Leaving
Europe late evening, almost midnight from airport Charles De Gaulle near Paris.
Within an hour the airplane is at 10 km height and crossing continents and seas
with 1000 km per hour. The plane flies into the morning, the dark helmet of the
night is gradually changing from black via dark blue into lighter blue. More
colors appear on the horizon when suddenly the sun comes up and its bright warm
light is shaping the clouds and the scenery with Siberia’s winding rivers beneath.
Wow, flying is so amazing, it changes the small individual perspective of let’s
say some 100 meters when walking around into a vista where the curve of mother
earth is the horizon.
The
aircraft has deployed landing on Tokyo International Airport. Tokyo, expansive
and vertical metropole, very warm in August, with shopping malls cooled down to
comfortable temperatures for the overheated body and toilet seats warmed up to the
right temperature for the butt.
Traveling
in Japan is easy, to travel from Tokyo to Arita, about 1100 km distance, the
Shinkansen bullet train brings you in 5 hours to Fukuoka. In Fukuoka change the
Shinkansen train for the Midori express. Another hour and half omnibus-train traveling
from the metropole Fukuoka via Saga to Arita, through a plain scenery that
changes in a dense mountainous capricious landscape. The train shakes on the single-track
route passing many tunnels. A wheel is a circle. Train wheels are circles from
iron. An airplane engine is a turning impeller in a circular sleeve. Sengai
Gibon, a Zen Buddhist monk, drew a perfect circle with a calligraphy brush. The
sun, the eye and the horizon with the eye as center can be represented by
circles. Drawing on circular porcelain plates was the reason to go to Arita.
Arita,
in the beginning it is walking like an elephant in a porcelain shop. Such an
amount of porcelain, everywhere porcelain tableware, each house has a showcase
with porcelain cups, saucers, sake bottles or ramen bowls. Porcelain shops sell
man sized vases, dishes and plates decorated with rocks, nebulous streams,
trees, flowers, fishes. And Arita Ceramics Wholesalers area is the place to see
it altogether, traditional baroque style vases, pure and rigorously contemporary
teapots, cheap and expensive sake cups, exclusive and unique dishes next to
bowls in an edition of a million.
Here,
in this habitat of potters, painters, stackers and packers I am going to study
porcelain decoration techniques on circular plates and dishes. Shozaburo-san is
the teacher, sensei, a master in drawing flowers and bamboo who teaches cobalt underglaze
techniques on biscuit ware. After a week trying to draw straight lines, a stylized
pattern of the sea, leaves and flowers it is clear you can’t become a porcelain
decoration master in three months of time. To draw these traditional subjects
with the hand of a master the hand, body and mind have to be trained for a life
time. Hence I start with using my usual tools such as ruler, compasses, tape
and templates. Tradition is the norm in Arita College of Ceramics. A trajectory
from learning to draw straight lines, curved lines, a pattern representing the
sea, the chrysanthemum, the three friends of winter pine, plum and bamboo
ensures that the centuries old images survive. The question of what makes sense
to draw on a particular object of porcelain arose, like drawing flowers on a
vase or the symbol of water on a teacup. On a noodle or ramen bowl there is no
depiction of noodles nor ramen. The dish is hardly ever decorated with a fish,
a slice of meat or with vegetables like Chinese cabbage, asparagus or bean
sprouts. It made me reflect on what you would like to see and what makes sense
to see when your bowl, cup or dish is empty after you have nourished yourself. Some
experiments followed with cutting tomatoes, peppers, onions and mushrooms in
two, dip it in cobalt blue underglaze paint and stamp it on the biscuit ware. It
became clear that the results were boring. But to depict rice on a dish that
was a challenge. Rice is everywhere in Japan, in Arita it grows on every corner
and piece of land. Rice is holy, Shinto religion is about rice, it is the most
important ingredient of sushi, sake is made of rice. Rice is a weed; it is a
corn. When rice is harvested, and threshed, it is formless. I did some experiments
with rice: some hands of rice soaked in underglaze paint shoveled on a dry or
wet biscuit ware dish. Single corns of underglaze blue rice were put in a grid
on a dish, a thick layer of rice on a dish was sprinkled with watery underglaze
paint. It became clear that a single layer of rice corns on a dish sprinkled
with thin underglaze paint gave a beautiful result. As if looking into a small
universe of drifting corns, floating bacteria in different layers in a circular
space. Rice gave a satisfying result. And green tea leaves gave a good result
too.
The
change from the usual rectangular shaped drawing paper to a circular drawing
surface of porcelain clay is a small revolutionary change for an artist. The
circle has top nor bottom, it is a turning wheel, a running clock, a petrified
wave. Hokusai’s famous ‘under the wave of Kanagawa’ is a print of a growing and
swallowing wave on a rectangular piece of paper. It fits much better in a
circle. The shape of a wave in underglaze blue lines and the counter-mold of the
wave, the air in white glaze on a dish of 20 cm intersection. The blue and
white intermingle because the white of the counter-mold divides the lines.
Tableware
is decorated to distract, to entertain, to wonder and to have a subject to talk
about during dinner. In Europe it is quite rare that tableware is decorated, we
suffer from modernism which wiped out decoration from houses, furniture and
tableware. A no-nonsense protestant sentiment got rid of embellishing daily
life with too much adornment. When there is some distraction it is in the form
of the plate, cup or vase. In Japan it is the opposite, decoration is part of
the tradition. Decoration is in the roofs (complex compositions of hard edge surfaces
coated with undulating roof tiles), in kimono’s, Ukiyo-e prints and manga
books, in Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines. On sliding doors, on a folding
screen and on tableware. We like to brighten up life with beauty; art and
design play with this beauty, challenge beauty, try to evoke unknown and unseen
beauty.
Porcelain
is like clothes, clothes made from textiles, clothes are so close, a second
skin to cover and protect the first. The same closeness has porcelain, we eat
and drink out of porcelain, we shit and piss in porcelain, both sides of the
spectrum as in filled – empty Ise-shi Shinto shrine, as the two sides of the
plate, as the out- and inside of bowl and vase. Imagine a survival kit: a roof,
clothes, a dish and a cup, rice, a toilet pot and a bed. All we need is love,
love love.
The
rectangle is in its origin an architectural shape, a rectangle is an open shape;
the circle is a more anthropomorphic and a closed shape. The circle is a clock,
a wheel, the iris of an eye and the horizon, sun- and moon projection, a
diaphragm, a spiral, a vortex. The drawings of the first month residency in
Arita are fitting in the shape of the circle, accentuate the circle, are
turning in the circle. Except for some exercises with tape to provoke a
collision of Kolkata street bricks, I tried to live in a circle with
compositions of triangles, squares, hexagons and circles drawn on circular
tableware. It is evident to draw on both sides of the biscuit ware plate so
that the rear side is bearing, reflecting or commenting the front side. The
circular plate with its front and rear side, convex and concave, a container of
food, decorated to amuse the eye, decorated to reflect on life, on the body
which needs to be fed, to reflect on the landscape with the soil where the nutrients
comes from, decorated to reflect on time and on death.
A
profound influence of the stay in Japan, in Kyushu, in Arita can be deducted
from the drawings on my dishes, plates, bowl and vase. Cycling in the morning
under different weather conditions to my studio, the ‘kitchen’, in Saga
Ceramics Research Laboratory drew details from the landscape into the drawings
on the biscuit ware. Visiting Kyushu Ceramic Museum with its magnificent
collection of pottery, looking around in the thousand porcelain shops of Arita,
a guided tour by Sakaida Kakiemon (fifteenth generation of the Kakiemon Kiln)
in his shop, museum, wheel throw- and decoration workshops, nose about the
famous porcelain houses like Koransha Co. Ltd, Imaemon and Fukagawa Seiji saturated
my walking around with the enormous richness of motives and the notion of how deep
patterns are anchored in the particular history of Imari ware. An artistic
digestion occurred, mixing, pairing, fragmenting the many visual components
into decorated porcelain objects with titles like ‘Arita Rococo Plate’, ‘Arita
Baroque’ and ‘Arita Iwa’ = ‘Arita Rock’. ‘Arita Iwa’ is making the step from
the relatively two dimensional plates to a three-dimensional vase. This was not
foreseen, it happened in the flow of drawing during 5 days a week on the
porcelain biscuit ware. The shape of the 37-cm tall vase is simple, slightly
convex and producing a surface which is vast and can not be overseen at a
glance. In a horizontal – vertical grid a line drawing in underglaze blue is
drawn, a vertical and regular zigzag line that starts to derail at the bottom
of the vase. The derailment of the lines is trapped in the basic grid, they follow
an improvised zigzag movement on the mantle of the vase from a vertical start
to a horizontal impact 360 degrees later. The drawing evokes Arita, the craggy
mountain Kurokami, evokes the shape and whimsical drawing in stones and rocks, evokes
geology, a volcano. A keystone part on the vase is filled in with a regular
brick pattern which you see everywhere as a detail in the landscape around
Arita. ‘Arita Iwa’ evokes a single rock and it is, conceptually seen, a glazed and
fired kaolin clay substance becoming a stylized derivative illusion of a flaky rock
with its roots in Arita’s Izumiyama Kaolin Quarry.
Arita,
hidden between steep mountains, some with a reservoir of the purest kaolin rock
to make porcelain clay, 400 years ago found by the Korean Ri Sam Pei. Steep mountains
where climbing kilns were built to fire the big amount of strong and beautiful porcelain
tableware. Sailors from the Dutch Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie or VOC,
exploring East Asia set foot on Kyushu almost at the same time when porcelain
production started in Arita. Through the harbor of Imari the porcelain was
shipped to Deshima where the Dutch traders had permission to build a trading
post. From Deshima the VOC shipped the high quality Imari-ware to Europe. There
is still a Dutch Touch present on Kyushu. During the residency I made a visit
back in time to the 17th century to the reconstruction of Deshima
Island in Nagasaki. And a visit to a one to one copy of a Dutch town with typical
buildings from Holland, like windmills, fishermen houses, canal houses and the
Dom tower of Utrecht. The name of this Dutch Village is Huis Ten Bosch, a theme
park build near Sasebo. I went there for a pilgrimage, to see the 1200 square meters’
mural ‘Après nous le déluge’ painted by Dutch artist Rob Scholte. On a hot
September Sunday afternoon I went there, walking through a Dutch town in the
mountains, searching for the mural of golden age sea battles, Apollo 14 rocket
fire and a green traffic light in the clouds. The overall painting is a collage
of precisely put together images with historical, financial and funny
references to art, politics, glory and defeat. It is a visual spectacle like a
James Bond movie with explosions and collapses. I watched this spectacle for
some hours, fluctuating between ‘wow yes’ and ‘ooh no’. In a copy of the royal
palace Huis Ten Bosch a postmodern painting has been executed depicting a copy
in a copy in a copy, playing with the past, present and the future, in Japan.
It was quite a complex experience.
Porcelain is telling stories. Porcelain plates
are fired frozen stories. Porcelain plates narrate old stories about the sea,
the land, the weather, the people. The language of the stories is a drawn
language, a language of patterns, a language of calligraphy. A porcelain vase
or porcelain plate made in Arita is a book. Arita, hidden between steep
mountains, with memorable stories of porcelain dynasties four centuries old.
The stories are difficult to discover, the inhabitants of Arita, of Japan, are
cautious and introvert. Having lived and slept there for three months and
despite the lack of a common language, but by looking around inquisitively and
with some guesswork it becomes clear that there could be written thick and
interesting novels about this city. About the families of potters, their names,
relations, quarrels and feuds, the history of Arita-ware in 15 generations of
kiln firing, slip casting and under- over- in-glaze painting, about the rise
and fall – about bloom and decline. About the splitting of the family Fukagawa in
about 1870 in two potteries of great fame Fukagawa Seiji and Koransha Co. Ltd. About Sakaida Kakiemon 15th generation – not
yet living national treasury and the former and next succession. Imaemon kiln, Yamatoku
kiln from Yamaguchi San the Mayor of Arita town. An essay about this mayor of
Arita with his specialized and seemingly successful pottery in sanitary
porcelain, or a novel about the museum director with his secret collection. The
trading house Momota Tuen with its origin in Korea. Dostoyevsky- or Pynchon-
like novels could be written about the clans, the forcefield between potters
and traders with 400 years’ of successes and struggles, competition and
innovation readable back in time on porcelain plates, bowls, vases. But now,
today, what is the reason for the recent decline of the porcelain industry?
Changing food patterns, changing family life, competition from cheap porcelain
from China, Korea and Taiwan? Could it be lack of openness, the trepidation to
communicate in foreign languages, lack of innovation and hold on to 400 years
of tradition, lack of creativity, not daring to take risks? Complacency and self-regard?
Lack of cooperation between the actors, lack of willingness to leave the
well-known route and venture into risky misty paths? The story of Arita
nowadays where traders and potters try to turn the tide, working intensively
and passionately together. A writer in residence, an anthropologist or a
filmmaker in residence could make particular discoveries and pay tribute to amazing,
shocking, interesting and secret stories. In general, it is the story of
mankind struggling with fear and desire, dealing with full and empty, longing
for reason and beauty.
Another
story, an Arita story, is the story of a designer and an artist living together
for three months in a traditional Japanese house in Arita. Each one with a
project, a designer’s project and an artistic project. They talk, compare, find
differences, they envy the other or preach to the congregation, denying and
trumpeting, trying to draw conclusions. Both residents have a vague idea what
to do, they both have a practice behind them. The clichés of the difference
between art and design must be put on the table to reach somewhere beyond the
cliché. Therefore, to make a start, design has practical use and art is in
principle useless. Practical use from design products could be seen as
attributes necessary to serve and comfort the human existence. The uselessness
of art is a liberating idea or big nonsense, in one mind an art work explodes,
in the other mind it doesn’t make any sense and the viewer remains indifferent.
The artist works more on unique pieces and handcraft is sometimes important and
sometimes of no importance. The designer thinks in editions from the beginning
and about how to make it in such a way that it is reproducible. Handcraft,
technology, material properties and preciseness is important. An artist can
make shit into art, a designer can make snot into design. As young dogs we
discussed the field related operations to gain success, to enforce fame, to
earn money as water. Do you keep the client in mind by having a fata morgana
about the desires of her or him? Or don’t they exist, clients, so that you are
free and without any strange responsibility towards them? When art is somehow
dealing with freedom and liberating itself from preconceptions, is design the
opposite, imprisoned and living up to expectations? No, it is not so literal. We
understood each other? Yes, perhaps. No, not at all. Each of us was living on a
self-made island, sometimes the water between the islands was low, sometimes it
was high with stormy weather. But in some practices there was hundred percent resemblance.
A drive to make, the dedication to create something new. A residency of three
months is a pressure cooker the moment a vague idea falls into fertile soil. At
that moment the designer tries to force the cold and calm materiality of
porcelain under the pressure of time in forms it won’t, it can’t and it doesn’t
want to take. The artist is also shifting gear, a seven days’ workweek is too
short. Both A and D understand that it was a beginning: three months is too
short to elevate that grain fallen on fertile soil into a bonsai pine tree, a
bamboo forest or a fruitfully Kaki tree. Or a philosophical stone in a Japanese
Zen garden. They go home, leaving the common ground of Arita in Saga Prefecture
on the island Kyushu. The designer is taking home three slip-cast molds and a
chemical recipe for dripping and solidifying porcelain to continue the research
in his studio in Holland. The artist goes home amputated, a radical cut off
from the porcelain decoration in the ‘kitchen’, the moment that the ceramic
virus attacks. Without a kiln, turntable and a lump of clay you’re not a potter.
What rests is a cold turkey from the underglaze-blue-drawing-on-porcelain
addiction.
Henri Jacobs - AIR Arita /
1 September - 30 November 2016
Arita – Kyushu - Japan
on the occasion of '1616 -
2016, 400 years Arita porcelain'
acknowledgements: Arita
College of Ceramics, Saga Ceramics Research Laboratory, Saga Prefectural
Government and the Embassy of the Netherlands in Tokyo
thanks to Mirjam Rickert,
Yoriko Ishizawa, Shozaburo-san, Shinohara family, Makoto Terasaki, Nakajima
Tomohiro, Keisuke Mori, Koki Shirahama, Yuko-san and Koransha Co. Ltd, Hideki Baba,
Ichinose Hiromichi, Bas Valckx, Stefan Scholten and Floris Wubben
generously supported by
Mondriaan Fund Amsterdam
Brussels, Belgium, 8
January 2017
wonderful Henri!
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