Duff bogen on mon 7 apr 08
I wrote this under time/pressure (I told my kids I'd be ready to leave the library in three minutes. They checked out there books and went out and sat on a bench in the lobby. Cute as bugs with the late winter afternoon sun streaming in.) Looking back I found mistakes and garbled language
Duff bogen wrote: Enough already with the leach stuff. (A friend who met him said he was a nice old guy. This is his opinion. It's like that old fake latin quote that states "taste is not a matter for debate" "Taste" like opinion is personal and subjective. Debating either boils down to "I like it" vs. "I don't like it")
When I started all this hoo-ha by writing "Being Gai-jin and not a
part of the culture from which Min-gei springs" I was thinking about the core question of "what pots do I make?" It's like the story about the Guy who asked the Rabbi, "Do you try to be like Moses?" and the Rabbi replies "No! I try to be more like me. God put Moses here to be Moses and me to be me"
Min-gei rises from a culturally specific set of ideas. Not having grown up in that culture, isn't trying to follow those ideas, for me, like tyring to be Moses instead of trying to be me.. I'm not trying to espouse cultural ignorance here or the potential for cross-cultural communication, [an aside for Lee here- going from culture to culture there's always loss. I remember a quote attributed to Hamada. To answer the question " How do you look at pots? he replied "With my stomach." As gai-jin that means to me- "Yeah. He's kinda saying we eat the pots with our eyes, digest them with our minds, assimilate them into our being, and they come out through our fingers not as copies but our own pots fed by those observed pots." But what if the author (Peterson?) translated 'hara" as stomach and Hamada had intended a more spiritual digestion. If this was his intent then my understanding, which is of a more intellectual digestion, is wrong. This, to me is the important point, at the
core our pots have to come from our guts and not a falable inturpretation of an external idea.] but I feel that by superficially appropriating the label of a cultural construct we disrespect the depth and meaning of those ideas.
I posted this under Mug/Tea-bowl as they both seem to speak to the same core question "What pots do I make?". Can I make Cha-wan? No, but I can make a board of pots, trying to learn from Cha-wan, and by simile how these cups can inform our daily ritual of coffee. (Cardew made "morning cups" with two small handles { morning light coming in and cafe au lait made with Jamaican Blue Mountain}- In reflection I find it interesting how having two handles, neither one of which being large enough to hold the cup, keeps you from doing anything else and forces you towards being drinking coffee now.
DRB
Lee wrote:
On Fri, Apr 4, 2008 at 6:04 PM, Nobody Special wrote:
> I have been making pots for a few years, and collecting them for many more.
> I routinely see mugs priced from about $20-45. Tea bowls seem always to be
> priced at $60-125.
There are some cups lower than that at the site. I noticed them
at $30.00. My mugs and yunomi tend to be about the same price. A
mug without a foot but with a handle takes about the same amount of
time as a yunomi with a trimmed foot.
Tea ceremony bowls are a horse of a different color. Maybe
those are at the higher end of the range you post. Most tea bowls
in the West are made simply as a functional object to enjoy. If
powdered tea is going to be whisked in them, you have to take in
consideration the process of whisking and drinking tea. But it is
rare that tea is whisked in them. I highly recommend it, not only
to learn what a good teabowl is, but also for the health benefits of
drinking powdered tea.
I purchased the domain yunomi.org and will organize
information about tea ware and tea there.
--
Lee, a Mashiko potter in Minneapolis
http://mashikopots.blogspot.com/
"Ta tIr na n-óg ar chul an tI-tIr dlainn trina chéile"-that is, "The
land of eternal youth is behind the house, a beautiful land fluent
within itself." -- John O'Donohue
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You may look at the archives for the list, post messages, change your
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