I finally got the pictures from my first tea ceremony. This last April, my tea sensei’s mother, also a tea sensei, had her 25th annual Hanamizuki Chakai. Hanamizuki is Dogwood in English. Apparently, after the gift of cherry trees (the ones along the Potomac, I think) by Japan to the US, the US gave a gift of Dogwood trees to Japan. Ogura sensei really likes them, and donates the proceeds of every year’s Hanamizuki Chakai to planting and maintaining Dogwood trees around Saga.

Anyway, this year they allowed me to make tea at the outdoor tea setting, or temaeza. Here it is pictured from the shade of the guest seating. One of Ogura sensei’s high school students is performing the ceremony. It was a beautiful spring day, not too hot, but the sun was bright, and my white hairless pate turned pink pretty quick.

I was quite nervous and not so enthusiastic when they told me I’d go first that day, but felt better when they said that going first early in the day, there are fewer guests to watch you sweat, so I felt better about going early.

Silly me. Here was the first guest of the day:

 This is Minister (Soumu Daijin) Haraguchi, roughly equivalent in the US to the Secretary of State. What you can’t see in all the pictures are the bodyguards hovering about. One of them was over my shoulder watching me make the tea, I guess to make sure I didn’t put anything funny in it.
He was kind enough to sit by me for a photo.

My teacher, Kawakami Sensei is next to me, and her mother, Ogura Sensei is standing in the rear.
In the pics below you can see the implements. The mizusashi is a collapsed large jar that collapsed uniformly inward. Not so acceptable for a large jar, but easy to make it into a ‘found’ water jar for ocha. This day we used a palm frond as a lid. The lady sitting behind me is Tanaka san, another potter in Taku who just happened to be a student of Ogura sensei. Very nice lady, and a good potter. Though she might not want me to tell, she is one who made the collapsed jar. Don’t tell anybody…

Below is the temaeza that was set up indoors for guests. The mizusashi looks like Hagi Shiro (Hagi white), with a Shinsha teabowl (copper red) A bit more formal…  Kawakami sensei is performing the ceremony with Ogura sensei looking on.

It was a great event and lots of people came to participate and help out. Lots of work and lots of fun.

From the back/tea room:

I took this the 3rd day, and the center table is looking rather disheveled, the yakishime teabowl, second from the right in the picture where they are all in a line, was the one teabowl that sold. The next one that got picked up and asked about the most was the tall tsutsu teabowl directly above.

Next are some photos from the front room:

Well, we wrapped up the show last night at 6 pm, and headed out for a nice dinner and some beer, stopping on the way at Homura, the best pottery gallery in Karatsu. Not good to go in there with a wad of cash in your pocket, you won’t escape undamaged. I did the next best thing by only dropping $50 on a really nice little teabowl that I coudn’t believe was priced that low.

Here are some pics from the show starting from the entry way, with 3 pieces: my big Chosen Karatsu jar, a collaborative piece (an incense burner), and Nakayama kun’s long wallet, made of Bison.

Sorry the wallet is not too visible. The burner is yohen yakishime and the lid is fumed silver with a lotus motif. The flower is the knob, the leaves incised, and the empty seed pods are the air holes. Isn’t it a beaut?

Finally fired the big jar. It was a bugger to glaze by myself, I need to figure out a system for these.

 When I peeked in the kiln, I was worried, because the whole thing was listing to one side, but luckily it wasn’t stuck to the back wall of the kiln. The flat bottom had sagged a bit on one side onto the shells. Luckily it didn’t cause any ruptures in the sides of the pot.

Where it did sag a bit was around the shoulder, not too much, but made the lip of the pot warp some. Not sure if I like this or not. Some people might like the movement, and a lot of large jars often have this feature/problem. I think I would have preferred it un-warped myself.  The sag happened exactly where it happened on the wheel when I was finishing the rim. I fixed it at the time, but it came back anyway. Something to remember.

The glaze turned out ok, but far from ideal. The ame ran so much that it pulled the white down, stretching it too thin, and I lost much of the fine runs with the blues. The best runs came at the front of the pot, pictured.  (Sorry for the crappy pictures, I’ll photo the load properly and post as they get done.)  Final dims of the pot are 40cm tall X 33cm wide. Weight: 4kg/10lbs even.

I’ve been continuing excavation of the front area of the kiln, preparing it for the kiln building workshop in October. About 10 inches down, there’s a seam of clay that runs through our whole yard, and this gives me a good excuse to collect some for making pots. I posted text and pictures to the kiln workshop blog already, so I’ll just link to it from here:

http://karatsupots-workshop.blogspot.com/