Lee Love on mon 29 mar 04
I remember driving to Stillwater one Saturday, to visit
MacKenzie and look at his pottery. After we arrived, I think we were
looking at the shard pile and Jean noticed a broken pot with MacKenzie's
bright green glaze on it. It is an oxidation glaze he developed to
be put in a cool, oxidized area of his big kiln. The surface of the
green pot was oily looking. MacKenzie told me that he learn from
Matsuzaki Ken, Shimaoka's leading student, that he put his oribe in
hydrochloric acid to get rid of the metallic bloom. I thought of
this when John H. talked about most traditional oribes not passing the
"lemon test." I know this is probably true.
Here in Japan, many potters still have secrets. A
friend of mine was visiting Akechi, the shop where we buy non-Mashiko
materials, and a local Oribe potter, (someone who won one of the Mashiko
Meese International Grand Prizes with an oribe dish) was there too. I
asked my friend to find out if there was acid at Akechi for this use, to
put on a Nuka Sage bowl of mine. I asked her to ask about Oribe,
because I thought that the same acid would take the bloom off the Sage bowl.
My friend asked the owner of Akechi what to use. The owner
noticed the Prize winning Oribe potter and asked him what he used.
The potter didn't answer, but just turned his back on the owner. The
owner turned beat red to be treated so rudely. This potter must
think the acid bath is a secret.
No doubt, my traditional Nuka Sage glaze would not resist the
lemon test either. Why do we use Oribe, Glassy Green and Sage
Nuka? Because we don't know how to test it for leaching? Because we
are Stoopid? (keep your comments to yourself!) ;-) No. We use
these copper glazes for aesthetic reasons.
If you go to the link below, you can see a closeup of my
Sage Nuka on a sushi platter. If you look, you can see why I use it.
This is a sushi platter: not a lemon platter, nor a cider platter or
a red sauce spaghetti platter. It is safe for sushi and the glaze
has been used this way for hundreds of years. I didn't use acid on
this. It came out of the kiln list way:
http://public.fotki.com/togeika/pots_from_mashiko/sage.html
--
Lee In Mashiko Lee@Mashiko.org http://Mashiko.us
"With Humans it's what's here (he points to his heart) that makes the
difference. If you don't have it in the heart, nothing you make will
make a difference." ~~Bernard Leach~~ (As told to Dean Schwarz)
| |
|
