House Photos

Over the years there have been many photographs taken of my house by both professional photographers and others but it is only when you live in the house all the time that natural lighting opportunities like these come about.  The top photograph shows reflected morning light on the dining room ceiling.  The parquet bench in the kitchen only gets this early morning light a few times each year.

Early Pots from our Anagama

 

                     The two pots shown above were from one of our early anagama firings and are very colourful.  The round one is one of Estelle's while the slab built hexagonal bowl is one of mine.  The lower photograph is a close up showing some of the wonderful effects that just happen naturally in an anagama firing.

Estelle's Tea Pots

Two of Estelle's anagama fired teapots.  With a fine grained clay these were very satisfactory but with a course grained Shigaraki type clay, like in the upper photograph, they were not always leak proof.  Estelle's method of making the teapot body was to pull up a cylinder and then fill it out from the inside this thinning the clay until it was little more than the thickness of the crystal particles.

Another Sake Cup

This Bizen sake cup and its lovely box was a gift from Rakusai Fujiwara-san from Imbe, Japan.  He had a wonderful collection of pottery which he spent an afternoon showing to Estelle and me when we visited him.

Japanese Things

Just to show two lovely Japanese things.  The anagama fired guinomi is by Kazuya-san and was photographed while I was in Japan in April 2013.  The Japanese brush was a gift from friends and I find it both beautiful and useful.

A Japanese Visitor.

Last Sunday I was visited by Masakazu Kusakabe-san from Japan.  We had met at the 2002 International Wood Fire Festival in Aomori, Japan.  His book, co authored with Marc Lancet, "Japanese Wood-Fired Ceramics"  is a must for all wood firers. The guinomi is one of two he presented to me.  The vase is another of Estelle's fired in the second firing of the Kamaka anagama.