In October 2013, I attended a week long workshop with Japanese potter, Shozo Michikawa at West Dean College.
Shozo is a generous and enthusiastic teacher. He shared traditional Japanese pottery techniques for making tea bowls and tea pots, as well as his unique methods for forming twisted, natural looking vessels on the wheel.
A strong ideal of Shozo’s is that the clay should not lose life and feeling of movement by being made into an object.
We discussed the Japanese design aesthetic of, ‘Wabi Sabi.’ Simply put, it is the beauty of the imperfect, transient or incomplete.
Since my return, many of my students, have enjoyed experimenting with these ideas, finding it a liberating approach, as I have myself!
These Shino style tea bowls are deliberately deformed on the wheel during making. The foot ring is quickly carved, rather than turned on the wheel. Liberating indeed.
The component parts of these tiny teapots were thrown quickly, ‘off the hump’ before assembly.
The following gallery shows more work that I made on Shozo’s course, as well as afterwards, back in Sidcup. Do also look up Shozo’s own original ceramics. He is sought after, and sells and exhibits internationally. (I will provide up to date links asap. Currently I have not been able to get onto his website.)
