Learning about Japanese Wood-fired Ceramics

I had the opportunity yesterday to attend a workshop given by Masakazu Kusakabe and Marc Lancet on Japanese Wood-Fired Ceramics. I almost didn’t sign up for this in spite of my love of both the forms and the firing technique. The usual list of excuses – too busy, evening dinner engagement, should be cleaning the house and anything else I could rationalize as a reason not to spend the day being fascinated by hearing the stories these two had to tell and the wonderful techniques they had to show us.

Kusakabe-sensei demonstrates throwing a tea bowl off the mound.

Throwing traditional forms

Masakazu Kusakabe demonstrated the throwing and trimming of traditional Japanese forms while he talked about the philosophy of why he was throwing and altering each form the way he was as well as the how of what he was doing.

Preparing slabs for tossing

Tossing surface decorated slabs

Simultaneously Marc Lancet was preparing thick slabs of clay from the 25 lb. blocks of Grogzilla, a clay made by Clay Planet where the workshop was held. He was texturing the slabs using a variety of methods and brushing slip on one of the textured surfaces. A needle tool was then used to draw on the surface after the slip was dried with a torch. The torch was used both to speed up the process, but also to limit the depth of the dry layer.

Slab has been textured, coated with slip which is allowed to dry, and then drawn on with needle tool. Slab prepared by Marc and drawing by Kusakabe-sensei.

The thick slab was then tossed several times, rotating the slab with each toss. The lines of the drawing stretched out to give the effect of the thick and thin lines of a Sumi-e drawing and the textured sides of the thick slab thin out to become a frame for the finished slab. As always with any art piece, one has to know when to stop!

Tossed from slab textured by Marc and picture drawn by Kusakabe with needle tool

And another one

I have not tried tossing a slab.  Marc made it look easy but I’m sure it requires a bit of practice. He did give us a hint on throwing them – aim for having the middle of the slab strike the plaster first.Several slabs were prepared in the course of the morning. The process went quickly once the slabs were prepared and ready to go. Here is another slab from drawing to finish:

Drawing on slab with needle tool.

Slab with needle tool drawing.

And here is the finished slab:

Masakazu Kusakabe and Marc Lancet showing the results of their collaboration to the class.

So now what do we do with the slabs:

I likely would have just stopped there and called them wall plates. But they are destined to become sculptures. Each slab was wrapped around a wooden table leg after first wrapping newspaper around the leg and removing the cylinder immediately after wrapping and sealing the seam.  Some of the cylinders were finished by adding bottoms, rims and handles. Others were added to the pieces that Marc had thrown and altered in the morning session.

While Marc was working on the sculptures, Kusakabe-sensei was demonstrating trimming the tea bowls and we were given the opportunity to try some of the different trimming tools he was using – an oyster shell, small scraps of beveled wood on one of the tea  bowls ourselves. So we even got to get a little clay on our hands.

Masakazu Kusakabe demonstrated trimming several of the tea bowls and had us try one each.

Definitely a worthwhile day. Lots of ideas. Here’s a link to more pictures on Flickr if you would like to see more of the day: More pictures on Flickr And if you would like to know more about the how-to of  Japanese Wood-fired Ceramics including how to build kilns for wood firing, buy their book entitled “Japanese Wood-Fired Ceramics” or if you can read the kanji “The Secrets of Japanese Wood-Fired Ceramics”.

A few of the cylinders formed from the slabs.

Marc assembling a cylinder and a thrown altered form.