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raku/shino

updated fri 2 jun 00

 

mel jacobson on thu 1 jun 00


please let me jump on vince's wagon.
nothing in clay is static, it changes always, even if
a very small amount. just the exhaustion of materials makes it
impossible to keep things the same. (find some 12th century
chinese cobalt.)

american raku has almost nothing to do with
japanese raku...it is a new thing. it has its own
life, reasons. we just transfer a couple techniques
and a name.

it is like shino, something i am studying hard right
now. the original was pure white, perhaps the first
all white glaze ever made in japan's history. now
we are doing jet black, is it shino?...i suppose by loose
definition. felspathic glaze, cone 11, but it almost ends
there.

we by nature as potters cannot leave things alone...always
want to add our own benchmark...we honor, name, usually
give credit, but we like to tweak things a bit.

paul soldner took the old japanese idea of raku and bent the
hell out of it. when you see penny copper glazes with streaks
of red and blue green, well it does not look like a black shino
tea bowl at all....in fact, would make an old tea master gag.
and ,without question, the western world of clay 2000 has little
to do with kyoto in the 17th century.
mel
nice idea about putting things on my webpage/clayart if we have a
breakdown with clayart.
i will do that from now on.





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