David made contact with Oxford Group enthusiasts in Stoke, and accepted an invitation to a `house party' conference in Harrogate. `It hit me between the eyes'--to such an extent that he returned the next weekend with two or three friends.
For Leach, the measure of spiritual growth, as of art, is `life'. Just as one can recognize quality in a work of art, he says, one can recognize inner change in a person--the transformation from `a life that didn't have life to a life that becomes full of life'. He sees MRA, with its stress on listening for God's direction, on moral values and on putting faith into action in the community, as `the most effective way of focussing my Christian life'. Taking part in MRA events has provided some of the `most inspirational moments' of his 89 years.
Not, he is quick to stress, that trying to live out his values has been easy. `It's been a battle: it's sometimes successful and it's sometimes not. There's been a tussle between the vocational life as a so-called creative artist and the direct demands of living out what is common to us all on a more general moral level, whether we call ourselves artists or roadsweepers.' Sometimes he has agonized over whether to give up potting, so as to devote his whole time to MRA campaigns; thankfully for posterity he has held to his vocation.
In an interview with a former student, Gary Hatcher, in 1992, Leach describes his deeper inspiration as coming `from a quietness' and a `basic belief' in God. `I go along with this, believe in it, practise it and find through this that I attain slightly higher levels of intelligence and application of creative forces. This comes through in the rightness and integration in a piece of work.'
The third turning point came in 1955, when Leach left his father's pottery to set up on his own at Lowerdown Cross in Bovey Tracey, Devon. `By then my father was getting old and was writing little pamphlets saying "my days are numbered and I want my son, David, to carry on the pottery". I got cold feet: I had become proficient enough in the things I went to the pottery to help my father over--training, technology, marketing--but that wasn't artistic creation. My father presupposed this was naturally there: I wasn't that confident.'
To find out what he could do, Leach felt that he had to get out from `under my father's seeing eye and rather strong domination'. `He was a good teacher, very clear about what he thought was good and bad, and he didn't mind telling you. For many years after I came here I went on producing very similar pots to those I made, under my father's direction, at St Ives, and then because of the separation I began to develop my own expression.' Looking back, he is inclined to regret that he left it so late.
David and his wife, Elizabeth, have been married 63 years and their three sons all trained with him at Lowerdown Pottery. The eldest, John, now has a pottery and international reputation of his own, at Muchelney in Somerset, while Jeremy and Simon both combine potting with other interests. None of David's seven grandchildren have taken up the family vocation, though John's eldest son, Ben, is a sculptor. There are eight great-grandchildren.
Like his father before him, David has trained a generation of potters, and lectured and given workshops all over the world. He received an OBE in 1987. The Devon Guild of Craftsmen, based half a mile from his pottery, is an abiding enthusiasm. The guild was founded in 1955, with the aim of becoming the `best craft guild' in England, and today has 220 members, drawn from the whole southwest of England. Selection is rigorous: `if we pass three or four applicants out of 20 we're lucky,' he says.
Leach is disturbed by the `strong disrespect for tradition' and the overemphasis on `rather inward-looking self-expression' he sees in much of art today. `Art schools are not so interested in the acquisition of skills as in drawing out the student's creative capacity and ideas, which are sometimes very immature and quite unskillfully performed. I think it is important to learn the skills first, then you have the facility to do what you have in your mind successfully. The modern generation wants to take short cuts to self-expression.'
He has little time for the `shock tactics' of such modern stars as Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin with their bisected sheep and unmade beds. `If you ask some modern artists what they're trying to convey, they will nearly always say it's up to you, make of it what you will. I think that is an abdication of responsibility. The communication between maker and viewer is not good, because the work is not founded on these basic feelings we share.
`There's too much novelty-seeking. Novelty is here today and gone tomorrow. If my pot is good I want it to be good for me, good for the people who see it and good for a thousand years.'
And if, for David Leach, art is about conveying life, this is not an exclusive preserve. `We tend to wrap artists up into sculptors, painters, poets, musicians.... Eric Gill said, "An artist is not a special sort of man, every man is a special sort of artist".'
Like his father before him, David has trained a generation of potters, and lectured and given workshops all over the world. He received an OBE in 1987. The Devon Guild of Craftsmen, based half a mile from his pottery, is an abiding enthusiasm. The guild was founded in 1955, with the aim of becoming the `best craft guild' in England, and today has 220 members, drawn from the whole southwest of England. Selection is rigorous: `if we pass three or four applicants out of 20 we're lucky,' he says.
Leach is disturbed by the `strong disrespect for tradition' and the overemphasis on `rather inward-looking self-expression' he sees in much of art today. `Art schools are not so interested in the acquisition of skills as in drawing out the student's creative capacity and ideas, which are sometimes very immature and quite unskillfully performed. I think it is important to learn the skills first, then you have the facility to do what you have in your mind successfully. The modern generation wants to take short cuts to self-expression.'
He has little time for the `shock tactics' of such modern stars as Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin with their bisected sheep and unmade beds. `If you ask some modern artists what they're trying to convey, they will nearly always say it's up to you, make of it what you will. I think that is an abdication of responsibility. The communication between maker and viewer is not good, because the work is not founded on these basic feelings we share.
`There's too much novelty-seeking. Novelty is here today and gone tomorrow. If my pot is good I want it to be good for me, good for the people who see it and good for a thousand years.'
And if, for David Leach, art is about conveying life, this is not an exclusive preserve. `We tend to wrap artists up into sculptors, painters, poets, musicians.... Eric Gill said, "An artist is not a special sort of man, every man is a special sort of artist".'
COPYRIGHT 2001 For A Change
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group
Friday, February 06, 2004
Wednesday, February 04, 2004
Tuesday, February 03, 2004
SHUSSAN-DOKI
Shussan in Japanese means birth and doki means pottery. It is believed that this pottery describes laboring (birth) artistically.. Because of the fine decoration and design, Shussan Doki is believed to have been made for a ritual of childbirth which was surely a much harder labor than that of today. The event of childbirth was no doubt more mysterious and religious to the ancient people.
Jomon Pottery of Sutama
Shussan in Japanese means birth and doki means pottery. It is believed that this pottery describes laboring (birth) artistically.. Because of the fine decoration and design, Shussan Doki is believed to have been made for a ritual of childbirth which was surely a much harder labor than that of today. The event of childbirth was no doubt more mysterious and religious to the ancient people.
Jomon Pottery of Sutama
Monday, February 02, 2004
The first known Pottery in the World
Full article here:
Jomon History
: "That end of the Ice Age was accompanied by the first of the two most decisive changes in Japanese history: the invention of pottery. In the usual experience of archeologists, inventions flow from mainlands to islands, and small peripheral societies aren't supposed to contribute revolutionary advances to the rest of the world. It therefore astonished archeologists to discover that the world's oldest known pottery was made in Japan 12,700 years ago. For the first time in human experience, people had watertight containers readily available in any desired shape. With their new ability to boil or steam food, they gained access to abundant resources that had previously been difficult to use: leafy vegetables, which would burn or dry out if cooked on an open fire; shellfish, which could now be opened easily; and toxic foods like acorns, which could now have their toxins boiled out. Soft-boiled foods could be fed to small children, permitting earlier weaning and more closely spaced babies. Toothless old people, the repositories of information in a preliterate society, could now be fed and live longer. All those momentous consequences of pottery triggered a population explosion, causing Japan's population to climb from an estimated few thousand to a quarter of a million. The prejudice that islanders are supposed to learn from superior continentals wasn't the sole reason that record-breaking Japanese pottery caused such a shock. In addition, those first Japanese potters were clearly hunter-gatherers, which also violated established views. Usually only sedentary societies own pottery: what nomad wants to carry heavy, fragile pots, as well as weapons and the baby, whenever time comes to shift camps. Most sedentary societies elsewhere in the world arose only with the adoption of agriculture. But the Japanese environment is so productive that people could settle down and make pottery while still living by hunting and gathering. Pottery helped those Japanese hunter-gatherers exploit their environment rich food resources more than 10,000 years before intensive agriculture reached Japan."
Full article here:
Jomon History
: "That end of the Ice Age was accompanied by the first of the two most decisive changes in Japanese history: the invention of pottery. In the usual experience of archeologists, inventions flow from mainlands to islands, and small peripheral societies aren't supposed to contribute revolutionary advances to the rest of the world. It therefore astonished archeologists to discover that the world's oldest known pottery was made in Japan 12,700 years ago. For the first time in human experience, people had watertight containers readily available in any desired shape. With their new ability to boil or steam food, they gained access to abundant resources that had previously been difficult to use: leafy vegetables, which would burn or dry out if cooked on an open fire; shellfish, which could now be opened easily; and toxic foods like acorns, which could now have their toxins boiled out. Soft-boiled foods could be fed to small children, permitting earlier weaning and more closely spaced babies. Toothless old people, the repositories of information in a preliterate society, could now be fed and live longer. All those momentous consequences of pottery triggered a population explosion, causing Japan's population to climb from an estimated few thousand to a quarter of a million. The prejudice that islanders are supposed to learn from superior continentals wasn't the sole reason that record-breaking Japanese pottery caused such a shock. In addition, those first Japanese potters were clearly hunter-gatherers, which also violated established views. Usually only sedentary societies own pottery: what nomad wants to carry heavy, fragile pots, as well as weapons and the baby, whenever time comes to shift camps. Most sedentary societies elsewhere in the world arose only with the adoption of agriculture. But the Japanese environment is so productive that people could settle down and make pottery while still living by hunting and gathering. Pottery helped those Japanese hunter-gatherers exploit their environment rich food resources more than 10,000 years before intensive agriculture reached Japan."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)