This last week or so, from April 29 to May 5, I spent my days displaying and selling pots at a space in the pottery festival in Karatsu. This was the fourth year of the festival, and had the most visitors to date. 

As display areas go, it seemed odd in the beginning: an old pachinko parlor stripped of its machines with very high ceiling and polished granit flooring. It was a huge space, even when divided between 3 kilns. My space alone was about 4 x 10 meters, as big as my entire studio.

 It all ended up looking quite nice, but I had to construct some shelves in order to have enough to fill the space.    

 One other thing I did which I rarely do, was to have a demo space for making coil and paddle pots on my kick wheel.  

 It actually brought in a lot of customers, who were curious about how these pots are made. 

Overall a busy week, and a pretty good one for sales. I was very pleased to have customers who were actively seeking me out after buying my pots at this show last year. One couple who had bought a couple of pots last year ended up buying ten this year! Then, just yesterday I got a phone call from a man who had purchased one of my guinomi, positively ebullient about. 

Two of the three collaborative works between Nakayama Tomosuke and myself sold, giving us both a big boost of confidence about the direction we are taking with our work. The octopus incense burner is the piece that didn’t sell yet, sorry no pic for the lotus motif incense burner which did sell, along with the teapot pictured below.