Jane Wheeler's Blog Japan

more walking and painting and prairie gardening

Posted jane -->on 22nd Apr 2021

on Saturday mornings I drive to Bowhouse near St Monan’s to pick up a local veg and other foodstuffs order, so I have been looking for walks nearby. last week’s was one of those. this week I did a circuit of part of the coastal path and inland around the Balcaskie estate.

first along the coastal path above those rocky beaches with all their geology laid out

and the sloping cliffs covered in gorse with linnets singing in the sunshine on the top twigs

I think the footpath may follow a raised beach, where the land has been rising through the Holocene, due to the release of pressure from the weight of ice sheets.

and a clump of alexanders, so familiar in Norfolk, which knocked me back as I haven’t noticed it anywhere else here yet, this spring. it looked like the frosts has browned it off a bit.

the hedgerow plants really have not got going yet inland, though I did see a stand of jack-in-the-hedge at Kemback on Sunday.

Pittenweem and St Monan’s both have sea-filled swimming pools cut out of the rocky foreshore. all year round swimming has really become a thing over the last year, everyone seems to be doing it.

the pretty little East Neuk (Neuk being the Scottish for nook, or corner) fishing harbours all look a bit the same. this is St Monan’s. I avoided the Pittenweem one because of the steep steps down to it which my knee finds difficult at the moment. it is the most active commercially apparently, a small number of boats remain, nowadays mainly fishing for shellfish. several fish vans from Pittenweem deliver inland, blasting their horns as they roll up – one outside this house – but their fish will be coming from a central market I’d guess.

from St Monan’s there’s a not very exciting stretch along the road to Abercrombie and then across a couple of fields to the ruined church. Abercrombie, recorded in 1157-60 as Abercrumbin, means ‘mouth of the river Crombie’. The first element is the Pictish word aber ‘river mouth’. Crombie is a stream-name derived from the Gaelic word crombadh ‘bending, winding’.

with old gravestones to read and ponder over. a new plaque in the wall celebrates the lives of Tom and Ingrid Pevsner, he born in Dresden in 1926 … what story lies behind that I wonder. I completely missed five sculptured stones, showing Celtic ornament, in the walls, mention found online.

so why was this medieval church abandoned and allowed to fall into ruin, some time in the seventeenth century? something to do with the presbyterian movement? the graveyard is still consecrated, presumably, as it has more recent memorials, including the Pevsners.

walking on round the estate in the marvellous sunshine

over a formal bridge

past redpoll cattle with two young calves

and the very restrained house, no mad gothic stuff there …

the madness reserved for the lime trees, all pruned of their whiskers and skirts

and two clumps of snakeshead fritillaries rather isolated along the verge.

the button-push gates and the lodge with its matching doocots (dovecote in Scottish)

are quite fancy. from the right hand doocot you can just see Kelly Castle, under Kelly Law, another walk I must do.

I am taking my four winds sketch books on all my walks, I just started the sixth one.

very quick drawings, done on varied papers, some already drawn on, or patterned, bring a life and intensity to painting.

I also have a new tool, a brush pen, designed for calligraphic writing, specifically Japanese and Chinese scripts. it brings a broader more intuitive attitude.

the new book has some different papers

from envelopes (a Mina Perhonen invite card envelope, which is an art object in itself) and birthday present wrapping.

it already has some hints inserted

the first one only took me a few days to get through, but now it’s a couple of weeks. they are thicker, though, more signatures (book-binding term for the packets of folded paper in sections that form a book) sewn in.

meanwhile the new painting has been taking shape, a lot of green brush-drawing

then a coat of translucent yellows,

and something else started to happen, which will have to wait for the next blog

meanwhile ALL my little prairie plants are outside in the growshed, wrapped in wool liners to keep the night cold (and frost) off.

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Pragmata Gallery

Posted jane -->on 23rd May 2015

here are some photos from the first exhibition in Japan, which Pragmata Gallery kindly sent me;

first of all, the pots arrived in one piece, except for one black clay incense burner which lost its little blip ear thing – that clay is very fragile even after a stoneware firing.

here is Petros in his gardening outfit – the theme was an English Garden – he has seen so many photos of my garden and the countryside around here ….

“grass” on the floor

although Petros is Greek, he has certainly absorbed the principles of japanese organisation and small space interiors

Petros and I were very pleased with the result. I am very grateful to him for putting on this exhibition, and honoured to have the work there.

soon there will be another exhibition in Tokyo, at the Oz Zingaro gallery

with a very posh invite. it opens on 28th May, here are the details

Oz Zingaro, Takashi Murakami’s ceramics gallery in Tokyo

Yubinbango164-0001, Nakano-ku, Tokyo Nakano 5-52-15
Nakano Broadway 4F 03-5318-4150
opening times 12:00 to 19:00

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two firings, very different

Posted jane -->on 3rd May 2015

I’ve been making work for a second show in Japan this last two weeks, having shipped off thirty three pieces for the first one, at Pragmata Gallery, last week. it’s horribly last minute especially as the last firing was a bit of a shocker.

I used to have more of this when I first started using the black iron oxide crackle slip combination, and I suspected that I was pushing it. but I was trying for deeper blues and that requires thicker coats of the chun glaze. as you can see I overdid it.

glaze flowed more than I was expecting

a shame because the blues were indeed beautiful

but some pieces were exceptional and are on their way to Pragmata gallery. the exhibition there opens on the 8th May.

in the way of things I was perhaps overcautious on the next firing. I was pretty sure that the crackle slip would have calmed down and not open up like this

it is only really a crackle slip when freshly mixed.

and I was right. also I didn’t want it to cover up the imprints of leaves and stems pressed into the fresh clay when I made the pots, nor the runs and layers of the iron oxide.

so the thinner layer of slip gave me these lovely watercolour effects.

this very spectacular bowl came from the first firing.

this from the second. I was rather surprised. was the difference due just to the depth of the chun glaze, as the oxide under it was the same as before? or did the early reduction that I had been chasing, to get the clay feet of the pots toasty, somehow change the action of the oxide with the glaze? we will see what happens in future firings.

at the back of the kiln the blues were much stronger. I have no idea why.

these were at the front. I have to say that what I have been doing works one hundred percent better on a grogged dark clay. this is a relatively smooth white stoneware.

but here is a red grogged stoneware, the pot is very lovely but it could have been much bluer at the back of the kiln.

I have four large bottles from this firing which I’m very pleased with, and eight small pieces, bottles and caddies.

plus around eighteen from previous firings. all to be shipped off on wednesday to Oz Zingaro Gallery in Tokyo.

then I’m going to get experimenting.

meanwhile, this beautiful photograph taken in the highlands of Scotland by my daughter encapsulates a lot of the things that happen in the glaze slip oxide clay relationship in these pots

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crosses and stitches

Posted jane -->on 14th Apr 2015

boro patchwork from japan uses running stitches which become decorative in utilitarian pattern making. the stitches are called sashiko. many contemporary textile artists use these stitches in a painterly expressive way which I admire, it looks deceptively simple but as it is a way of drawing with thread it takes a good deal of skill and understanding to carry off. artists like India Flint, Christine Mausberger and Lotta Helleburg use it beautifully.

I have come to the end of a long run of imprinting clay with leaves, and it occuured to me that going back to mark-making in this very simple way would work well.

with a bamboo chisel-shaped tool I danced over the clay making crosses, put the rolling pin over again to close them up a little, made the pots.

rather a lot of caddies, lids cut with a scalpel

I was using a smoother clay than usual

an almost white stoneware, sprinkled with rust scraped off various rusty old objects.

the next thing is how to finish them – ie how to not cover up the crosses. I used oxides to fill them.

most have the usual watery coating of oxide, covered with a thin coat of slip and the chun glaze. I’m counting on the depth of the marks to allow them to show through.

I have one big one with my old poisonous dry barium glaze over the oxide, which is mostly only in the crosses. so we’ll see how that comes out. I’m firing today, and there are three glaze tests in there, so fingers crossed.

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an exhibition coming up

Posted jane -->on 7th Jan 2015

in just under 2 weeks I have an exhibition of pots in the Bircham Gallery in Holt, together with photos by the gallery owner, Chris Harrison. a great opportunity to put the wood-fired pieces out into the world. however we selected some slightly older pieces, and some “back catalogue” ones as well,

like this huge flask vessel from 2007. after my first experience of woodfiring with Nic Collins, and particularly of placing pots on their backs or sides on wads, that’s how I fired this one, in my gas kiln. it was too tall for the kiln standing up. I also placed some little containers of salt near it, something which I had seen Nic do.

this was fired in a makeshift saggar also in my gas kiln, with hardwood shavings. I tried it three times and the best results came from this firing. there are two other pieces, both of which reflect the changes in my work due to firing with Nic, and with Gas Kimishima, when I spent two weeks camping and firing for ten days in a wood near Tring.

now I have got such good results on Nic’s woodfiring workshop, I will continue to take part – it is a unique opportunity for me to wood fire in a group situation, with all Nic’s expertise available, something I could never do at home.

whether covered in the ambient ash and cinder melt

or red clay glazed with shino

or further back in the kiln with only flame marks and wonderful toasty clay colours

my pots really love this sort of firing.

in contrast, there will be a big group of gas-fired pieces in this chun glaze with the crawling slip and iron oxide under it.

the jewel-like chun glaze rolling off and dribbling over the naked clay has the same kind of feel as the wood fired pieces, but the light colouring, refracting and reflecting light, makes them at the same time quite different.

clay, pots, trees, ash, leaves, light, refracted blue …..

I hope to see a few people who like my pots, at the Bircham Gallery on Saturday 17th January!

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grand ideas, inspiration and temptation

Posted jane -->on 7th Jan 2014

a beautiful hand-sewn silk dress, made and dyed by Australian artist India Flint, and reproduced here by her kind permission. she used her leaf bundling technique to dye it, including some shibori tie-dye, and a huge kelp stem which seems to have been twisted round the outside to help with the colours.

a photo taken by Australian artist Kaz Madigan as it was unrolled after boiling then cooling.

my efforts up until now have not been quite as exciting

these are some sample pieces I tried out eucalyptus leaves and some native leaves on

but I have been inspired to hand-sew some dresses with silk, silk jersey, and silk and merino jersey, and taken the plunge;

rolling this one up with eucalyptus leaves given me for christmas, and in this case with ivy berries, which may or may not give a pale sappy green, and a piece of old iron chain from the old pig sheds in my garden

to make this bundle, boiled in a copper bain-marie with red onion skins and a splash of vinegar.

and this one, a dress made from the tube of silk and merino jersey, bundled and boiled up on my woodstove with eucalyptus leaves, more scrap iron and a splash of vinegar

which I unbundled today, and found, to my huge excitement, the most marvellous colours and leaf shapes, plus the piece of ilex oak leafy twig I had popped in came up as a purple-grey spotty leaf print, and the black outside of the bundle as a square “bib” on the chest, back and front. I am not sure where I am going with all this but it is huge fun, and addictive.

guided by India’s blog and her books, Second Skin, and Eco Colour I bought a book on Shibori, Japanese tie-dye, and I have tried out two of the methods – this one, pleated-on-a-rope Yanagi, resuscitating a hand-knit cashmere shawl which had been at the bottom of the stock box for several years

and this one, mokume, on a Katherine Hamnett silk top from the eighties which had been lurking in my chest of drawers, unloved, for rather a long time. these were boiled together on the wood stove with eucalyptus leaves, scrap iron and vinegar. I think the fact that these are cooked in a better casserole with a good lid, hotter, and probably for a bit longer, may account for the more definite colours. but I haven’t opened that onion skin one with the ivy berries yet … patience! time makes all the difference ….

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“strong feeling”

Posted jane -->on 18th Jul 2013

in 2007 I was privileged to meet the master potter Shiho Kanzaki at his home and workshop in Shigaraki, through some very dear Japanese friends. we tipped up on a Sunday afternoon and introduced ourselves out of the blue. Shiho san is a very courteous and friendly, somewhat ascetic person, who loves to share himself and his pots, and his world view, and while my friends talked to him, I was invited to look at his work very thoroughly.

in his book, “Encounters with Fire, Encounters with People” which is available as an e-book on Amazon, he says some very interesting things about the creative process, and being a creative person. in living his life to the full, aware of the Infinite, and of his debt to it, and to every person that he has encountered, he can create his own ceramics, without pride and without the sense that he had accomplished success through his own efforts, and in gratitude. he says everyone has his or her own task, and each has a responsibility to fulfil that task – no-one else can fulfil it. his task is to “create his own ceramics, pieces that cannot be made by anyone else. his pottery is not made to please others, or for the sake of novelty, or to show off his technical expertise.” …..” either we live in confusion, rushing to and fro, misguided by short-sighted calculation and self-seeking, or we become fully ourselves and openly live our lives in the freedom of our essential inner natures.”

Iga vase, iga hanaire. h.25.5cm, by Shiho Kanzaki

one can see a creative practice as an indulgence, as a form of narcissism. “what’s it for?” “why am I wasting precious resources making pots which are not necessary for daily life”. Shiho san makes me feel that I am doing the right thing, following the path that my creative instincts tell me to. I am encouraged by my friends, and I am grateful to many friends and many encounters – a whole web of circumstances – which have meant that I am here, writing my blog about making pots in a particular way, which is my own.

“strong feeling” is an expression Shiho san often uses about those pots which have undergone ten to fifteen day wood firings near or in the firebox of his kiln. my most recent firing contained several pots that I would describe as strong, with some kind of intensity produced by the clash of materials used on them, not by long firing. I fire my gas kiln for about fourteen hours, but there are other ways of making “strong feeling” pots, I think.

for this firing I felt very confident that I could produce a lot of pieces with the oxide/crackle slip/chun layering, so two thirds are glazed this way. after the scraping off episode when I glazed the last batch I was fairly careful, but inevitably I was tempted to push just that little bit further with the thickness of oxide, slip and glaze. I almost overdid it on one piece and the whole lot started to crack off where the double dipping made it thickest – but I pushed it back on while still damp. some of that did fall off, and there were blobs of glaze on the kiln floor around it, but the pot itself was fine. this chun glaze is very forgiving – and the thickness gave me these wonderful blue coloured runs.

I haven’t had the blue happening much on the chun for the last two firings and I was wondering if the new batch was different – but it was just a matter of thickness, and something to do with the firing as well, because on some of these it is only on one side.

on others where the chun isn’t so thick the black iron oxide appears to be bursting out from under the layer of slip.

I have a lot of pots that I can glaze this way – as this one, which had been hanging back for a good while now, with no inspiration from me on what to do with it. using the oxide means I don’t have to worry about which clay the body is; they all work well with this combination.

the other third of the firing was with the ash glazes – really the most interesting is the unwashed ash.

I cleaned the glaze off the feet more thoroughly, and the firing was not quite as reduced and not quite as hot as the last one, so I didn’t have ash melt all over my shelves.

you can find images of the whole firing here

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big bottles

Posted jane -->on 1st Apr 2013

in this freezing weather it has been tough to work at anything to do with pottery, and in fact I have had a few weeks of knitting work to do. but I did get a couple of bags of “pizza” clay – a kind of white crank which is sold for making pizza ovens, but is good for sculptural pieces. it’s not terribly plastic and can be a bit anaemic with the wrong glaze, but I finished a big piece made of it in january and was pleased enough to order some more. I added more texture by rolling in crumbs of porcelain, then I left the slabs wrapped in plastic for a week so that the dry porcelain absorbed some of the damp from the clay and didn’t fall out as soon as I used the slabs.

it’s actually great to work with a little damper than usual – cold conditions make it much slower to stiffen and dry – and being such a stiff clay anyway it behaves very well for slab-building.

these two bottles will dry to about one inch shorter than my kiln.

lots of patting and paddling needed to get nice rounded shoulders and a shape that is just slightly softened.

I didn’t light the woodburner when I made the first one – there was enough sunshine coming through the rooflight to warm the workshop up to about 10C and it was bearable, warmly dressed. I keep a storage heater on low in there during the winter, to stop the clay freezing and the books from getting damp.

radio three keeps me going …

for this one I needed that extra heat, the sun didn’t cooperate.

I think this clay needs a glaze that accentuates its roughness, like my very dry barium carbonate glaze, and I will double dip with the crawling magnesium. with enough reduction the barium gets tinges of ochre and green, and reacts strongly with the magnesium glaze.

the porcelain crumbs stay whiter under the glaze

a nice texture

and a bit extra texture round the neck …

a few simple tools, and lots of gooey slip to stick the parts together.

I pulled this bottle out of the grass from where I dumped it; it cracked in the firing. sadly I can’t find the bottom, or it would be a candidate for the japanese method of mending pots with lacquer and gold powder, kintsugi, which I am going to have a crack (haha) at in the summer – you need warm temperatures for the lacquer to harden. funnily enough I think the cracks accentuate the shape.

I have another bag of the pizza clay which I plan to make two more big bottles with but this time I’ll paint them with black iron oxide when they are raw, and then slip them with the crackle slip, to get this effect, but on the much bigger bottles.

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porcelain

Posted jane -->on 8th Nov 2009

I have not written about the pots for a while. I have a new project, making porcelain pieces for Mina Perhonen in Japan, which are more production pieces, even though they are still made by hand, but things have been slow, with many interruptions.

the order consists of bottles, conical bowls, and spoons. it has taken a few weeks to get anywhere near filling the kiln, but there are enough pieces to start packing it now.

I have experimented with many different textures, made by impressing leaves, ivy flower heads, and various implements into the porcelain.

the spoons are very delicate; a mouse broke one by treading on it – a fat mouse presumably. I can’t get rid of them in the workshop.

I have also made some more jars with cut-off lids, using the impress/stamping technique to almost pierce the clay, or pushing knife or brush handles through it.

as the porcelain is translucent, this should allow the light into/out of these, and they might be pretty with tea-lights in them.

the last set of pieces were these six bottles, made in Southern Ice porcelain. it seems to split open even more than the Audrey Blackman, I was surprised to find most of these with top to bottom splits in them, although I had made deep grooves in them by impressing apple leaves into them, which have big central stems, and will have encouraged the clay to open.

the oak leaf and rose hip arrangement is one of the decorations I made for our feast; taken out of the hedgerow in Sharrington Road, the oaks are for us sea-going types (Hearts of Oak) and for the Bale oak ….

I will try some more saggar firing with some of these, but the pieces for Japan will be glazed. there will be some more split firings, I think.

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amsterdam three – shopping

Posted jane -->on 7th Nov 2009

day four in Amsterdam. a trip to the Nordmarket flea market with mina perhonen. shopping and walking, hopping on and off the bus that runs up and down the Princes Graft, the first of the old canals near Tamago.

we found buttons, very useful, I got a bag full of big vintage plastic ones, suitable for hats,

and handmade paper made into books with wonderful shabby pieces of leather for covers, and a cord to tie them closed.

I bought three .. Akira and Naho bought quite a lot. the vendor gave them a couple of tiny books for free.

then we wandered off down some of the tiny back streets, near where I found this entrance on Saturday;

all very pretty, and we found a shop full of American forties and fifties industrial furniture down here.

perfect for the new addition to the Mina store in Kyoto.

the more Akira looked the more he added to the list of things to be shipped to Japan.

the young Dutch guy was quite taken aback, he hadn’t expected to sell everything so quickly.

Akira explained that they were going to make patchwork quilts and cushions from their fabrics, and this sort of furnishing would be perfect to show it off. to fit out a shop, it would not be so much really. of course shipping to japan is an expense, but in a shipping container, packed well, which the owner explained he would do himself ….. he was falling over backwards to be helpful.

after this excitement we walked back to Tamago, and I started my rather protracted trip home – the train back to Eindhoven turned out to be problematic, and it took me an hour longer than it should have, but the rest of the journey went smoothly. I was sad to leave my friends, but inspired by our weekend.

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