Lee Love on tue 30 sep 03
----- Original Message -----
From:
> It is just that now and then, when it comes up, I tend to
> think "Jeeze, that is a lot of dough for a cute little Tea
> Bowl especially of a kind that a competant fellow could
> readily make a few hundred of them in a day, which WAS at
> one time, a big part of their charm, no?
It sometimes it is difficult to understand the values of other
cultures. I personally enjoy "found" teabowls and don't imagine my self
ever buying an expensive "new" teabowl. I'd be more drawn to buy some old
Yi ware, with the same money.
It's difficult for me to understand spending the same amount of money as
these tea bowls on certain brands of motorcylces or cars too. Or spending
a lot of money on houses. I don't understand million dollar cruise
missles, or billion dollar stealth planes (most people on our planet don't
understand these last things.)
I'd much rather spend my money on travel, books, animals,
or electronic equipment or cameras. I usually like to spend money on
things that enable me, not just to aquire things in themselves. I can see
someone else doing the same thing with an motorcycle or someone who is
serious about tea and buys a teabowl. You have to understand, in Japan,
teabowls are not a consumeable, but can be an investment that doesn't loose
value like your IRA.
In the past, I've found myself simutaneously defending my
teacher's high prices and MacKenzie's low prices. I support what they do
because they do it with integrity, they are both generous people and their
behavior and the intergrity of their work is NOT effected by their prices.
It is amusing how their prices effect others though.
Lee In Mashiko
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