Lee Love was born in Sakai City, Japan, in the same neighborhood as the tea master Sen No Rikyu. He moved to the United States

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1 F O U N D I N T R A N S L A T I O N BY LEE LOVE Lee Love was born in Sakai City, Japan, in the same neighborhood as the tea master Sen No Rikyu. He moved to the United States at the age of 16 months, grew up in Michigan, and moved to Minnesota in 1983 to study Zen Buddhism with Dainin Katagiri Roshi. When Katagiri Roshi died in 1990, Love began his studies in pottery th Avenue South Minneapolis, MN mingeisota.blogspot.com togeika@gmail.com In the fall of 1999 I moved to Mashiko, Japan, and in March 2000, I began a three-year apprenticeship with Living National Treasure Tatsuzo Shimaoka. Shimaoka-sensei followed a traditional way of working. Often, while following him in a row of apprentices like a line of ducklings behind their mother (there were four young Japanese apprentices also studying during my time there), I felt as if we were transported back to the seventeenth century. Only the telephone wires running overhead and Shimaoka-sensei s muddy blue jeans were evidence that this was not true. Adhering to the old way of doing things and meeting sensei s high standards demanded much from us apprentices. Added to that were my personal lack of language skills and other aspects of culture shock. But all the difficulties were well worth it. Yes, we learned the techniques of traditional pottery, but we were also immersed in a way of doing things that paralleled the lives of the farmers who worked in the fields and rice paddies around the workshop. Our lives were in tune with nature. The old craftsmen we worked with always knew what wild vegetables were growing in the woods or on the mountains, and because we did so much work outside we had to be attuned to the weather and the seasons. I felt fortunate that my experiences in traditional Zen monasteries, in both the United States and Japan, had prepared me to be a clay monk. In both situations, culture was in harmony with nature. I was able to see how this allowed me to make work that is both subtle and nuanced, rather than exaggerated or forced. One spring day during my apprenticeship I was called, along with two other apprentices, over to Shimaoka-sensei s house, a traditional Japanese house built in the early 1970s. We were asked to unpack a closet in the large tatami (straw mat) room just off the Western-style dining/reception room. Pulling back the sliding doors under the stairs, we saw stacks of Paulownia-wood boxes tied shut with traditional cord. We were asked to open all the boxes. Sensei was inventorying the work and selecting work to be photographed. Shimaoka put an advertisement in every issue of The Mingei, the monthly magazine of the Mingeikan, the Tokyo folk crafts museum established by Soetsu Yanagi. The ad usually featured an object from his personal collection. It was one of the 35

ways he financially supported the Mingeikan. We sat on the tatami floor, untied the boxes, and unwrapped the pots from their yellow and orange cloth wrappings.

2 ways he financially supported the Mingeikan. We sat on the tatami floor, untied the boxes, and unwrapped the pots from their yellow and orange cloth wrappings. Many of the pots were from Song Dynasty China, but most were from Korea during the Choson Dynasty ( ). I was taken by the Korean work, especially the paddled pots decorated with sgraffito and white slip and painted with images of lotus flowers and fish. I had seen flasks like these in catalogs and behind glass, but actually touching and holding them gave them life. Now, when I see these works in catalogs or in museums, I know exactly what they feel like. I am transported back to those days of my apprenticeship, and I can't help but thank my teacher for the opportunity to experience these pots, which are full of unpretentious vitality, organic form and decoration, and playfulness. This experience affirmed the influence of Choson pottery on my work. I use some of Shimaoka s rope impression, but I find myself doing more and more hakame-style brushed slip and sgraffito decoration, inspired by these Korean pots. These pots also gave me a standard by which to evaluate all other ceramic work, especially Japanese work. Kasama is the pottery town across the mountains that separate Mashiko s Tochigi prefecture from Ibaraki prefecture. When pottery making was re-established in Mashiko, just over 150 years ago, Kasama is where the technology came from. The Ibaraki Prefectural Ceramic Museum opened shortly after we moved to Mashiko and I began my apprenticeship. A show that was of special importance to me, The Romance of Ko-Kutani, the Brilliance of Yoshidaya Ware opened in May Ko-Kutani (Old Kutani) and Kutani were made in the seventeenth century, but production was halted for many years, until Yoshi-

3 opposite: Tea Bowl. Korea, Choson Period, second half of sixteenth century. Porcelain with ash glaze, gold laquer repairs. 2.5 x 6 in. Courtesy Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Gift of Charles Lang Freer. F daya Kutani revived the ware in the eighteenth century. (A similar situation occured with the Shino kilns in Mino. Shino was made for only about sixty years, at the beginning in the late sixteenth century, then was re-created in Japan in the twentieth century.) Walking through the Kutani show, which depicted the various times and places where Kutani ware was made, my wife, Jean, and I noticed that the work was most vibrant at the beginning of the period. Kutani s original inspiration had been Chinese porcelains, decorated with elaborate designs in both glaze and enamel. We noticed that when the potters were directly influenced by the original Chinese examples, or when craftsmen from later ages were trying to rediscover and be true to the best of the earlier pieces, the work seemed most dynamic and full of life. As soon as the techniques and technology were mastered, instead of being inspired by the Chinese or the orginal Kutani, the potters started copying themselves. There was even a time in Kutani when a famous artist was asked to make images for decoration, and these decorations were copied for many years. They did not have the vitality of the work in the discovery state. Recently, Warren MacKenzie told me a story about his experience during a residency in Japan at the old kiln town of Shigaraki. At a pottery festival he noticed that in each booth, even if the potter was selling pretty unremarkable ware, there was an example in an honored spot to show what he was actually capable of making a showpiece. MacKenzie also spoke about a time he went into a pottery shop in Shigaraki and noticed nice work, including teaceremony bowls. The potter who made them told MacKenzie that these works weren t what people were buying. Instead, they bought the copies he made of famous old pots. The host went out back and brought MacKenzie a copy of a vase, complete with the chip that had fallen off the rim onto the shoulder during the firing of the original. MacKenzie showed me a photo of the original in a book he had. Success creates a market for these copies, just as success sapped the vibrancy of Kutani ware. It is common for shops in the Ancient Kiln Site towns to concentrate primarily on souvenir ware. It is the fate of potters in these towns to make what the place is famous for, rather than making work relevant to their own time and place. The other show that helped me understand cross-cultural influences was the 2007 Shino and Oribe show at the Idemitsu Musem of Art. Shino ware was one of my earliest inspirations and is one of my favorite types of pottery. In the West, we primarily know Shino as the gray to white glaze that breaks to red/brown where thin. Only a few pieces of this kind of Shino ware, primarily tea bowls, water jars, and vases, came out of a single firing. The great majority of the work was decorated with iron slip poured under the glaze, and iron brushwork and sgraffito on the glaze. This exhibition showed the full range of Shino wares, including shards from archaeological sites and lacquerware and baskets that had inspired Shino shapes. There were also painted scrolls that showed the brushwork and motifs that inspired the iron decorations on both Shino and Oribe ware. The most important element of the show for me were the pots that had been the earliest inspirations for Shino, and the explanation of the importance of tea master Sen no Rikyu and Korean pottery in the development of Shino and Oribe ware. Rikyu helped establish these common rice bowls as famous and soughtafter tea bowls for the tea ceremony. With the encouragement of Rikyu and his patrons and students, the Shino and Oribe kilns were built and the old kiln towns, such as Bizen, Shigaraki, Iga, and Tamba, began to produce tea ware. 37

4 38 Previously, only found wares had come from those kilns and not pots specifically made for the tea ceremony. Before I went to live in Japan, I thought that the Japanese stoneware so inspiring to us in the West was made by folk potters. Actually, these works were commissioned by feudal lords and tea masters. Many of these outstanding works were made in response to Chinese and Korean wares admired by these educated people. Here in the United States, most potters have thought of Japanese ceramics in terms of the rustic tea-ceremony wares promoted by Rikyu, rather than the fine porcelain wares, such as Kutani and Arita, and the colorful work of Satsuma and Imari. But there are many examples of influences from China and Korea. In fact, the only seemingly indigenous Japanese pottery is from the Jomon era (14,000 BC to 500 Ad). Recent archaeological discoveries in Korea, Russia, and China, however, have shown that the Jomon culture existed on lands all around the Japan Sea, so it is probably not correct to count Jomon as belonging only to the Japanese archipelago. There was a constant importing of technology and cultural knowledge from the continent beginning in at least the Yayoi period (250 BC to 250 Ad). In the nineteenth century, when Japan was opened to the West, the World Expositions in Europe and America were important for the diffusion of culture to and from Japan. These exchanges helped inspire post-impressionist art in Europe and encouraged the preservation of Japanese art and craft by such people as Okakura Tenshin, Soetsu Yanagi, and Bernard Leach, who were in turn influenced by William Morris and the European arts and crafts movement. Japan was fortunate in that it was never colonized like most of Asia was, so it was able to continue many unbroken traditions. An island culture surrounded by dangerous seas, it was protected from colonization and occupation, but the cultural boundaries were permeable, allowing knowledge and information to pass through. This allowed Japan to accept new things on its own terms and protected it from extractive colonization. Japan assimilated new culture and made it Japanese, thereby protecting its cultural identity. My understanding of how new traditions developed in Japan paralleled what I recognized in Hamada and Shimaoka s work. My initial take on Hamada when I was in America was that he was an educated person who went to Mashiko and made the folk pottery he found there. When I was able to study traditional Mashiko work made before Hamada s arrival and compare it to his work at the Mingeikan folk craft museum in Tokyo, at his museum in Mashiko, and at gallery sales, I realized that he brought to Mashiko shapes he was exposed to during his studies and travels to China, Korea, Europe, and the rest of the world. Before Hamada, Mashiko was known for kitchen crockery and storage jars; it was a kind of Redwing Pottery of Japan. It was Hamada who brought tableware and tea-ceremony ware to Mashiko. My view of Shimaoka s work changed also. While making it as part of my apprenticeship studies, I developed an appreciation of its subtle, understated beauty. I realized that intentional distortion and the finger marks I was purposely leaving on the clay in my own work were exaggerations. I thought they made the work look more handmade. But because of the rope-impression technique and inlay on the surfaces of Shimaoka s pots, you did not want extraneous marks or throwing lines, which make the inlay uneven for scraping. I had to reassess my work and make conscious decisions about the elements I added to them, making sure that marks and irregularities had a purpose. Functional potters understand how machined, synthetic surfaces reduce our

above: Lee Love, Chinese Inspired Jar, 2009. Anagama-fired porcelain, unglazed, with rope impression. 10 x 9.5 in. exposure to a natural tactile vocabulary.

5 above: Lee Love, Chinese Inspired Jar, Anagama-fired porcelain, unglazed, with rope impression. 10 x 9.5 in. exposure to a natural tactile vocabulary. The gesture and the natural nonuniformity of handmade work are two of the things that draw many of us to handmade pottery. But our tactile vocabulary can also be limited in the opposite direction, when we become used to exaggerated gesture and expression, and lose the ability to perceive more subtle and nuanced expression. I realized that intentional throwing marks were not honest, and distorting a pot to look as though it was accidental or a kiln accident was not genuine. The Japanese examples at the Kutani and Mino exhibitions helped me realize that copying oneself in order to repeat success is actually more problematic than copying outside inspirations, because it closes you off from exploration. Whether looking outside or inward, a potter needs to reinterpret, rather than to render. 39

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