“Slippery Mud” by Rand O'Brien 7.26.09

As many of you know, I’m a sometime potter.  At one point in my life a therapist and a potter.  But the wheel has been turning only sporadically in the past decade though my various life changes.  I hope that it will be turning more and more in near future.  Today, I want to share with you about “slippery mud”, the substance some fishermen (or women) may be surprised by at the bottom of a stream; this humble substance given to us by this Universe.  I just want to share a meditation on clay.

Let me share a little of the science of pottery, as in the end there is a lot of science in pottery.

Al₂O₃.2SiO₂.2H₂0  Kaolinite

This is clay in its purest form. Kaolin. (It may sound familiar as Kaopectate which if you look at the ingredients you will find that it is primarily Kaolin (clay) and pectin (jelly maker)). The specialness of clay particles is that they are flat. So they stack up like a deck of cards.  Sand particles are round and if you try to stack them they fall down.  With the particles of clay with the attached water molecules, they stack up against one another, stick together and you can make a wall – the standing of the wall of a pot.  It is also why clay is so slippery - the particles slide by one another, and they create a barrier so they line ponds.  A very handy substance in the world.  And when pure kaolin is taken up to about 2800˚ F then it becomes fused and transforms into a ceramic and is vitreous, or does not absorb water. 

When other impurities come into kaolin, you then get clay.  And from that you get porcelains, ball clays, stonewares, earthenwares, each with the additions of various impurities and other earth chemicals that lower the temperature by each clay matures or fully fired.  The lowest-firing clays – the earthenwares can be fired out at 1800˚F and porcelains and stonewares at 2400˚F.

One of my thoughts that I will return to today is the ubiquitous nature of clay in our lives, and how something that is so common goes out of our consciousness, the opposite of mindfulness and presence.  Clay is everywhere, whether the dishes we eat from, the bowls where our food is made or served, the crocks historic and new, lamp bases, sinks tubs and toilets, sparkplugs, the millions,  billions of bricks our buildings are built with, the sidewalks of Portsmouth and other cities, tiles in our baths, kitchens, on our floors, electrical insulators, electronics, dear to everyone’s hearts Corning or Corelle ware, catalytic converters, the Space Shuttle protective tiles, vases, motars and pestles, and on and on.  Everyday we touch this substance as part of our lives, like the air we breathe, and yet think little of the history technology or science. 

An example is this teabowl.  The claybody that I developed has six different clays and feldspars incorporated in it.  It throws in a way I love and matures to a porcelainous-stoneware. The glaze has another six ingredients, but only performs this way in a wood-fired kiln, where I brought the temperature up to 2400˚F. using only wood.(A flowerpot in the kiln at this temperature would melt into a brown lump.)  But there are different atmospheres within the kiln, oxidation where oxygen interacts with the glaze/clay components or a reducing atmosphere, where there is more fuel than oxygen to burn it, so the ware is deprived of oxygen at important intervals, which changes the clay and the glazes. In woodfired kilns, where the wood ash itself is incorporated in the glaze or where fall ash from the fire makes a glaze and the volatiles of the wood interact with the clay to create colors, again depending upon the chemical nature of the various clays.  Even the type of wood makes a difference in the outcome.  So though this cup seems quite simple, it is a compound of many processes and chemical reactions.  Some that I, as a potter, have very little control over – especially if I choose to fire with wood, as opposed to natural gas or electric.  The kiln itself is a marvel of taking wood and burning it in such a way to supply air to the fuel, wood, and yet holding back the heat going up the flue to build and keep the heat in the kiln to the 2400˚F. needed.   A delicate balance that depends on the design of the kiln, the dryness of the wood, the size of the wood. This is the same for this jar my friend Dan Comte made and fired in his large, 24foot long, wood kiln nearly 10 years ago. (He and I sadly took the kiln down when he moved about 4 years later.) Ceramic vessels and ware have been with us since that first discovery of a fire pit built on a clay bank that created that first piece of hard material that was something entirely different that the mud that lay beneath.

But what is beyond the ceramic, what is spiritual about this process that I chose to make a sermon out of it? I’m not going to talk about sparkplugs, or toilets, but rather the craftsmen and women that use this substance to transcend the everyday, which bring beauty and joy and function to this place in our lives.  An old Japanese phrase notes that “clay is a great teacher.” 

Why is it some pots are alive and some just feel dead??  As Michael Cardew notes, when opening a form it springs up with a difference “you suddenly worship; you have created a form, not merely reproduced one ‘for everything that lives is holy’. “  Next time you go to Sunapee, or to  Laudholm Farm Crafts festivals, or any place where you can handle and look at pots that are handmade, take a look at the aliveness of the form.  What I mean is that in some pots there is an energy from the shape, the glaze the artist’s eye and hand that brings something different to the clay.  Other pots might be pretty, but are dead weight.  The classic colonial salt glaze jugs that are now in our homes and museums are a good example.  There are some that are utilitarian, formed well, even have a bright blue flourish, but next to another form is round and full, blown out, has an excitement and has frozen energy to it.  But that is part of it – seeing this aliveness.  Look closely at pots and you can tell the story.  I love seeing finger marks in the glaze, or to see a shard that is 2000 years old from a broken pot and there is a fingerprint of the potter who made it, or the crock in my kitchen with the glaze that was dipped too deep and I see all five of the potter’s fingers on the edge of the glaze.  Whether the pot was just cut off the wheel and the cord-marks are still present in its wonderful looped motion, others are perfectly smooth with only the potter’s signature there.  Is there a foot carved into the base of a bowl, plate or cup?  How was that carved – carefully, slowly, or the quick spiral cut of a master.  When I pick up a pot, I look at the bottom.

Bernard Leach, a potter from Britain who was a close friend of Hamada, one of the living legends of Japan who helped bring the Mingei idea of craft to the West, said:

“It is not without reason that the important parts of pots should be known as foot, belly, shoulder, neck, and lip or that the curve and angle should be thought of as male or female….The shape will include the mark of each part of the process of throwing, the ribs left by the fingers, the upward thrust of the cylinder from the wheel-head to the major curve of the belly, the fullness or leanness of that curve, the pause and turn of the shoulder, often accentuated with ridge or collar, where convex movement changes to concave, the neck tapering to the lip with a concluding accent and conciseness of finish.  Many of the noblest and most spontaneous pots are complete at this point, but others, especially such that have a foot ring, need to be pared on the wheel when half dry.  (He continues).

It is interesting to see an Oriental pick up a pot for examination, and presently turn it over to look at the clay and the form and the cutting of the foot.  He inspects it as carefully as a banker a doubtful signature. – in fact, he looking for the bona fides of the author.  There in the most naked but hidden part of the work, he expects to come into closest touch with the character and perception of its maker.  He looks to see how far and how well the pot has been dipped, in what relation the texture and color of the clay stand to the glaze, whether the foot has the right width, depth, angle, undercut, bevels, and general feeling to carry and complete the form above it.  Nothing can be concealed there, and much of his final pleasure lies in the satisfaction of knowing that this last examination and scrutiny has been passed with honour.”

There have been many lessons about life that I have found in this journey with clay.  I first would like to say, though clearly being a Westerner, much of my thought about clay comes from the East.   When one begins the journey with clay on a wheel, one becomes quickly acquainted with the center.  There is a still point at the center of the mound of clay on the wheel.  (I noted that both literally and figuratively I am centered by clay, and Susan is quite happy when I throw, as I am more calm and well…..centered!!)

Alan Craiger Smith noted in “Tin glazed Pottery”: At the centre of every vessel thrown on the wheel is a point of stillness, which remains still, whatever form the clay assumes.  The form of the vessel measures movement in relation to this point.  The variety of possible forms is endless.  So is the possible variety of decoration which gives additional life to the forms.  The still point is the beginning of both.  The point which exists in the spinning clay but cannot actually be seen is the outward counterpart of the experience of being. Without it, there is no form, no variation of shape, no diversity of pattern, no possibility of any image or dream suggestion.”

Putting one’s finger or hand at the still point is a unique experience, and opening a mound of clay to remain perfectly round is an art that is best described as, well, eventually learned!!  Without it the pot is misshapened, not perfectly round.  The same as we, when not centered are misshapen, not round or whole. (Though one of my favorite pots in the world is a simple raku flowerpot of Susan’s that is quickly thrown with an edge off center, not perfect.)

This leads to my second observation, that an imperfection can add an aliveness to a pot that a perfectly smooth finish can leave deadened.  Even the great Song porcelains of China, the beautiful Celadon glazes, may have a hint of color that offsets the buttery glaze.  Oftimes in the perfection of the Zen Ashram will be a rough hewn pot or pot from within the ashes of a wood kiln offsetting the perfection.  I’ve come to love cracks in pots, a bend in a pot from too much heat or the slight warp of a porcelain bowl. (A curious thing of throwing porcelain, which is difficult anyway, is that “porcelain bruises.”  If the bowl is slightly misshapened in the throwing, though righted and looking perfectly round, on firing it will remember its bruise and be slightly warped in that spot.)  But I also love the perfection of line - a very thin bowl with a perfect roundness.  But as Herrick noted, a “sweet disorder in the dress….”  I’ve come to accept imperfection in my pots, in myself and in people.  In the end that imperfection can make things much more interesting, or maddening, and in that case more for the teaching.

Firing with wood, is a pyro’s delight and a unique experience.  Many times experienced as group firing, as a long firing may take days to accomplish, depending on the kiln and the effects desired.  Through woodfiring I have learned patience and have had to confront my own humility.  One stokes a fire slowly in a wood kiln up to about 1000˚, to bring the pots through a phase called quartz inversion, where again the science of firing takes over.  Past this physical change in the structure of the quartz/silica in the clay, one can proceed more rapidly.  The hope is to gain a little on the temperature with each stoke.  The heat decreases with the fresh fuel, then begins to build and just before the crest, where the temperature begins to decrease, one stokes again. And again and again.  Dan’s big kiln when up to 2000˚F+, degrees make have taken a cord a wood a day to keep it both hot and to keep building the temperature.  But then it stalls, and one makes a go at that temperature (many times around 2100deg) for 3 or 4 hours but there is no gain. All the little tricks- smaller amounts of wood, clearing the ashes, opening air passages, closing the flue, opening the flue -and then mysteriously it begins to climb again.   This is the time of patience, of just staying with it, and the time when I truly am humbled by the process.  But I enjoy firing the most at 2AM, no one else around, the stars are out, I measure the wood for the next stoke, watch the flue, watch the temperature, open the door to yellow-white heat, throw the wood in the fire box and hear it crackle even before it hits the grate and quick close the door, not to let cool air on the pots or wood and cool my face and hands.  And again, and again.  When the kiln becomes a living being with the rhythm of the fire and me, it is one of the true and pure joys I have in this world. There is an aching beauty to keep the door open a few seconds longer and watch the flame coil around the pots as they glow yellow-white in the heat. And with a certain pride when the next stoker comes on at 5AM to know I brought the whole process up another 150deg.  Patience and humbleness of the fire and the kiln's life.

I’ve learned to let go, to know that things are not truly precious in this world.  This was a hard lesson, as I have had (past tense) pots that I truly loved, that had an energy or glaze that was unique.  This lesson came in a very intense way for me, about 17years ago.  I had the pots from a wood firing on the dining room table in Keene.  Some truly beautiful pots, many porcelains, as I was throwing porcelain at the time.  The following day, for whatever reason, though at the time clearly seemed important, my wife and I had a huge argument, a bitter battle.  I became enraged and when she was out of the room, I smashed the entire table of pots.  Nothing left, gone.  At first I amazed myself, then angry at myself, then ashamed.  I had frightened her, and I am truly sorry for this, though she was most upset over my destruction of such beauty.  But then a strange thing happened for me, as I felt great relief; relief that things that had been so precious for me, no longer were precious.  A pot became just a pot; I realized in the midst of the destruction, as I was cleaning up the beautiful reds and blues and whites and ash drippings, that they no longer were important.  If a pot breaks, it breaks.  If the world is not as I hoped, it is okay. This latter wisdom is something I work with everyday, and seemingly every moment, but the deeper understanding of this began with the mini-enlightenment of that destruction.  I do not believe I could have come to that wisdom in the any other way.  If I broke a pot as Oko Ono did one of the great Ming vases, my understanding would have been nothing.  Though the act of destruction I found the beginning of a deeper acceptance.  Given other acceptances that I have had to meet in my life, that beginning was a gift.

There is a strange anxiety I get when I try different forms. I always feel silly when this happens, like grow-up already!! But there is something comforting about making the four tea bowls with which I begin each throwing session.  But pushing a new form always pushes me.  Mary Roehm, a Potter from SUNY New Paltz in New York noted, “You can only go as far into clay and you can go into your self.” But along with this, if I am not potting, and begin to think about the form and pots I wish to make, but knowing I don’t have the time, it actually brings pain, emotional pain that pushes me to throw. A yearning to create the time and space to make pots.  In the book Art and Fear the Authors Bays & Orland talk about the various anxieties and fears that limit artists. They quote Stephen Des Taebler as he notes “Artists don’t’ get down to work until the pain of working is exceeded by the pain of not working.”  Pushing me to a new form and pushing the clay to its limit brings those pots into being that are alive.  But then the other problem, which all artists deal with, is when to leave things alone.  Not to push it one step further, not to put one more mark on the pot, not to incise it more deeply.  The balance between the two becomes the difference between an interesting pot, an overworked pot or a stunning pot.  Oh, to know the difference.  I always seem to find the line after I cross it.  There it is, one foot behind me.  I hope to learn to know when I am where I am and that is where I need to be, not to think where I should be.  I think the Buddha had something to say about that.

And in the end I have come to understand that each pot has its own lifetime.  Some never come off the wheel, some crack while drying, others are dropped, some go through the intense heat in one piece and serve a family to finally slip out of the hand and some lay buried for a thousand years.   Again, this is a lesson that has taught me simple acceptance.  And though it is a lesson that is much easier said than done, so our lives are like pots.  Some never come off the wheel and are miscarried.  Some of us die way too young and some live very long lives; some become warped in the heat, some become beautiful in the broken places.   My acceptance continues to be taught to me by this substance of the earth.

In conclusion, Otto Nazler noted:

“When you hold a pot in your hands, when you go over its wall with your fingers, you feel the hands of the potter, her finger marks, his touch.  You may not know who he was or what she looked like, but handling the pot, be it hundreds or thousands of years old, you can still feel the imprints of their hands.  It is this fact about a pot that makes it so endearing, so very personal. It makes the physical handling of a pot such an important part of it appreciation, as important as it visual impact and at times even more so…

The form of a pot is the main part of its spiritual substance.  Its outline, its proportions and balance; the fingermarks impressed on its wall, are the simple statement of it creator, spontaneous and a personal as his handwriting.  It is also unique as to the hour or the minute it was made. The same pot does not happen twice.”

I hope in leaving today - given the billions of pots that have been made in human history - you hold a pot a little longer.  You think of buying a pot with a makers mark, something not perfect.  You think of the Japanese potters who leave roughness on the foot of a pot, so the handler is much more present as he or she sets it on the table, carefully, so as not to scratch the table’s surface; to be absolutely present in the moment as the pot and table and bearer meet.  And at that moment note clay opening a mini-enlightenment of presence and the now.  That is all we have.