Akitajin \"Lee Love\" on sat 18 oct 97
Erikyu wrote:
> This group is a wonderful EXCHANGE of ideas. Nobody should > feel
guilty for not giving away all of their secrets. We should give and > take
for our own pleasure and enlightenment.
Hi Erikyu!
Guilty would not be the right emotion to feel, IMHO. I won't say what
I'd call it. ;^) I remember reading a story about when Hamada and Leach
first toured the United States. A workshop participant was hemming and
hawing, obviously wanting to ask a question (can't remember if it was of
Hamada or Leach, but I think it was of Hamada.) Finally, this person said
something like (as best as I can remember),
"I know the formula to this glaze is probably secret, but I really wish I
could have it."
The potter said, "Of course you can have it."
The author mentioned that when pottery was just getting off the ground
here, potters were sometimes protective of their tricks and formulas. If
we would have stayed that way, the progress of the form would have been
greatly hindered.
Ninety-nine percent of the potters I have ever met have been more than
generous with their knowledge. It is like being in a special society,
something like Herman Hesse's _Journey to the East_. It is like the Masons
too, but we still get dirty! ;^) The Non-Secret Society of Potters & Mud
People. The handshake ain't secret, just strong! :^)
"When I give you a dollar and you give me a dollar, we each still end up
with jist a dollar. (Ann Ryand understand up to this point.) But when I
give you and idea and you give me an idea, we both end up with two ideas
instead of one." Ideas and intellectual capital can only increase by
flowing.
It has been said that potters can use the same material, the same
equipment and the same formulas but end up having different results because
the potters themselves are different.
One time, at a workshop, I heard Warren MacKenzie tell this story (I
just got back from his fall preview show at Randy Johnson's):
Mac told us he was going to show us how to make his special little salt
shakers, the ones that look like a sphere, but have a hole on the bottom
where the salt comes out when you shake it. This shaker rests on the
table with the hole down, when you are not using it.
He told us why he shows people how to make them. He said, once at a
workshop (I think it was in Michigan), a young person came to him and asked
him if he could figure out how to make a type of salt shaker that her clay
teacher used to make. She said that it was a secret that her teacher
would not share. Mac asked her what she knew about it and said he would
see what he could come up with. By the end of the workshop, they figured
it out. (it is a sphere, with a cone entering the middle of it from the
bottom. Looks something like this in cross section:
,~~~~~~~,
' I I '
! I I !
! l l !
I------I I--------I
First you pull up the cone, like a little spout and then you pull up a wall
around it and close it at the top.
Mac said the instructor shouldn't have been so stingy with his
little trick and to prove a point, he teaches folks how to make them at
_his_ workshops. :^)
Lee (Dairin "Big Fish")
"Really there is no East, no West,
Where then is the South and the North?
Illusion makes the world close in,
Enlightenment opens it on every side."
/(o\' Lee In Saint Paul, Minnesota USA
\o)/' mailto:Ikiru@Kami.com
' http://www.millcomm.com/~leelove/
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