My recent topics and interests, Episode 6

(by S. Miyauchi, Professional Engineer, Doctor of Engineering, JSME Fellow)

About my pottery

Although I collect antiques for long times (See the below photo "Antiques in my study"), I really wanted to make potteries myself. So I started it as an extension of the habit of making things peculiar to Japanese engineers (物作り, mono-dzukuri). I show you some of my works (photos below). Since last year (2017) was the year of the Rooster, in the middle of a big round dish, I put moon and Feng (鳳, the sacred bird) in it. Two flower vases are Shigaraki style.

Surely, there are many pleasure of making things (mono-dzukuri) as follows.

①The above mentioned Feng was pressed with the rubber stamp bought at the longly established stamp shop in

Kyoto (http://www.tamaru-inbou.com/). "Sansuiga" (山水画, Japanese-style landscape painting) on the small

dish is pressed by the antique stamp I bought in Nanjing in 1986.

②Platycodon grandiflorus that is a pretty blue flower swaying lightly in autumn breezeis is my family crest. I made

tyouka (貼花) from clay board by a cooking cutting die, and attached it to the main body. In addition, tyouka were

heavily used in Tang Celadon, those amazingness and decorativeness are surely Tang Dynasty Spirit.

③ It is also interesting to write symbolic Chinese characters by a glaze that is not ease to flow. The character of "旬"

(syun) on the lid of the teapot represents the blessing of the delicious seasonal food.

④From Wudi (武帝) the Great of the Heydime Han Dynasty (2nd century B.C.), Zhang Qian (張騫) received the

order to form an alliance with Yuezhi (月氏, Kushan, Eastern Iranian Nomads) against Xiongnu (匈奴, Perhaps

Huns). He went to the west to the west toward the sunset and crossed the Tian Shan mountains (天山) to Sogdiana

(Transoxiana around Samarkand). My pottery inscription "穿空" is due to his pseudonym whose meaning is "to

penetrate through space". For me as an engineer and a kind of scientist, it also has a meaning to open up the

horizon of knowledge.

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