primalmommy on mon 29 mar 04
I guess my point was never that pottery should be made to work in a
microwave. It was that you can't assume an enlightened generation --
people who are familiar with the making, tradition, use of pottery --
will necessarily have an impact on the coming "microwave" generation,
who, like it or not, may be more like the white-tile, fast-food,
heat-and-serve, mass-produced-everything folks in the world where I
live.
And those young people --in Japan or Des Moines -- may not have the
information their parents/grandparents did about which platter should be
used only for serving, which bowl isn't good for baby's orange juice.
The pots will still be around after the knowledgeable are gone.
Old ladies here --and probably younger ones in England -- know that you
warm a ceramic tea pot before making tea in it. Most folks of my
generation, though, treat everything like it's Pyrex -- out of the
freezer, into the oven, out of the oven, onto the marble countertop, the
microwave, the dishwasher. Not because they fail to appreciate
tradition, but because they have never KNOWN that tradition. I don't
know how many handmade teapots will survive.
If the issue were nonchalance over glaze toxicity -- which might look,
to me, like saying "It's ok to make poisonous surfaces here because
people know not to use them with acidic foods or for long periods" --
then the minute that pot leaves the hands of the knowedgable (through
export, or time) it carries the danger with it. Like the raku from the
art fair once the tag is removed.
I grew up with hunters and guns, and assumed everybody knew how to use
and respect them. Now I read the newspaper. The little kid who just
accidentally shot/killed his friend in Toledo didn't have the
woodsman/grandfather I did. I am not trying to be dramatic here, and I
know nobody is going to blow their head off with a teabowl, but any time
"knowledge of safe use" is a condition of safety, you're over-relying on
the bank of knowledge out there.. or its ability to translate to future
generations.
Can't remember if it was Mark Twain or Groucho Marx who said, "The
problem with making things idiot proof is that the idiots are so damn
ingenious."
The other angle at which we are failing to connect, perhaps, is that you
live in a wood firing world, while 90% of what I see sold at art fairs,
festivals, coffee shops, etc. is ^6 electric pottery, much of it made by
potters who are not skilled in glaze chemistry. Unless you have access
to a large art department, craft center, or guild, that's pretty much
the way we cook our fish --er, pots -- around here. And a lot of the
pots that are made in those big places are made by folks who have no
idea about the glazes in those giant buckets. I have been told by the
head of a large program, when asking about glaze stability, that
"anything fired to ^10 is safe." This was a professor. Why would I think
to question that?
Even folks who learn in ^10 reduction sometimes graduate (or quit, or
get sick of guild politics and leave) and shift to what they can do from
their own studio --which is quite often ^6 electric. It isn't out of
some anal retentive urge to reproduce the industrial standard.. and the
old notion that ^6 electric (or lower, for majolica) means making the
same old motel-lamp colors and cash-flow blues/rutile greens has been
challenged by potters determined to "play the cards we are dealt" and
see what we can do within those limits.
And when I say "limits" it is not an implication of "lesser methods".
Wood firing has limits, like raku, or any other. I sometimes wonder if
people recognize the sheer number of electric kiln potters out there..
less visible, perhaps, than bigger dogs with bigger kilns and taller
chimneys.. but there may be a tidal wave of new work inthe next few
years. If ^6 is not your thing, maybe you're not familiar with the
challenges of the materials, the difficulty of making good glass at low
temps without feeling like you work at the HazMat center in your own
studio. Or wondering if it really is "food safe, microwave safe,
dishwasher safe" like you say.
The alternative to potters following the lead of books like "mastering
^6" -- (and learning how it works, so they can make their own glazes,
fire down for stable mattes, etc.) --is for potters to keep buying "by
the pint" or "ready made", trusting somebody somewhere that it really is
"food safe" and paying big dollars to make pots in all the colors
available at the local paint-a-plate. Sounds too much like eating at
mcDonalds. It's expensive, and nobody knows for sure where it came from
or what's in it, but it's easier than making your own and it's always
the same.
I am not saying that potters are destroying the environment. Only that
we have as much responsibility to the hands that hold our pots as
corporate polluters do, tradition or no. In my part of the country it
was "traditional" to bird hunt with lead shot when I was a kid..
tradition changed, and steel shot works fine. It was 'traditional" to
put sodium metabisulfite in homemade wine...not for this girl. Don't get
me started on what was in some of those 'home remedies'.
As a folklorist I am at peace with the fact that traditions are
continually evolving. The new quilters are doing some amazing work,
often aided by computer designs. Technology is changing the face of many
forms of art and craft. The new native American pots have become
something remarkable, new artistic visions informed by old patterns. I
can't imagine standing there harrumphing because they were not fired in
buffalo manure or because they don't look like they used to. Time
marches on. Tradition marches with it, a step behind. We would be
mistaken to throw out the treasures of the ages -- like fine old
japanese pottery, tea ceremony, or a nice mata ortiz pot... but I think
it's wise not to hold too tightly to the parts that no longer make
sense. Where you are, what you are doing maybe still does. In the world
of oxidation, though, it just doesn't translate.
After all, what we do now makes the tradition for our grandchildrens'
generation.
Yours,
Kelly in Ohio
who likes a little "red herring" -- sashimi, maybe -- some sesame seeds
- wasabi, something wrapped in nori, pickled ginger sliced thin and some
really smooth, pretty chopsticks... green tea.. and as the bumper
stickers say around here, "I don't give a damn HOW they do it in
California" ;0)
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