Stemmed bowl: Copper-red glaze Sang-de -Boeuf. search for harmony, gentleness, naturalness) and wabi (poverty, or absence of ego).

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Teresa Doyle
5 years ago
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Shibui beauty, the beauty of the tea ceremony, is beauty that makes an artist of the viewer- Soetsu Yanagi (The Unknown Craftsman: A Japanese Insight into Beauty) For two glorious days of Blue

2 Shibui beauty, the beauty of the tea ceremony, is beauty that makes an artist of the viewer- Soetsu Yanagi (The Unknown Craftsman: A Japanese Insight into Beauty) For two glorious days of Blue Mountains spring weather on 24 and 25 October last year, the country workshop of renowned Australian potter Peter Rushforth hummed with an atmosphere of joy and gratitude. While the Mountains no doubt attracted many nature lovers that weekend to its spring gardens, the visitors to Le Var, the Rushforths' quiet bush property on the Shipley Plateau near Blackheath, had come to admire nature transformed-in an exhibition of pottery that celebrated forty years of Peter Rushforth' s distinguished career. As I rubbed shoulders with the ceramics cognoscenti, I felt, even as a relative newcomer to Peter Rushforth' s pottery, that for those two days I entered into a special communion with the creator of these beautiful artefacts. And the joy I felt in that was in part the joy of the 'artist' who completes the work by viewing it with' pleasure. Peter's invitation promised a retrospective exhibition 'of three hundred stoneware pots (that) exemplifies the range of glazes and forms that I have developed during the past forty years. It also expresses my philosophy that has been influenced by the craft movements... both in the East and West... (which) have a common aim in the belief that individually crafted objects, if successful, could serve to enhance our daily living.' Those who visited Le Var that weekend (from as far afield as Adelaide and Melbourne) were also fortunate to see this work in the environment in which it was partly inspired and wholly created. As a close friend and neighbour to the Rushforths for the last few years, I have always regarded Le Var as possessing something of the peaceful ambience that the painter Claude Monet sought in his country retreat at Giverny. Peter's construction of a small decorative pond, complete with lilypads, behind the gallery last year reinforced this impression. With delight I noticed how the exhibition spilled over from the shelves of the studio and gallery into the garden-with pots in the rockery by the pond and the garden path as if they had sprung out of the very earth itself. Down by the studio, an outdoor display of large jars in rust-orange and white glazes resonated with the foliage and trunks of the gum trees and the pale

3 Stemmed bowl: Copper-red glaze Sang-de -Boeuf. tradition-born out of the practices of Korean and Japanese folk pottery, informed by Zen Buddhist beliefs about beauty and being, refined into an aesthetic principle by the tea masters of the fifteenth century. Certain threads of this traditional thought and practice were revived in the twentieth century through the writings of mingei ('art of the people') theorist Soetsu Yanagi and the work of potter Shoji Hamada, and finally interpreted and introduced to the West by English potter Bernard Leach. To transfer this philosophy intact and wholesale to another culture and another age is an impossible project and probably not even a desirable one-even in Japan today there are many contrasting approaches and innovations and discoveries within strict traditions. Peter has always maintained that it is a heritage on which Australian potters can draw 'certain truths as stepping stones' to create new work: 'it is not a matter of simulating a traditional glaze or an aesthetic from another country, but of using this insight into pottery values to produce new glazes from our local materials and our own philosophy to produce work that is valid to the Australian environment.' Critics of Peter's work have acknowledged this departure from a purist attempt to recreate traditional work. Ian McKay has observed: 'Peter's style is distinctive and personal and its long evolution has taken it away from its origins... when Peter Rushforth uses glazes, dignified with centuries-old names, it is always on his own terms.' I would rather leave it to those with greater scholarship and expertise than myself to judge pottery by such untranslatable aesthetic concepts as shibusa (expressing authority, nobility and unpretentiousness), sabi (the beauty of antiquity, a search for harmony, gentleness, naturalness) and wabi (poverty, or absence of ego). Nor do I feel competent to judge technical aspects of the glazesthough described by such ancient names as Jun, Temmoku, Celadon and Shino. Peter himself questions the validity of such terms which refer to very specific techniques using highly localized materials. 'Never at any time in our history have we had access to knowledge that will allow us to develop such glazes.' There are, however, two ideas that emerged from my reading of Yanagi and my discussions with Peter which, as a non-potter, I feel I was able to grasp intuitively and recognize as informing his work. The first is the craft ideal of 'good work proceeding from the whole man, heart, head and hand, in proper balance'; and the belief that in an industrial age of mass-produced commercial artefacts, there is still room for the individually handmade object that can never be replaced by the machine product. Closely allied to this ideal is the Zen notion of beauty, raised to an art in the Way of the Tea, as being inextricably bound up with function: 'Things that cannot be used possess something negative, even if beautiful. Ugly things are not fit to be used. Real beauty appeals to us, asks to be used; beauty cannot be neglected. The seeing eye will urge the using hand.' In Peter's exhibition, casserole dishes, mugs, plates, teapots, tea bowls and bowls mingled happily with the magnificent jars and vases. I overheard one visitor remark as she picked up her choice of bowl : 'I'm going to look forward to eating breakfast out of this every morning.' No doubt such a comment would gladden the heart of any potter. Peter explains: 'I think if you're following the tradition of being a potter, you should be able to present a range of this work, not just precious objects for a showcase, but objects we handle and use every day. There are pots that come out of the kiln that I know are unique to that firing and some that are successful will have forms that stand by themselves. They can be used for flowers, whatever... but alongside that there are teapot~ and bowls. which are as great a challenge as anything to make.' In this, Peter's work seems true to the spirit of the craft ideal, combining utility with beauty, elegant form with function. The second idea is that of naturalness as expressed in irregularity and asymmetry. I found this a little harder to grasp at first and as far as understanding how these qualities express the hidden laws of nature in the materials-the clay, the glazes-that is too esoteric for a non-potter. But when Peter described how the shape of a pot, accidentally slumped in the kiln at high temperature, expressed 'growth' in Japanese eyes, it was then that the idea of organic irregularity, the imperfections of natural shapes, struck a note of recognition. He also talked about the energy of a teabowl as being analogous to a bonsai-nature reduced or simplified to a pattern that distills the energy of natural shapes. It is easy for anyone who feels refreshed by a walk in the bush to comprehend the human spirit's thirst for contact with the natural-as Dark and pale Jun glaze.

.,Mountain Mist.,-Jun glaze. Teapot: Basalt Temmoku glaze Ash-glaze-firebox effects. Teabowl-lion ash-feldspar decoration on glaze. 1n glaze over incised ~coration.

4 .,Mountain Mist.,-Jun glaze. Teapot: Basalt Temmoku glaze Ash-glaze-firebox effects. Teabowl-lion ash-feldspar decoration on glaze. 1n glaze over incised ~coration. Lidded pot with Shino type glaze-heavily reduced patterns. much a sensuous contact with the shapes and textures of nature as any mystical connection. To invite the accidents of nature into art-roughness of texture, slight but pleasing irregularities of shape, cracks, patches, flow-marks in the surfaceseems to me a worthwhile goal and in no way negates or contradicts the skill and knowledge of the potter gained over many years. It possibly also explains in part why so many admirers see the Blue Mountains reflected in Peter Rushforth's pieces: given this organic element in many of his pots, the Mountains seem the natural context for this aspect of his work. Alan Lacovetsky mentioned the ash-glazed pots as being like 'the rock formations at the edge of Peter's property, like moss on stone, gnarled trees, bark.' Others note the resonance between the Jun blue and the Mountains' azure haze. 'I think it is largely coincidental that the (Jun} blues reflect the Blue Mountains,' says Peter, but he does acknowledge some influences from the landscape and even, in some pieces, deliberate subtle decorative motifs suggestive of hills, waterfalls, mist rising in the valleys. There is a sense too in which Peter's work unites these two worlds-the organic, as I have said, but also the warmly and invitingly human, suggestive immediately of having been used, dignified and 'aged' by use. It will require more mature reflection on my part to understand this feeling. Perhaps the forms, though strongly stated originals from Peter's wheel developed out of his years of potting experience, still have an echo, a resonance of age-old forms and therefore an immediate familiarity, solidity, authority. You want to pick them up, feel their weight and texture,

Large bowl: Temmoku wax resist decoration. Jun glaze (wood -fired) with wax-resist decoration. Platter: Jun with wax resist. Lidded jar: Brushwork over white slip (hakeme). Limestone glaze.

5 Large bowl: Temmoku wax resist decoration. Jun glaze (wood -fired) with wax-resist decoration. Platter: Jun with wax resist. Lidded jar: Brushwork over white slip (hakeme). Limestone glaze. Bowl: Celadon inside, white glaze. Jun glaze (wood-fired) wax-resist decoration. with see how they fit the hand. You can easily imagine using them in your own home. While gallery owners and collectors have paid most attention to the spectacular shiny, colourful glazes, particularly the elegant Jun blues, Peter's own favourite pots are the natural ash glazes, fired right in the firebox, which produce subtler green, grey and black shadings and a rougher, more rock-like texture. These have not had as big a following, perhaps because Australian tastes for their shibui qualities have been slower to mature. Having now 'cleared my workshop to begin with a clean slate and clear head', as Peter puts it, he intends to spend 1993 working on firing effects with the ash glazes. Some weeks after the exhibition, as I arrange a bunch of pink azaleas in a frosty blue blossom jar, pick another juicy nectarine from a small crackled pale green glazed bowl, or scoop a mouthful of sauce from a T emmoku glazed dish, I concur wholeheartedly with the belief that 'individually crafted objects serve to enhance our daily living'. The Japanese potter and poet Kawai observed: 'When a person buys a pot they buy themselves.' Seeing Peter's pots on the shelf at his workshop and in the hushed atmosphere of a commercial gallery was one view, but handling them every day in my own home has changed my understanding of their beauty. And in a subtle way, it has changed me, excited by the possibilities of beauty in daily life and awakened to it everywhere. With the gift of the potter's art, we can bring beauty into our lives and, with the appreciation that comes from daily contemplation and use, become 'artists'. Julian Leatherdale Photographer Alan Lacovetsky

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