Shadow seeing through light, cloud hunting a cup of coffee. Beauty of little things.

 

Sitting in my garden studio adjacent to my workshop, I am in a surreal world of ordinary beauty. It feels like both inside and outside, as if I was simultaneously at the bottom of the sea or in the heart of a great wood. Making a cup of tea, writing down thoughts and sketching ideas, pictures and words, handling and looking at raw materials, clay and tools before starting to make with my hands, all these activities are sacred.

The shop started with my project "The Automatic Crystal", a poignant love poem by Aimé Césaire, which I became possessed by in 2007. Having made a great many porcelain peanuts for an installation work, I started to make peanut jewellery followed by other wearable objects made of porcelain, metal and bicycle inner tubes. The works created from this project are more idiosyncratic & eccentric in nature than my more recent developments.

I have been searching for universal beauty, over the years and I have been attracted to simple materials and colours which accentuate the essence of form through light and shadow. Having come from Japan, I have always been aware of wabi-sabi and I feel that the beauty I am attracted to is essential to nature. Having lived in England and encountered European art closely, I can see that the attraction to rustic beauty is mutual to both cultures as people appreciate vintage objects that have been weathered by usage and natural passage of time.

I came up with “beauty of little things” as my shop title because it sums up where my inspiration comes from. I’m drawn to simple beautiful things in life that make me stop and appreciate my smallness within Existence. Chipped old coffee bowl, wonky handmade chair, bashed piece of metal found on the footpath, clover growing out of the cracked paving stones….

As I create things intuitively through the process itself, I can only understand where my inspiration has come from by looking back at what I have made. I work from nature and also from pre-existing forms of human archetypical objects, shapes and ideas.

For me the sacred world is nature and it is perfect. Yet as a human I also absurdly live in a world of imperfection. Nature sees humans as a perfect part of itself and yet humans see nature as imperfect, which produces the pathos of the human condition. It seems that when my work succeeds for me there is a unity between the perfection of nature and the awkwardness of the human world.

In my rustic chic collection for example, the clay is textured in a mould of encapsulated foliage, then delicately built by hand so that each piece can be reproduced but has it’s own character, unique to the moment of creation. I have used terracotta clay and high fired it to the point of warping and burning. The pieces are then dipped in pure white tin glaze. It is thought that tin glaze was first developed in Mesopotamia over a thousand years ago in an attempt to imitate Chinese porcelain and travelled eventually to Spain and Italy, where the first pieces date back to the early 1300's.

I now make everything in small quantities with great care taken over each individual piece. Although there is great demand to rush to meet the accelarated desire of modern society, increasingly I am seeking an effortless harmony between my work and my daily life in the belief that this will bring greater sincerity in my objects.

2015 / Kent / England                             

 

 

小さい 物の美

 

ヨーロッパの芸術に魅かれ、２０代前半にイギリスに渡って、それからちょうど２０年経ちました。そして、さまざまなアートの形を探り続けたなかで、陶芸をはじめました。

 

16-17世紀ごろに、西洋の人たちが中国の磁器を羨望したらしく、それを真似るために、陶器に白い釉薬をかけた器があります。それは異文化へのあこがれと、生まれ育った土地の感性が一体して、西洋独特な美の物になりました。

 

そして私も、東洋に生まれ、西の国に暮らし、おおくの文化にふれながら物を作り続けてきました。洗練と素朴が出逢う物、文化を渡って共感できる美という物を想い、ここに生まれたのが、この　’Rustic Chic’ ー’錆シック’　コレクションです。

 

高い温度で焼き上げた、赤焦げ茶のテラコッタの深い色合いと、浸されたティンの白さは、文明をもこえた空と水の向こうにとどきたいという願いがあります。

 

イギリスの自然につつまれた小さな工房で、一つ一つ手作りした物なので、みんな個性的になりました。

 

静　ロンドン / ケント 2014