Two lovely videos about Japanese Pottery

I found these two lovely videos about the history of Japanese pottery and I hope you'll enjoy them and find them as educative as I did.

Part One

Part Two

Tibetan Pottery

There are some funny people who think that if you don't know how to use a potter's wheel, you're not a 'real' potter. Hah! I found these videos on Youtube and just couldn't resist posting them to show how wrong they are.

I don't think anyone who watches this video or this next one will ever think of handbuilding the same way again. There's no other description for what the Tibetans do with just their hands, a couple of oddly-shaped stones, a bit of water and simple home-made wooden tools but High Art!

What makes pottery beautiful for me? (Winston Lim)

The question of what makes pottery beautiful is a personal one but our ideas of what makes anything beautiful are shaped as much by our cultures as they are by personal preferences. My own ideas on the matter probably constitute a rather unorthodox point of view as I have been exposed to many influences throughout the course of my life. 

 

However, my personal ideal is clean, elegant lines and never more than three colours all either matching or two contrasting and a third neutral one. My current favourite technique involves a deeply coloured glaze over white slip flowers for contrast and texture though a single strong colour with a high gloss is usually good enough for me if I have made the pot a pleasing shape. And unless I'm making dishes or bowls, then I must also try to make a cover for every pot or my pot looks naked to me. I might put an ornate sprig on the cover but not much more than that if I can help it.

 

For example, I could make my pottery very colourful with lots of different glazes, but I wouldn't. At least not any more. When I started making pottery, I couldn't resist the temptation to splash all sorts of colours on my pots and even made covers in different colours. The results weren't always as successful as I'd hoped, as you can see from this old pot of mine. And though you can't see it, it's got a small, straight and rather narrow foot ring less than two inches in diameter - which looks nice and shows that my pot is perfectly balanced - but isn't quite the aesthetic I'm looking for. I prefer things that look like they won't tip over if you fill them to the brim.

At our class, our Japanese teachers and students have a rather different cultural sense of beauty in pottery - something for which I'm very grateful as they've taught me new ways to look at such things. My preference for graceful curves and simple colours comes from them. I'm not sure where my liking for pregnant shapes comes from, however. But if you'd like to know more about Japanese ideas of beautiful pottery, click here Japanese Pottery Aesthetics

 

What Works For Me : Winston Lim

When I sit down with a ball of clay, I always keep two things in mind before I start shaping it. The first is that what comes from my hands should always be something that can be used, be it a bowl a cup, or even a sculpture of a  mouse, let's say. That is what I call my artisan side and you'll never see me produce anything that's purely for display.
 

I'm afraid I'm very old-fashioned and lean to the view that above all, ceramic pieces should always be functional. But I also believe that there's nothing to stop me from making it the nicest that I possibly can. Which, as a student potter, means that about 90% of what I make at this stage, no matter how nice it might look, is what I call "a learning piece" that is, a piece done to acquire or practise a particular skill or technique.
 

The worst thing about me is I'm a perfectionist. Looking at my pieces, my eye sees all the faults and imperfections. I wouldn't sell my 'learning pieces' if I could, but I'm happy to give my pots away to friends if they like them. of course, as time goes by, I will get better and better and hot end up depending on happy incidents with the firing to produce really nice stuff with a definite look that says it was made by me, even if you didn't see the signature.

My Japanese teachers say that we should be proud  of our works and put them up for sale at the Pottery festival. Much to my shock, I actually sold five or six pieces over the last two years (like this one) and got orders for ten large or twenty small ones. That's a sort of mixed blessing because I won't put anything in the shops unless I'm happy with it - and it's got that 'definitive look' about it.

If I had to say what the best thing might be about my pottery, however, it would have to be that as I learn new techniques and improve old ones, I also try to incorporate other artistic skills  I've picked up into each piece I do nowadays. In this test piece, for example, I've used Chinese-style one-stroke painting to paint white chrysanthemums on a green-glazed bowl and though it isn't quite as nice as I'd hoped it would be, I must say that it actually turned out better than I thought so I'm going to work on stuff like this for the next few months.

There you have it, my personal thoughts as a potter and, in all modesty, a bit of an artist - a potty painter, you might say.